DatNerdyKid Reviews-'X-Men: Days of Future Past'

I’ve had quite a loving relationship with Fox’s X-Men movies. The first and second are quite good, the third a fair bit less so, having introduced the fairly unneeded ‘cure’ storyline and packing the film into 99 minutes. ‘Origins’ is better and more comic-faithful than people give it credit, despite the unnecessarily extensive cast (Gambit and Blob, really?), butchering Deadpool and fudging with the timeline (don’t even get me started on how people seem to IGNORE the fact that the Three Mile Island meltdown happened in 1979). ‘First Class’ was a fantastically emotion-filled study of the origins of our main characters set during a real-world crisis-who cares of the ‘first class’ presented wasn’t the ACTUAL first class from the comics?! And finally, ‘The Wolverine’ gave us a dark, brutal and tragic hero set against a modern Tokyo, Japan, rendering aspects of the famed ‘Japan Saga’ while remaining inventive in its own right (however its butchering of the Silver Samurai character is…annoying, but not completely detracting).

Given my enjoyment of the previous instalments in the saga, I was incredibly excited to go and see this. So, as already stated, I skipped out on uni to go see this-and going to see the first session on opening day is quite dedicated-and I am SOOOOO glad I did. So here, I am going to provide my review. Beware, SPOILERS will be dotted throughout my review, so if you don’t want to know, I’d strongly advise not reading beyond this point. Now here’s the thing about me and reviews-I talk. A lot. I simply have SO much to say that I cannot exactly be concise. As such, in similar fashion to my review for ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’, I am going to divide this up into three easily-identifiable sections: the good, the bittersweet, and the bad. So, uh, enjoy!

The Good:

