Movie Review – X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

Released this weekend is X-Men: Days of Future Past, an X-Men film that brings together almost all of the main characters that we’ve seen in the six previous films.

X-Men: Days of Future Past is a science-fiction film that involves time travel to save the future from an oppressive society where mutants are actively hunted by Sentinels, a series of killing machines that can adapt to better defend themselves from mutants.  Wolverine is sent back in time to try to stop a key event from occurring, causing a chain reaction that will change the future.

This film takes place after the events in X-Men: The Last Stand as well as X-Men: First Class.

Directed by Bryan Singer, X-Men: Days of Future Past stars Hugh Jackman as Logan / Wolverine, James McAvoy as Charles Xavier, and Jennifer Lawrence as Raven Darkholme / Mystique.  The film also features a bunch of other actors in the X-Men universe including Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Michael Fassbender, Halle Berry, Ellen Page, Nicholas Hoult and Shawn Ashmore.  New faces in this movie include Peter Dinklage and Evan Peters.

X-Men: Days of Future Past begins nine years from now in the year 2023.

In a dystopian future, killer robots known as Sentinels actively hunt and kill mutants.  Those mutants not killed by the Sentinels are rounded up and placed in internment camps.  In addition to hunting and killing mutants, the Sentinels also hunt for human beings who carry the X-gene in their system.  Although those humans are not mutants, the X-genes can be passed down to their children.

In the film we see a small band of mutants hiding from Sentinels.  The mutants include Peter Rasputin / COLOSSUS (Daniel Cudmore), Bobby Drake / ICEMAN (Shawn Ashmore), Kitty Pryde / SHADOWCAT (Ellen Page), BISHOP (Oman Sy), Clarice Ferguson / BLINK (Bingbing Fan), Roberto da Costa / SUNSPOT (Adan Canto), and James Proudstar / WARPATH (Booboo Stewart).  When the robots discover the mutants, the mutants fight back and delay them until Kitty Pryde can send another mutant’s consciousness back in time to warn the group about the approaching danger.  By the time the Sentinels reach Kitty, she and the other mutants disappear as if they were never there in the first place.

A short while later Kitty’s group of mutants meets with Eric Lehnserr / MAGNETO (Ian McKellen) and Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart).  Also with them are Ororo Munroe / STORM (Halle Berry) and Logan / WOLVERINE (Hugh Jackman).  The mutants know that they cannot keep fighting the Sentinels, and it’s just a matter of time before they’re all killed by the killer robots.  In order to end this war, they’re going to have to travel back in time to prevent them from being created.  Thankfully Kitty Pryde can send a person’s consciousness back through time.

Charles Xavier believes that the turning point was back in 1973 when Mystique assassinated Bolivar Trask, the military scientist who designed the Sentinel robots.  His assassination sparked an anti-mutant hysteria which led to the government authorizing the Sentinel program, which eventually led to the war against mutants.  Mystique would also be captured by the government, and her blood would be reverse-engineered and adapted to the Sentinels, giving them the power to change and absorb any type of an attack.

It’s decided that Logan is the best mutant to travel that far back in time as he can regenerate and survive the trip.  If Kitty was to send any other mutants that far back in time, the process would kill them.  When Logan arrives back in 1973, he’ll look just as he does in 1973, and he’ll retain his memories so he can complete his mission.  The only catch is that Kitty will continually have to focus on Logan’s head in 2023 so that his conscious will stay in 1973.  He can only remain in the past as long as Kitty is concentrating.  If there’s a break in the connection, then Logan’s consciousness will be returned to the future and any changes made to the timeline will be lost.

The time travel is successful and Logan wakes up in 1973.

He makes his way to the X-Mansion in New York and pushes his way past Dr. Hank McCoy / BEAST (Nicholas Hoult) to enter the house.  The X-Mansion is deserted and there aren’t any signs of the mutant students.  There is also no sign of Charles Xavier (James McAvoy).  When Logan teases McCoy, he changes into the Beast and briefly fights Logan.  Xavier arrives and stops the fighting.

