Time travel is a tricky business. Movies that are heavily reliant on it for their storyline often become a convoluted mess and collapse under their own complexity. Thankfully, director Bryan Singer has avoided most of the pitfalls with his return to the franchise that kick-started the superhero movie renaissance. X-Men Days Of Future Past is ambitious, thrilling and dotted with superb action scenes.
Opening in a future where the world has been ravaged by a war between humans and mutants, the handful of remaining X-Men have banded together for one last shot at redemption. Hunted by genocidal robots called Sentinels, Professor X and his proteges come up with a plan to send future Wolverine’s consciousness back in time into 1970’s Wolverine’s body, in order to stop a tragedy from taking place that triggers the war that will destroy them.
The 1970’s cast have more to do, with the adventure largely taking place in this timeline. Hugh Jackman, defying time himself it seems in his seventh outing as Wolverine, must round up the fragmented group from X-Men First Class and reunite Fassbender’s Magneto and McAvoy’s Charles Xavier. There’s a new baddie on the scene in the form of Bolivar Trask, a scientist who believes the mutant gene heralds the extinction of ordinary humans and develops his Sentinels to combat the mutant threat.
Despite the premise, it actually plays out a whole simpler than you’d expect. The plot is weaved together in such a way that it’s easy to follow and the absolutely huge cast all seem to play a vital part. It’s inevitable when there are this many characters to process that some franchise favourites won’t get as much screen time as as others, but the ones that are given a chance to shine seize the opportunity and deliver some crowd-pleasing, standout moments (Quicksilver, I’m looking at you!)
X-Men Days Of Future Past has some of the best set-pieces of the whole franchise, but does suffer from hokey dialogue at times. As pleasing as it is on the eye, some of the interaction between the characters falls on the wrong side of cheesy and is only rescued by the charisma of some of the bigger stars in the picture. Wolverine and Quicksilver get the most cheers from the crowd while Fassbender’s Magneto gets to flex his muscles and finally show off why he is the most menacing and dangerous mutant of them all.
Returning for his third adventure with the X-Men, Singer’s passion for the project shines through in every frame. A resounding success, the detail and nuance written into each character could only be achieved with a fanboy behind the camera, and in one fell swoop he has managed to wipe out the memory of the weaker X-Men movies and reboot the franchise. It’s Singer’s love for the story that helps elevate X-Men Days Of Future Past from a by-the-numbers blockbuster into arguably the best entry in the series so far.
(Images courtesy 20th Century Fox, Collider, Empire)
