X-Men: Days of Future Past comes at a time when the comic book movie genre is starting to feel stagnant. Most pictures within this little niche hut are mostly concerned with setting up sequels and franchising that they cannot even achieve the simple task of telling a good story within their duration.
Days of Future Past, adapted from the iconic comic storyline by Chris Claremont, has grand marvellous ambition that boggles the mind, and it confounds in an almost surreal way, how well it executes that ambition.
The screenplay, penned by Simon Kindberg particularly impresses. By crafting a time travel narrative, Kindberg illustrates the core reason as to why the X-franchise is very appealing. At its heart, it has always been ideologies clashing in a Chess like fashion fronted by two men.
Additionally, like all good time travel stories, it allows us to peek into a moment of time that has fundamentally shaped someone. The explanation of the time travel was simple, the dialogue was engaging and the speechifying was dignified and not overly sentimental.
Furthermore, the humour emerged from natural places within the situations that the characters found themselves in and the references to prior films were all subtly put in as opposed to drawing attention to themselves.
Byran Singer matches the screenplay in its greatness with his outstanding direction. He keeps the scale of the film in check with some great editing and focus on character building scenes. His camera always greatly lingers and yet has sharp focus, showcasing important subtle, details.
A good example of this is the scene when Charles and Erik are on a plane together. He has a close up focused on the former and a medium shot on the latter. As the scene goes on and becomes increasingly intense, through the subtle use of the camera, that aforementioned medium shot slowly becomes a close up as the scene goes on.
He also plays with the nature of time in some scenes, the best example being a tense fight scene that takes place on the Paris streets. The camera is focused and captures all the action, but then he cuts to the cameras that the reporters use. We are then treated to seeing the footage being captured on video, in 16:9 aspect ratio and having this great grainy texture. The effect is one of a sense of nostalgic bliss and a prism as to how we used to look at the world.
It is coupled with a fantastic scene where the audience is treated to an extended rift on the joys of Bernard`s watch and one of the best dramatic scenes in a comic book movie. You have the X-Men back in the right hands of a man who understands the material and most importantly has fun with it.
Praising the cast would take volumes because of the sheer amount of people in the picture, so to focus the lens on a couple of actors should suffice. Hugh Jackman returns as Wolverine and brings much gravity and weight to his plight. But it is James McAvoy who is the biggest surprise bringing previous untapped depth to young Charles Xavier as a portrait of a man who has lost all hope and faith, in the face of personal loss. It is his character who carries the film, in a piece about the nature of change and determinism set against overwhelming impossibility and bleakness.