1. The Acting: The acting in this film, pretty much across the board, is stellar-I’m only going to point out particular standout stars here, but I’m not kidding. Hugh Jackman is the literal and figurative glue that binds two timelines, two generations, two casts together, and performs brilliantly once again in a more ‘fish out of water’ style leadership role. James McAoy is excellent as an Xavier who has lost his way-we have never seen, let alone even imagined, that the wise elder leader of the X-Men embodied by Patrick Stewart could have gone through this phase of hopelessness and self-loathing, and McAvoy plays this with every ounce of his ability. In a rather shocking turn, Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique is truly the heart and soul of the film-its events revolve entirely around her. Lawrence portrays her intense moral confliction particularly well, introducing a side to the athletic, naked blue woman we had onle ever known previously as Magneto’s sidekick. Ian McKellen, despite his limited screentime, portrays the older Erik fighting alongside the X-Men in a way we have never seen him before-with mutual goals of evading extinction aligned, Erik is now self-sacrificing and perhaps truly heroic, a reflective scene with Patrick Stewart near the end highlighting his redemption and regret for years of pointless fighting. Nicholas Hoult works very well as Beast, the ever-loyal and reliable companion for McAvoy’s apathetic broken man, and he is truly fearsome as Beast. Peter Dinklage oozes charisma as human scientist Bolivar Trask, the ideal villain of the piece, and you really believe that he is nearly deranged enough to perform horrific experiments on the mutants you…um…don’t get to see in this film. 
2. The Design: So the design in this film is...another level. The suits worn by the future X-Men (unfortunately none are worn by the 1973 team) are all distinct enough from each other to be unique and are a humungous improvement upon the cookie-cuttertight  black leather of the first three films. And more than that, the costumes make SENSE-the more utilitarian look exemplifies the presence of a hard-fought war in the future. Hell, Wolverine's suit even has yellow and blue underneath the body armour as a nod to the comic-book outfits. Magneto's costume is a tad elaborate, with the torso armour on top of nylon (or whatever material he's wearing) looking rather strange at times, however the helmet is a vast improvement upon the shiny metal helmet in 'First Class', however much more comic-accurate the former may have been. Now while neither design is particularly comic-accurate, both Sentinel designs are immaculate-the 1973 Sentinels look like truly clean, sterile and state-of-the-art war machines, while the 2023 Sentinel Mark X's are indeed terrifying, their adaptibility and even normal form actually MAKING SENSE within the context of the film. The designs for the future are cast in dark greys and blacks, setting the tone for a bleak and dystopic future that works perfectly in the 2023-set sequences.
3. The Special Effects: The special effects in this film are truly incredible. The Sentinel Mark X's are a true feat of VFX beauty, rendered wonderfully and looking superb in every form. Each unique X-Man-of-the-future's power is visually stunning and looks like some of the best effects work I have seen in a film in a looooong time; Iceman's frozen appearance is updated further from 'The Last Stand' such that it is more transparent and comic-accurate, while I must praise Sunspot's fire blasting and Blink's portals in particular. The future sequences are where the special effects really shine through, however the  slow-motion sequence of Peter Maximoff running about in the Pentagon kitchen is beautiful; with such attention to detail, it is truly a spectacle. 
4. The Script: The film feels exactly the right length. Nothing feels like it drags for too long, or is cut short too soon-the film flows at a precise, even pace. Not a single line in the film was at all cringeworthy-there was no cheesy humour, no lines that were just plain...horrible. Humour is natural and not bombastic or thrown in there for fun-scenes such as Wolverine and Hank's first 'meeting', Peter and Erik's rather awkward elevator scene and the aforementioned slow-mo kitchen are very funny without pushing it in your face. One major aspect that surprised me, and will be expanded upon in my next topic, is how the very sizeable cast was extremely well-handled. The main villain (Trask) probably only got about 15 minutes of screen time, and yet I was not left feeling like he'd been 'pushed to the side' as many felt about Christopher Eccleston's Malekith; the future cast of mutants, while reduced to being Sentinel fodder for the most part, do not feel at all like unnecessary characters, because they suit their specific purpose; the main cast members got the right level of attention without hogging the show, and I left feeling as though both the new and original casts received just the right amount of time on screen each to make the story work. basically what I am trying to say is that the natural reaction of fanboys when a lot of characters are included in a story is to go "Spider-Man 3! Spider-Man 3!", referencing the film's inability to deal with inconclusive storylines for its three villains, and yet this film handle's a cast of at least two or three times the size with true ease.
5. The Cast: I am not talking about the particular actors or their acting ability here. I felt that the characters chosen for the film were perfect. As mentioned previously, the new members of the future cast (Bishop, Blink, Sunspot, and seeing as I'm feeling generous, Warpath) were each diverse and interesting in their own right, being used where necessary and each bringing a distinctive feel to the film. I honestly feel like Singer cutting Rogue from all but one scene (spoilers!) actually benefited the film-her absence from the future X-Men team implies a) her power loss was permanent and b) she kinda died. This is a GOOD thing because it allows the development of the implied potential between Kitty and Iceman in 'The Last Stand'-he has moved on because his girlfriend died, and Kitty was the only natural person he could move on to. It just makes sense people. Plus, it makes her cameo (see 'The Reset') all the more meaningful, because we know that things have been restored to the way they should be. I am also surprisingly pleased by the fact that the core 1973 cast was kept, by comparison, quite small-having the central focus lying on Logan, Charles, Erik, Raven and Hank (to a smaller degree) allows the film to go into character study mode as they interact and stuff...I honestly believe that had say, for example, Emma Frost or Azazel survived until this film, the past sequences would have been over-crammed because it truly is about THESE characters.
6. The Nostalgia: Singer, you've outdone yourself. You really have. Given its absence from 'First Class', I totally was NOT expecting the original trilogy theme + DNA-explorer-sequence (can't describe it too well but you know what I mean) + the closing of the Cerebro room X-door at the end of the opening credits. Obviously, it's a Bryan Singer thing. And my face literally grinned with glee. It was a CLASSIC X-Men film-while the character focus remained upon the 1973 cast, the film opened with the future cast (as it should have done) and...it just FELT like one of the original films. I don't know how else to explain it. It just made me feel...good. The fact that Singer also chose to give the fans resolution by including three cameos from original trilogy cast members (see 'The Reset') is proof of just how much he wanted this film to please the fans-and I do not believe the fanservice to bepandering in any way, but rather the necessary resolution to those characters. Huzzah!
7. The Impending Apocalypse: En Sabah Nur! En Sabah Nur! En Sabah Nur! Saying it now-the telekinetic construction of pyramids is goddamn spectacular. 
8. The Reset: Getting into MAJOR spoiler territory here. Basically, thanks to some timey-wimey technicalities Logan’s alteration of the past erases (for the most part) every previous film except for ‘First Class’. To be clear, let me break this up into two timelines: Timeline A includes every X-Men and Wolverine film that has been released up to this point, as well as the ‘dystopian future’ sections of this film-it is the timeline in which Mystique murders Trask in 1973, setting in motion the chain of events that leads to what we see in the future; Timeline B includes ‘First Class’, the 1973 sections of this film, the ‘peaceful alternate 2023’ (in which uh…Anna Paquin, Kelsey Grammer, Famke Janssen and James Marsden cameo) featured at the end of the film, and presumably all films in the saga henceforth-this is the timeline in which Mystique is convinced not to kill Trask and Magneto is now on the loose. So now, films almost universally-panned by the fanbase (i.e. ‘The Last Stand’ and ‘Origins’) are completely GONE. With that though unfortunately, ‘X-Men’, ‘X2’ and ‘The Wolverine’ (in my opinion the best of those three) are also gone. The timey-wimey antics succeed in wiping the slate clean and pretty much starting afresh, meaning that future films could pretty much go anywhere…

