With this movie now released on Disney+, I decided to give it a watch and see if maybe I’ll come around to liking it. Before I begin, however, I’d like to briefly go over my bittersweet history with Fox’s X-Men franchise: I used to like the first two when I was a kid but the older I got, the more I felt they aged like milk, X3: The Last Stand suffers from everything I don’t like about the first two but even worse, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is one of the worst comic book movies ever made, then FINALLY in 2011 we got X-Men: First Class which is still, in my opinion, the best X-Men movie ever made.
First Class was the reboot I had been hoping for….oh wait, it turns out it was a prequel to the original movies despite the many inconsistencies. I shrugged it off at the time, especially when they announced a crossover between the younger and older versions of these characters. I was excited…but then I saw the movie and while I enjoyed it the first time I watched it, it suffered from what I call “Avatar Syndrome” where it seems great on first viewing but when you watch it a second time with your brain turned back on, it’s a total one hundred eighty degrees. And after a third time? Yeah…it’s even worse.
As I try my hardest to keep my Bryan Singer jokes to a minimum, I will start with the positives.
BRILLIANT MAIN CAST
One thing these movies were always good for was the dedicated performances of great cast members: Hugh Jackman is great as Wolverine, James McAvoy and Patrick Stewart kill it as Xavier, same for Ian McKellan and Michael Fassbender as Magneto, Nicholas Hoult is the definitive Beast, and this is when Jennifer Lawrence was at her best as Mystique before she stopped trying. Everyone has great chemistry with one another; the banter between Logan and the rest of the characters is spot on.
James McAvoy is the star of the show; every time he’s given time to shine as Charles Xavier, he knocks it out of the park: particularly when he and Patrick Stewart speak face to face with each other. McAvoy is one of the best actors working today and scenes like that showcase his immense talent.
VISUALLY STUNNING
One thing that I can always give Bryan Singer credit for (even though I don’t want to) is that he knows how to point a camera and paint a good picture. This whole movie looks like it could be straight from a comic book with many iconic shots and dynamic angles that keep your eyes glued to the screen.
Of course, the movie has to be beautiful in order to have a sequence as well done as the Quicksilver kitchen scene. Yes, it is amazing and everybody has complimented the scene perfectly in every way so I would just be repeating them at this point.
And that’s all I’ve got in terms of positives…so let’s begin the negatives.
EVERY OTHER CHARACTER IS WASTED
Remember how everyone had an issue with Cyclops having five minutes of screentime only to be killed off from the movie entirely? That’s this entire movie. Let’s do a headcount, shall we?
Hi, Iceman, nice to see you again, and look, you finally have your ice body and ice slide! Cool! Oh wait, we’re going back to the past now so you can just stand around doing nothing off-screen only to die in the climax…okay then.
Oh sweet! Bishop! One of the best characters from the comics…..and he just shows up with no explanation only to be cast aside when Wolverine goes back in time. And also dies in the climax.
Storm! Nice, after the Thor movies, they could easily make her lightning awesome! Nope, she’s criminally nerfed to the point of being useless as she has ONE mildly entertaining attack before being killed off. Did she even have any dialogue in this movie?
Okay well, we have Kitty Pryde, the most important character in the Days Of Future Past storyline, surely they will finally treat this character with respect. Hm? What’s that? She just sits there and sends Wolverine back in time? Sigh….great, because of course, Wolverine HAS to be the main star of the movie. Nobody else is allowed to be the main character.
Blink? Sunspot? Colossus? They have the best parts during the future segments but all take a back seat to Wolverine because, again, Wolverine is the poster child, he’s all that mattered to Fox.
Timey Wimey, Wibbly Wobbly Mess
I love time travel, I find it to be one of the most fun concepts to use in a story but it has to be done correctly with the rules of time travel laid out flat for the audience to understand. Well, this movie certainly is not Back To The Future…
Where to begin: okay so this movie establishes that the Sentinels were created in the 70s because of what Magneto did in Cuba and the JFK assassination. Interesting, seeing how the first X-Men movies made it seem like Magneto and the Brotherhood of Mutants didn’t make a name for themselves until 2000.