Xavier is a depressed person who looks like a drug addict.  One of the biggest differences is that he has the use of his legs again.  It’s explained that McCoy created a serum that allows himself to look like a normal person, and a larger dose allows Xavier to use his legs.  The only condition is that it takes away Xavier’s telepathy.

We learn that Xavier became depressed when the Vietnam War began and his students and teachers were drafted into the army.  Many of them were killed overseas.

At first Xavier does not believe Logan’s story about being from the future.  He’s only convinced after Logan shares a story from Xavier’s past, a story that he had not told anybody at that point in time (Just like how Marty McFly convinces the 1955 version of Doc Brown in Back to the Future).  He and McCoy agree to help stop Mystique from assassinating Bolivar Trask during the signing of the Paris Peace Accords.

Stopping Mystique is going to require the help of Eric Lehnserr / MAGNETO (Michael Fassbender).  The only problem is that Lehnserr is currently locked in a secure prison cell deep beneath the Pentagon.  It turns out that Lehnserr was blamed for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy back in 1963.

Dr. Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) is the CEO of Trask Industries, a research company that also develops advanced technology.  Trask tries to sell his Sentinel robot program to Congress, but they refuse him.  Later, Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) infiltrates Trask Industries and goes through Trask’s files, learning of the deaths and autopsies of fellow mutants.

To free Magneto, the gang seeks the help of Pietro Maximoff / QUICKSILVER (Evan Peters).  At first Quicksilver doesn’t seem to care about helping the mutants, but he becomes very interested when learning that he’ll be helping them break into the Pentagon.

The mutants pose as tourists inside of the Pentagon, and then they break away from the tour group at a key moment.  Quicksilver poses as a security guard and uses his supersonic speeds to his advantage.  When he reaches Magneto’s cell, Quicksilver vibrates his hands fast enough to cause the glass to break.  On the way out of the Pentagon, the mutants are stopped by a few guards armed with plastic guards.  There’s a hilarious segment where Quicksilver uses his speed to defeat all the guards in the blink of an eye.

Meanwhile, in Saigon, Vietnam, Mystique poses as an officer to gain access to quarantined soldiers.  Major William Stryker (Josh Helman) arrives and tries to take the soldiers to Trask Industries, but Mystique stops him.  She and the other soldiers, really other mutants, attack Stryker’s soldiers.  Mystique then leads the mutants to an aircraft where they escape from Vietnam.  That’s the last that we see of that group of mutants.

Xavier, Wolverine, Magneto and Beast all arrive in Paris, France to try to stop Mystique.  All sorts of foreign dignitaries are in the town, and Mystique poses as a hooker to get the attention of a Vietnamese general.  She later kills him and assumes his identity to get closer to Trask.

The following day is when the peace treaty is supposed to be signed, ending the war in Vietnam.  Trask is there in the room pitching his Sentinel program when his system alerts him to a mutant in that very room.  They discover that the Vietnamese general is really Mystique.  Before she can kill Trask, the other mutants arrive in the room and prevent her from assassinating him.  Knowing that she’s dangerous enough to create a dark future, Magneto tries to shoot and kill Mystique.  She escapes him by jumping out a window, but Magneto curves the path of the bullet, causing it to still strike her in the leg.

Inside the room, Wolverine recognizes the younger version of Colonel Stryker, and he has flashbacks to the operation that inserted adamantium into his skeleton.  This causes too much stress and it travels back to the future.  Even though Logan is unconscious, he still lashes out with his claws, injuring his fellow mutants and Kitty Pryde.  She keeps focusing on him and waits for him to calm down.  Once he does, his consciousness in 1973 is able to refocus and resume his mission.

Mystique lands on the pavement and stuns the crowds outside of the building.  They’re just as shocked when Magneto flies down to the pavement and tries to finish off Mystique.  He’s stopped when Beast jumps down and lands on him.  Mystique flees as Beast fights with Magneto and tries to drown him in a fountain.  Magneto uses his magnetism powers to use metal poles in the fountain to grab Beast.  Magneto then flees, heading off in his own direction and away from Xavier, Wolverine and Beast.

