X-Men: Days of Future Past

Last week I sat down to write about Godzilla and found that a minor hurdle that I had to enjoying it was getting past a very mundane plot that occupied the first thirty minutes of the film.  And, like a virus coming around for a second go at a drained and exhausted human body, X-Men: Days of Future Past took plot issues to a whole new level and gave me my second assault from within the past week.  If audiences spend the entire film thinking too much, stocks in Tylenol would see a significant jump as thousands of movie goers would attempt to quell their brain-drain headaches.

Every movie, especially time travel movies (which this one is), will have plot holes in it, and action films such as this require an expected suspension of disbelief.  The issue with this movie is that the suspension of disbelief needed does not come from having to allow for the fact that there are mutants with crazy powers, but that everything you have been told from previous X-Men movies may or may not fit with the tale you are watching.  X-Men: First Class was a wonderfully fun film which had the appearance to be a reboot over a direct prequel, as elements were introduced that did not fit with the previously established trilogy.  That is fine and good, but X-Men: Days of Future Past links the two together, meaning that all anomalies from the past versions should somehow fit with the future version, and it is just a mess of mental catastrophe wading your mind through the maze of inconsistencies.

Let me now pause to enjoy the aforementioned Tylenol…

Alright, I am back on track.  If you were to spend all of the running length of this film straining to put all of the pieces together of what you are being told by director Bryan Singer and writer Simon Kinberg then you would miss out on a visually stunning and fun adventure.  I won’t downplay the inconsistency factor, but the film is good enough that you are able to look past it.  If you look at the Batman trilogy by Christopher Nolan you will find a massive amount of improbabilities and plot holes, but the experience is engrossing enough that it is easy to pass them by.  It is very similar with X-Men: Days of Future Past, which relies on a stellar cast of talent playing mutants, all of whom have their own personal battles that they are trying to get through.

The future of mutants and humans is in jeopardy in the future, and the X-Men use the powers of Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) to transport Wolverine’s (Hugh Jackman) mind into his body in the year 1973.  He then must find the young Professor X (James McAvoy) and his old friend turned enemy, Magneto (Michael Fassbender).  Along the way we get to see new mutants and ones we have already met as they attempt to track down Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) whose actions may lead to the bleak future that they are trying to avoid.  It sounds a bit like Terminator, but instead of Kyle Reese naked and with no weapons landing in the past, we Wolverine, naked and with temper… this sort of thing bodes well for entertainment.

Just like the first film, I felt the largest strength to be the performances and relationship between McAvoy and Fassbender, both of whom play their characters perfectly and exhibit full, powerful emotions, as well as Fassbender being able to show strength and danger using only facial expressions an posturing.  Magneto really has to be one of the most cinematic villains in history, because there is so much you can do with him that creates a sense of awe when seen on the big screen.  Bryan Singer crafted numerous magnificent moments with Magneto that alone are worth seeing the film for.

One aspect that I was very happy with in X-Men: First Class was their use of the F-word.  This may sound very silly for me to bring up, but in a PG-13 movie they are only allowed one use of the word.  Just like any other aspect of the visceral and storytelling experience, language means a lot.  So many times when studios only have one opportunity to use a strong word that sums up many emotions it is just inserted in a throwaway moment.  First Class used it at an appropriate time, with appropriate characters that created a great deal of humour, but was so true and sincere to the moment.  X-Men: Days of Future Past ties in its use of the cuss word with the previous film, not for humour but for an understanding of character.  I do applaud them for making the most of the one shot they had at using that word, because it made an impact in the story.

The action scenes were a visually stimulating experience, and one in particular included an enormous amount of humour.  While it was not an overly funny movie, the humour fit perfectly with the character and situation involved without being out of place and overly slap-stick (even though it was rather slap-stick).  Once again, Singer showed an awareness of what works, with whom, and when.  One downside to his choice of visuals was at times inserting grainy perspective shots from bystanders to the action who had cameras.  I do understand that the intent was possibly to instill the understanding that the mutants were now caught on tape, but it had a tendency to work against the flow of what was unraveling.

If you are an X-Men fan, or just a fan of solid summer action flicks, you will most likely get all of your money’s worth out of X-Men: Days of Future Past.  Or, if you are like me, you are sitting on a stock pile of Scene points and will have the option of seeing it for free.  But, if you completely act like me, you will not figure out how to redeem the points and, for the second week in a row, pay full price for a movie you could have gotten for free because you don’t understand tech.  I am not completely blaming this on Bryan Singer, but I am considering writing a strongly written letter.

Rating – 3 out of 4 stars