X-Men: Days Of Future Past

It’s hard when you’re a fan, going to watch a major movie blockbuster of one of the most iconic storylines of quite possibly your favourite franchise of all time. If you like it too much, you’re clouded by bias, and then if you’re too critical, you just come off as assholish and can’t accept that different mediums will always be different in storytelling. Thankfully after watching X-Men: Days of Future Past, I am not the latter of fans but fall providently close to the former.
 
X-Men: First Class had been such a hit with director Matthew Vaughn at the helm, adding a bright energy to the films that we had never seen prior, although X-Men and X2 were fantastic films taking the superhero genre into an actuality that we hadn’t yet seen before, First Class kept up with the genre and its audience. Maybe the black leather does tend to scare people off in the long run. A good dash of colour and a surprising amount of humour and only a 5 second cameo of Wolverine left fans everywhere satisfied. Not to keep Bryan Singer out of First Class’s success, he was still a producer on the film, but his return as director for Days of Future Past left many feeling hesitant, worried that gone were the laughs and good fun to come from the X-Men.
 
It is my absolute pleasure to say that Singer has achieved beyond expectations an entertaining medley of what made his first two X-Men films successful as well as what First Class brought to the franchise to give it a new life (Vaughn of course had a hand in the script of DOFP so perhaps a combination of the two talents leads to pleasant results). Fans of First Class and Singer’s first two X-Men films will certainly enjoy Days of Future Past. The Future cast hold onto the seriousness that we’re used to from a Singer film, there’s a lot of destruction and the black leather looks cooler than ever, and while tension is higher for the First Class cast, there’s a surprising amount of cheek and charm still thrown into the mix (not to mention Charles’ pink psychedelic shirt).
 
Amazingly the best humour comes from Peter Maximoff (picky fan alert!) who nearly steals the show. Evan Peters manages to pull of Quicksilvers douchebag personality with amazing charm. He’s restless, zero patience for anyone, talks quickly, and has a constant smarmy grin on his face, but let’s face it, he’s also kind of a loser teenager so you can almost forgive his tinfoil jacket costume. As to whether his parentage is that of a certain master of magnetism, it’s all still fairly up in the air, but fans will catch the quick nod to its possibility.
 
While I can assure you that Quicksilver is indeed a great asset to Days of Future Past, I cannot entirely console fans that were disappointed of the change of Kitty to Wolverine who goes back into time. What can be said though is that Kitty Pryde is wicked badass in the future so it’s almost okay that she doesn’t get the honour of going back in time, her ability of being able to send people back in time isn’t elaborated on and merely accepted. Fans of the films only will take it in good faith, whereas comic fans will be a harder sell, but just know that Ellen Page milks her screen time awesomely and Kitty is still one of the fiercest X-Men around. Not to take away from the rest of the other X-Men in the future though. Sadly there’s no Rogue, but fans will be pleased to know that Iceman, Bishop, Blink, Warpath, and Sunspot all deliver on the coolness and badassery of the X-Men, and it’s good to know that even in the future the X-Men will always be around to kick some serious Sentinel butt.
 
But yes, it is Wolverine who gets sent back in time to save the future, but the movie is less focused on Wolverine as he certainly plays a supporting character, and the movie develops into more of Charles’ story. Much like how First Class was about Erik becoming Magneto, Days of Future Past is Charles’ triumph. How he overcame loss and heartbreak to become the wise leader he is best known as. Don’t let the trailers for this movie fool you, the movie ends up playing fairly different than what the trailers lead you to believe and for all intents and purposes Wolverine is kind of useless beyond relaying information from future to past. He can’t fix anything worth a damn, so no worries guys this isn’t Wolvie 2 or anything like that.
 
While the movie ends up being Charles’ spotlight (James McAvoy completely steals the show with his absolute vulnerability on screen), the story is based around his relationships, with Hank, with Erik, and really it’s his relationship with Raven that defines the movie. Many will focus on the relationship of Magneto and Professor X, and certainly a lot of that plays out, especially in the future (both Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart have amazing chemistry that is absolutely soul-crushing— not to mention Michael Fassbender and McAvoy giving them a run for their money as well), but in true X-Men fashion Magneto will always find a way to kind mess things up, and as much as we warmed up to him in First Class, the true hero of this will be Charles (and Raven) and it’s incredibly inspiring.

 
Days of Future Past ends on what might be the most optimistic note for an X-Men film to finish on, to date, with messages of hope and second chances, and Bryan Singer has managed to prove that an amazing story can be told without lengthy battle scenes, convoluted romance (there were no kissing scenes! amazing!), and that a superhero movie can be more about the characters than their powers.
 
Even though it’s a pretty happy ending, we all know that happiness never lasts for the X-Men, the scene after the credits are telling, less so for non-comic fans, but comic fans and those already familiar with the title of the next x-film to come out have something to look forward to.