​The Bittersweet:

1. We know how it ends: This pretty much speaks for itself-we know how it all ends. One of the final sequences of the film depicts our grey-streaked Wolverine waking up in an altered future, where the school is functioning and Rogue, (a very different looking) Beast, Jean Grey and Cyclops are all alive, ending with Logan asking Xavier to tell him what had happened over the past 50 years. The problem is, while the film intended to give the impression that these characters’ futures are no longer set and they could go ‘anywhere’, the (most definitely welcome) fanservice that was the aforementioned cameos severely impacts the stakes of ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’; the events of the next film have occurred in the new past and the ‘happy’ ending for the future cast implies that these events have no negative impact on the future-everyone SURVIVES. We go into the next film thinking “Okay, this will be interesting, but no one’s gonna die except perhaps Magneto or Mystique”, and unless the film opts to include further timeline-messing antics (definitely not necessary but not necessarily unwelcome either) which are indeed a part of the storyline upon which the film will be based, the stakes have virtually been ruined. In addition, the fact that Bryan Singer chose to announce ‘Apocalypse’ and Wolverine 3 prior to this film’s release also gave the idea of predestination-we knew going into the film that we would be seeing Apocalypse next and that Wolverine would get another solo film. If he hadn’t announced those films, and the ‘new future’ scene was heavily changed, then perhaps we could have been genuinely surprised by the (very excellent) post-credits tease for Apocalypse. In short, Singer blew his load too early (the joke had to be made).
2. Michael Fassbender: I am going to have to be very delicate here. In 'First Class', I absolutely loved Fassbender-I felt like he gave Erik Lehnsherr true conviction and was successfully able to turn a monster into a sympathetic character, and then into a monster again. His truly emotionally-fuelled performance was possibly better than anything I had seen before that from McKellen. And then...uh. Now Fassbender did a fine job, he really did. The scene where he got to talk to Charles for the first time in years was completely gripping. However I felt that in this film he was a bit...directionless. I mean after the breakout it was inevitable he would turn on Charles, Logan and Hank to follow his own agenda-he is unswerveable in his motivations and of course he would only work with the 'good guys' for as long as he had to. I just feel like his 'character arc' in the film was...practically nonexistant. I mean we thought Erik had killed JFK, and his revelation that JFK was in fact a mutant and he had actually tried to save him proved to partially redeem his character, but other than that I just didn't feel like he was given a lot to do. To be perfectly honest, I found Fassbender a little emotionally flat this time around, which was disappointing. He was just there to ultimately take the opportunity to capitalise upon the Sentinel demonstration and provide the film's climax. However, I do think the inventive ways in which he controlled metal to be very cool.
3. Evan Peters: A LOT of people have heavily praised Evan Peters' Peter Maximoff (never actually referred to as Quicksilver), claiming that he 'steals the show'. Some have complained about the fact that he seems to just randomly disappear after breaking out Erik. I disagree with both of these propositions. First things first, the costume may have originally looked bad but it actually didn't bother me on film-everything from the headphones to the goggles made sense because of the character portrayed. Secondly, I am actually glad that he was kinda told to 'go home' after Erik was broken out, not only because as stated before I thought the film was correct in focusing on the core 1973 cast of five, and Peter would have been 6th-wheeling, but because this guy was a teenage kleptomaniac with no real fighting experience-do you really want him around when you're trying to prevent a war? His absence from the rest of the film, bar a brief shot of him in the final act, makes SENSE for this reason. I've already stated how beautifully his powers are depicted in the film, so no need to go back there. But I do have one real negative with Peters' performance-he seems uninspired. During the whole sequence of Logan, Charles and hank in his basement, he speaks in a very monotone and boring manner that just made me think..."Eh." I thought the premise for the character as a troublesome thief was indeed an interesting interpretation, however I found his characterisation rather bland and unengaging. Oh, and if you're wondering, there is a particular allusion to Erik  being his father (but Erik would have had to have been mighty young!).

The Bad:

*tumbleweed rolls through*
Nothing. Seriously, nothing. There is nothing inherently and irredeemably poor about this film.
I mean...I suppose there are two annoyances the film brings about, but these are nothing to do with the film itself. The first is the fact that in two years time, I have to watch Channing Tatum portray Gambit onscreen when I thought there was nothing at all wrong with Taylor Kitsch (it was the script that was the problem, not his acting). Secondly, the timeline reset means 'The Wolverine' never happened. This is a huge bummer because it gave people (including myself) the brutal, badass Logan they always wanted, against the backdrop of Japan. Wicked stuff, now essentially gone to waste.

I hope you were able to stick out my review, thanks all :D