Never thought I’d like a heartwarming movie. X-Men: Days of Future Past set aside big summer movie special effects and instead focused on story. This was nice change. The first three X-Men movies had left me a bit underwhelmed with this franchise. I enjoyed X-Men: First Class, but wasn’t too impressed with the Wolverine movies.
Still, I’m glad they continue to make X-Men movies. This one renewed my interest in the franchise. Apparently, there was an end-credit scene about the next X-Men movie and I missed it. So, if you’re planning to see this movie, wait for the credits to end.
It’s remarkable that a movie can get you to care about characters you don’t know during an action scene with little dialogue. The movie opens to apocalyptic New York. (Why is s always New York?) We get the story of how the apocalypse started. We then see a team of mutants fighting Sentinels who, though annoying, are pretty badass.
That was a great way to open a movie. Through the fight, we see how unstoppable the Sentinels are. At the same time, we see these X-Men who continue fighting these things despite being grossly out-matched. They never had the upper hand, yet they kept fighting.
I’ve seen most of the X-Men movies, but I haven’t read the comic- would like to. We got some “new” mutants alongside some familiar faces in Days of Future Past. The movie never officially introduced these characters, but it didn’t need to. We got to know them though the opening scene.
The movie throws us right into the problem. It wastes no time sending Wolverine back in time. Wolverine’s consciousness is sent into his younger self in the 70’s where he has to meet up with younger Xavier and Eric to stop the Sentinels from being created. The movie doesn’t stay in the past. It switches from past to present.
Though I do enjoy Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, I’m glad he wasn’t the center of this movie. Unlike the other X-men movies, Wolverine didn’t take over the plot. We saw the inner struggle of other characters.
Man did we get some character development and some role reversals. Young Xavier starts out as a douche who’s given up on everything while Mystique/Raven is fighting honorably for mutants.
I love Mystique. First of all, it’s awesome watching her fight. We see her before she went all dark side with Magneto. She’s right at the brink of falling down that path. She’s a woman on a mission struggling between being Raven and Mystique.
I enjoyed watching young Xavier grow and once again accept his power. His change was believable. The scene where young Xavier met his older version was an awesome moment. Eric was Eric. He was presented with a problem and decided to handle it in his own way. I have to mention Quicksilver. He was only on screen for a short period and he owned it. He was hilarious.
The ending had the warm and fuzzies all over it. But, it wasn’t cranked up to sickening levels. It was an ending full of hope.
The only thing that bothered me about this movie was that they didn’t explain why Xavier was still alive and why Magneto still had his powers. When I first heard they were making another X-men movie my first thought was how were they going to do that. I read an article saying they were taking the storylines from all the other movies including X-Men 3, and they did. We saw flashbacks from the third movie. I expected them to explain why Xavier was alive. They didn’t. Maybe it’s in the comic. I’d like to get back to reading comics/graphic novels. Don’t have the money right now.
I hated, hated what this franchise did to Rogue. I don’t even understand why they thought it was a good idea to make her so weak. I was happy, though, to see her in the trailer for X-Men: Days of Future Past. I was hoping they’d fix her character. Alas, they cut her out, mostly. A bit disappointed. Rogue is one of my favorite characters and I like Anna Paquin as an actress.
Of course, I saw this movie in 3D. I’m thinking 3D works wonders for a movie with a lot of special effects. X-men had some good 3D moments, but for the most part, it wasn’t worth it. I know the whole point of 3D is to pull the viewer into the movie. So far, I haven’t seen this done well with scenes were characters are just talking. It does put you into the scene. Seeing a landscape or a building in 3D makes you feel like you standing there looking at the scene instead of seeing it through a screen. I love those moment when it’s raining or snowing in the movie because the 3D makes it seems like the drops or flakes are falling on me. However, 3D just didn’t work with this movie.
