Movie Review: X-Men: Days Of Future Past

I saw X-Men: Days Of Future Past last night (I hope that’s the last time I have to write out the whole title).  The film is the first comic book movie to use time travel so I guess that’s some sort of milestone that geeks everywhere should be proud of. I thought the movie was great although I didn’t think it was as good as “X-Men: First Class” and actually have a fair amount of complaints about it.  I loved “X-Men: First Class” and “X-Men 2″ This film might go right behind them ranking wise although I haven’t seen X 2 in ages so I should probably rewatch so I can better judge the quality of these films because that is what’s important in life.  (Oh yeah, minor spoilers ahead)

Uh…watch where you’re going bub!

From the trailers and previews one might think “Oh look another movie about the X-Men, which is really about Wolverine and everyone else just waits for him to do awesome stuff.”.  This is not entirely so.  The movie starts off in the future where the sentinel robots, which are pretty horrifying and unstoppable are pretty much killing every mutant/person who may eventually become a mutant/person who uses the word mutant.  I would say this idea sounds like a rip off of the Terminator movies but the story for this film was written in 1981 so suck it Arnold.  Anyway in the future some members of the X-Men and some other mutants who get 5 seconds of intros and backstory before they start doing cool shit are leaping from country to country (Using time travel!) fighting the sentinels and then, getting their asses kicked and then restarting the whole process. After landing in China, Magneto, Professor X, and Wolverine show up and decide it’s time to go back in time and try to stop the sentinels from ever existing. Side note, it took them 10 years and lots of ass kickings to come up with this idea.  Anyway using Shadowcat’s (Ellen Page) time travel hand motion thingy they send Wolvernine back to 1973 to unite an alcoholic and young Professor X with an imprisoned Magneto so they can stop Mystique from killing Peter Dinklage and setting off a chain of events the leads to the destruction of humankind and mutantkind. Anyway they stop her from killing him but manage to look like assholes on national TV while doing so. Humanity still hates them and Richard Nixon decides to give Peter Dinklage the OK to build some sentinels and have a party at the White House.  After initially helping Professor X, Magneto kind of says “F*ck you guys, I’m going to do my own thing.” and goes off and does some stuff that’s confusing at first but all seems to make sense at the end of the film.  Professor X meanwhile has to rediscover himself and accept the fact that he can hear what everyone on Earth is thinking.  In the end everything works out OK even though I hate the fact that in every single comic book movie the day gets saved with only a second to spare.  Just once I would like to see the day saved with a couple of hours to spare.  This way the heroes can get together and say “We did it, with plenty of time to spare…thank god because I really didn’t need anymore stress in my life.”

This is going to leave a weird tan line.

The film has quite a few flaws in my opinion.  I wish there was more backstory to what was going on in the future.  We kind of just hear a speech, see a brief montage and then all of sudden meet all of the future mutants who are like “Hey, shits bad so let’s go back in time.”  The first 10 minutes of the film are kind of awkward, once Wolverine goes back to 1973 though, I would say the film is pretty awesome for the next hour or so.  Quicksilver, who in the comics is actually Magneto’s son (Even though Magneto looks like he’s only interested in having sex with household appliances) has a pretty awesome cameo and I wish we could see more of him. Although he is convinced to help Wolverine and the gang way too easily in my opinion.  Also the character of Bishop who is a pretty important in the comics especially when it comes to time travel adventures says like 2 words in the entire film.  Seems like a waste to me. The film also sets up another movie with an after the credits scene that like 5 people are going to understand.  Also it seemingly ends the storyline of the X-Men from the original movies as somehow Wolverine going back in time has at least partially changed history to where some of the bad things in X-Men 2 and X-Men 3 didn’t actually happen.  Also I’m fairly certain that because of this movie “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” no longer exists or everyone is just going to deny it’s existence.

Superhero movie or an early incarnation of the Black Eyed Peas?

Overall Grade: 8/10