Trask is saved from the assassination, and the world is shocked by the existence of mutants.  Even though Mystique was (temporarily) stopped, this is still a dangerous enough situation to still create a dark future.  The X-Men still have to work to save the future.

President Richard Nixon (Mark Camacho) uses the incident in Paris as an excuse to authorize Trask’s Sentinels.  He gives Trask a large budget and allows him to bring his ten functional robots to the White House for a demonstration.  To make matters worse, Trask’s scientists have recovered some of Mystique’s blood on the streets of Paris, giving them her DNA.  Trask wants more samples from her body, but the blood is a great start for reverse-engineering her mutant abilities.

The Sentinels are sent by rail to Washington, D.C.  At some point along the route, Magneto gains access to the train cars and pulls up the steel train track.  He laces this steel into the Sentinels, giving him control of the robots.

Back at the X-Mansion, the gang needs to find Mystique before she can strike again.  Xavier stops using his serum so he can regain his telepathic powers, knowing full well that it will allow his paralysis to return.  Xavier then tries to use Cerebro to locate Mystique, but he loses control of the machine and it overloads, breaking the machine.

Feeling more depressed than ever, Logan tries to give Xavier a pep talk.  His talk doesn’t do much good, so he has Xavier link to Wolverine’s mind to get a glimpse of the future.  He does so and is able to briefly communicate with his future self.  This gives Xavier the motivation he needs.  Xavier uses his telepathy and learns that Mystique is at an airport and flying to Washington, D.C.

Magneto arrives inside of Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium and uses his powers to lift the baseball stadium into the air.  He then levitates it towards the White House.  By this point Magneto had located and is wearing the metal helmet that blocks telepathic mutants from accessing his mind.

Outside of the White House, there’s a small ceremony as President Nixon welcomes Bolivar Trask and his Sentinels.  The prototype robots are activated, and they impress the crowds.  Xavier, McCoy and Logan are in the crowds, and Xavier spots Mystique when she tries to assassinate Trask.  He uses his mind freeze to stop her, and McCoy and Logan try to grab her, but they’re stopped by an armed guard.

Suddenly Magneto arrives with the stadium still in the air.  He also activates the Sentinels and makes them attack the mutants.  The crowd scrambles for safety and President Nixon and his staff (including Mystique still in disguise) rush into the White House and reach the safe room bunker beneath the Oval Office.

Magneto then drops the baseball stadium around the White House, surrounding it with metal and concrete.  Xavier is pinned to the ground by debris, and McCoy tries to help him but fails.  Wolverine tries to fight Magneto, but Magneto knocks him to the ground with some of the debris.  Magneto then takes impales Wolverine with some rebar, tortures him, and then throws him into the Potomac River.

In 2023, another group of Sentinels heads towards the mutants.  Storm tries to stall them, but she’s later attacked and killed by the robots.  The same goes true for most of the other defenders as well.  Magneto sends the X-Jet into a cluster of Sentinels and detonates it, destroying many of the robots in the explosion.  He is forced to retreat into the compound and help defend it from the interior.  It’s a race against time for the mutants in 1973 to complete their mission before the Sentinels kill the X-Men in 2023.

Back in 1973, Magneto uses his powers to pull the safe room out of the ground and places it on the lawn.  He then aims the television cameras at himself, makes a speech about mutants, and prepares to kill President Nixon for all the world to see.  President Nixon steps forward to face Magneto, but we see that the real Nixon is still back in the safe room.  Obviously the fake version is Mystique.

Mystique reveals her true form and shoots Magneto with a plastic gun, hitting him in the neck.  His helmet is removed and Xavier links himself with Magneto’s mind, using his power of magnetism to remove the debris trapping himself.  When Mystique turns and wants to kill Trask, Xavier convinces her to let him live.  The damage to him is already done.

Magneto is allowed to flee along with Mystique.  We then see that the Sentinel program is cancelled and Trask’s reputation is destroyed.  He is no longer a threat to the future.