Speaking of the original films: Bolivar Trask, the creator of the sentinels was actually in X3 played by Bill Duke but yet in Days Of Future Past, he’s played by the legendary Peter Dinklage. Are we sure Trask isn’t a mutant as well? Because apparently, time does some interesting things to the character. Trask apparently presented the sentinels in 1973 and…what, no mutant ever talked about it? Where were these purple air conditioners during the events of X3? Oh wait, even better, if Mystique killed Trask in 1973, how was Trask alive in 2006 to be a character in The Last Stand?!?
Side note: When Bryan Singer left the franchise, Brett Ratner took over as director for The Last Stand….ouch. I hope Matthew Vaughn doesn’t have any skeletons in the closet.
Toad is in the movie as well but you wouldn’t know that because the actor looks absolutely nothing like Ray Park did in the first X-Men and Toad even has a completely different design. Isn’t this supposed to be a prequel?
Quicksilver is in this movie and yeah, he’s amazing but it is confirmed that he is Magneto’s son. So….where the hell was this character through the original trilogy? Oh, apparently, he never figured it out without time travel? What sense does that make?
Kitty Pryde can now use her powers to send a person’s consciousness back through time….ahem, excuse me but where did this come from? How do TARDIS hands fit with her intangibility powers? You’re just never going to explain it? Oh, okay.
I know that Days Of Future Past was meant to restart everything and “fix” all the plot holes that came from these movies but in doing so, they created even more plot holes that dig themselves even deeper. You know what would have made it all simpler? Instead of trying to compete with the MCU to create some giant crossover event, just make First Class a total reboot of the series.
Think about it: Matthew Vaughn created an origin for the X-Men that looks, sounds, and feels completely different from what Bryan Singer had created. Nothing about that movie really suggests that it is meant to be a prequel to the 2000 movie except for maybe Wolverine’s cameo and the opening scene with Magneto. No, instead we get a time travel plot that manages to make this whole timeline thing as screwed up as possible with more plot holes appearing in the sequels but…less said about those movies, the better.
THE SCORE IS A SNOOZE-FEST
It’s the ultimate assembly of all the X-Men…and there is not a single memorable piece of music in the entire movie. I know there are fans of the main theme which carries over from the other Bryan Singer movies but I personally cannot remember a single tune from the theme to hum. Of all movies, don’t you think this would have been the ONE time we’d hear the classic X-Men theme from the 90s?
THE SENTINELS…
I’m not somebody who needs everything to be identical to the comics, I’m all for filmmakers bringing their own visions for these universes to life but I HATED the designs for the Sentinels in both the past and future.
The past Sentinels look like giant toys with air conditioners in their stomachs that made me laugh when they started flying but then you have the future once that are basically just the Destroyer from Thor mixed with the T-1000 painted black. At least the ones in the future were a tad intimidating for the five minutes they are on screen.
OVERALL THOUGHTS
Is it terrible? No, I’d say that the movie just comes as a rushed, mediocre mess. It feels like the movie should have been split into two movies: one that shows the downfall of Earth via the Sentinels, show the reunion of the classic X-Men characters and their years of struggle in the war, then end it with the tease of time travel.
Then the second movie has Logan traveling back in time, then maybe a third movie where we see the classic X-Men actors all back together for one more adventure so that fixing the timeline wasn’t a pointless effort.
I already am not that fond of the Fox era of X-Men movies so this basically just showcased why the series continued to go downhill after this. Everyone asked to bring back Bryan Singer but I think that’s what killed the series and now I gladly accept when Disney and 20th Century Studios end up rebooting this franchise and actually put care and effort into it. I give Days Of Future Past a 4/10.
Melody's Marvels 