I waited a long time to see X-Men: Days of Future Past. I had intended to see it in the theaters when it released, but things conspired against that happening. Then it was available to download on iTunes for a couple weeks and I almost purchased it then. Finally, with the DVD release this past week my wife put me out of my misery and bought me a copy. X-Men: Days of Future Past (X-M:DoFP) is the latest installment in the X-Men franchise, directed by Bryan Singer and based on the classic Chris Claremont and John Byrne The Uncanny X-Men storyline, Days of Future Past.
X-M:DoFP continues the story from both the X-Men: First Class and X-Men: The Last Stand films. X-M:DoFP starts with a view of a grim future where mutants, those who help them and those who might become them are held in internment camps and are pursued by giant robots called Sentinels. We find out that those who remain of the original X-Men (Iceman, Professor X, Magneto, Kitty Pryde, Wolverine) are hanging on by a thread with the support of some new mutants, Bishop, Blink, Warpath and Sunspot. They devise a plan to stop their future by using Kitty Pryde's ability to send the consciousness of Wolverine back to the 1970s to stop a killing that leads to the Sentinels being activated to protect humans from mutants.
The storyline of X-M:DoFP has some timey-wimey bits that you have to either think too hard about or just go along for the ride on. No, we don't see how Professor Xavier is alive in the future, but hey, that's okay. There are bits of the movie where you see something happen then it hasn't happened - but that is explained. It is interesting to see the younger and older character versions in a film that does a better job of things than Star Trek: Generations did - which also starred Patrick Stewart.
One of the best parts of X-M:DoFP is getting to see the bleak future and the cool skills of the mutants as well as getting to see all of our old X-Men movie favorites. The skills of Bishop (played by Omar Sy) and Blink are colorful and excellent on screen. It was good to see portrayals of the older Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) and Wolverine (you can tell he's older by the grey hair). However, the best character in the film, hands down, has to be Quicksilver, played by Evan Peters. The incredibly fast mutant is snarky and portrays the character's suffering because everyone else is so much slower than him well. His character also gives the most awesome special effects moment in the movie.
Which actually leads to the main niggle with the movie. We don't get enough variety in the mutants except in short spurts. The thing that made X-Men and X2 even more fun was the diversity in mutants and their powers. Here we spend a lot of time with Magneto, Professor X, Beast, Wolverine and Mystique and unfortunately they aren't the most interesting of the characters (see note above about Quicksilver). However, there is hope that X-Men: Apocalypse will broaden the number of focal characters again and hopefully will be even better for it.
X-M:DoFP is a great entry into the X-Men movie franchise. I found it better than X-Men: First Class and X-Men: The Last Stand and certainly it was worth the wait. Overall, X-M:DoFP gets 4 Mick Happies. Now, when is the Quicksilver movie going to happen?
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