X-Men: Days Of Future Past Movie Review

X-Men: Days of Future Past is a very good and enjoyable movie that manages to incorporate a lot of different Mutants from various timelines with action, suspense, solid special effects and moments of humor. The All-Star cast which includes the likes of Hugh Jackman, Jennifer Lawrence, James McAvoy, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Peter Dinklage and Halle Berry do a wonderful job of bringing the characters from the pages of Marvel’s X-Men comics to life, while director Bryan Singer attempts to repair some of the mistakes made in previous X-Movies (mainly X-Men: Last Stand). Singer also moves to lay the groundwork for an all-encompassing X-Cinematic Universe, doing for Mutants what Disney and Marvel Studios have done for the Avengers. In this regard, I feel the movie has come up a little short.

The basic premise of the movie is that in some not-so-distant future, Mutants and even humans are on the verge of extinction thanks to a deadly army of Mutant Hunting Robots known as Sentinels, think Terminator only with Mutants thrown in the mix. In a last ditch effort to save themselves, Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Erik Lehnsherr aka Magneto (Ian McKellen) come up with a plan to send someone back (well specifically someone’s consciousness back to their younger body) at the end of the Vietnam War in the early 1970’s to stop the machines’ creation. The problem is that such a long time jump puts too much stress on the human brain causing irreparable brain damage, unless you have a healing factor that is. So you guessed it, the one who goes back in time is Wolverine (Hugh Jackman). Once back in his younger 70’s body, Wolverine seeks out the young Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) for help and all the real fun begins.

As I mentioned before, the movie by itself is really good, and I think most everyone from die-hard comic fans to more casual moviegoers will enjoy this one. However, the movie does have a few continuity issues mostly involving events portrayed in the X-Men spin-off Wolverine movies as well as leaving some major questions from X-Men: The Last Stand unanswered. For instance, remember how old Professor X (Patrick Stewart) seemingly died at the hands of Jean Grey in X-Men 3? We sure do and when we saw the older Xavier pop up in the after-credits scene of the last Wolverine movie, we were hoping we would be getting some answers as to how he was alive again in this new movie. We don’t. In fact, that entire scene at the end of The Wolverine which was specifically created to be a lead-in for this movie makes little sense to me since that scene took place in the present while this new movie takes place in the past and future.

Another continuity issue involves Wolverine himself and events depicted in this movie as to where he is and who he knows by the end of the Vietnam War and those depicted in the first Wolverine movie. I won’t go into specifics since it might be considered spoilerish, but when you go to watch this new movie just remember that in the first Wolverine movie it was established that Logan was serving in the US military with his brother Victor Creed (Sabretooth) over in Vietnam and was sentenced to life in prison thanks to actions taken by his brother until one Major William Stryker came along and recruited them for a special Mutant team.

The continuity issues for me are a bit of an annoyance, especially considering how Singer and 20th Century Fox have been talking so much recently about building up this big Mutant cinematic universe, but not enough for me to dislike the movie. I hope one day we get answers to how old Xavier seemingly came back to life, though honestly everything about X-Men: The Last Stand is probably best left forgotten. I will say for those who were unhappy with that movie, this movie should make you happy so take heart. Even if it’s not perfect, I enjoyed this movie and feel good about the future of the X-Men (yes even if Marvel Studios isn’t getting the rights back to them anytime soon).

Oh, make sure that you stay through the end of the credits to see a scene worth staying for.

Grade: B+