In 2023, Logan awakes to find himself in the X-Mansion.  Child mutants are all around him, some of them heading to and from classes.  He sees Storm teaching a class.  Down the hallway is a brief glimpse of Rogue (Anna Paquin).  Passing him in a hallway is the older version of Beast (Kelsey Grammer).  In Xavier’s office he sees Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) and Cyclops (James Marsden).

Earlier in the film, Logan gave Xavier some brief advice about how to handle situations in the future.  It was a sign that we might see characters that were killed off in previous movies.

X-Men: Days of Future Past ends with Xavier talking with Logan about the history events that have occurred since 1973.  We learn that Logan’s body was pulled from the Potomac River, and he came back to life.  One of the police officers on the rescue boat was really Mystique in disguise.

A scene at the end of the credits shows an Egyptian pyramid being constructed with telekinesis.  The mutant En Sabah Nur / Apocalypse is building the pyramid while the Four Horsemen watch him from a distance.  Are we going to see Apocalypse in a future X-Men film, or is Bryan Singer just messing with us?

FINAL THOUGHTS

So is X-Men: Days of Future Past any good?

I’m probably in the minority here, but I did NOT enjoy this X-Men film.

For starters, the whole film had way too much of a Terminator feeling to it with the whole “travel back in time to prevent a devastating war from wiping out a race of mutants / human beings.”  There’s also The Matrix here with the way that people connect to the Matrix in that film and the similar way that Kitty has to continually focus on Logan while he’s back in time, even when she’s about to be attacked by the Sentinels.  Coincidentally, the robotic creatures that attack the people in The Matrix are also called sentinels.

Right off the bat you have extremely familiar features of two very popular science-fiction films.

But what about the film’s villains?

This time around we basically have Mystique as the main villain, though it’s also argued that Magneto and Bolivar Trask are villains as well.  The key thing is that there is no primary villain in this film, no main bad guy that unites the team to fight together.  Merely stopping Mystique might not have prevented the dark future.  The team had to stop Mystique as well as swing public opinion against Trask to stop his program for good.

Hell, they could have also infiltrated Trask’s research facility, destroyed all of the material, and then killed Trask in a way that does not make it look like mutants were responsible.

Speaking of those Sentinels, we only see them in small bouts of combat in the future with several mutants that we’ve never seen until this point, fascinating mutants like Blink, Warpath and Sunspot.  These are brief scenes of combat in the beginning and ending of the film.  Unfortunately, the scenes with those new mutants are just as brief.

Fans of Storm will also be disappointed as we only see her in the beginning and ending of the film.  She uses her storm powers a little bit in the end, but that’s it.  We saw more action with Storm in the first X-Men film back in 2000 than we do in this most recent film.

What about Angel, Havok, Banshee, Emma Frost, Riptide and Azazel from X-Men: First Class?  They were all alive at the end of the film.  Most of them had sided with Magneto.  We briefly see Havok when Mystique helps them flee from the quarantined area in Vietnam, but that’s it.  The other mutants are nowhere to be found in this film.

It would have been great if we had seen a little bit more variety with the mutants back in 1973.  We see a little bit of Quicksilver, but otherwise it’s just Wolverine, Xavier, Magneto, Mystique and Beast, with the last three doing most of the fighting.

Action fans will also be disappointed with this film.  There are some brief fight scenes here and there in the 1973 portions of the film, and in 2023 the X-Men are fighting against Sentinels, but that’s it.  Do not expect any large brawls like in any of the other films, or any extended fight scenes.  In this film Wolverine is more talk than action since he cannot have his body stress itself in 1973 (too much stress will break the connection with Kitty Pryde).  You will not see Wolverine have any killing rampages or any cool fight scenes.

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) – movie trailer

In the end, X-Men: Days of Future Past had a somewhat interesting premise going for it, but I saw too many issues to make this an enjoyable film.  It felt like the film was severely overhyped, especially the way that the previews showed the mutants new to the series, mutants that we barely see and basically know nothing about in this movie.