X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

 "I don't want your SUFFERING! I don't want your FUTURE!"- Charles Xavier

Perhaps the best X-Men movie to date! Honestly, I geeked out! There are just so many things to love in this movie! I for one, am glad that the original cast are united back again to give us a story that continues on from X-Men 3. I'm so happy that Wolverine is finally teaming up again with his fellow X-Men to give us a proper X-Men movie. I mean, I love his solo outing but it has been too long indeed that we haven't seen Professor X and his team saving the world with their mutant powers. We also get to continue on with the story from where First Class left off. I wanted to see how they would continue Professor X, Magneto and Mystique's journey to become their signature self that we know and love from the comics and the previous movies. We're getting the best of both worlds (or both timelines, to be exact). This may be the second most comprehensive, unprecedented and epic comic book movie to date. Mind you, the first to me being The Avengers.

Mind-Blowing!

A work of a genius! Why? Let me explained. I was very concerned with how FOX is handling the X-Men franchise after their terrible outing with X-Men 3 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and the surprisingly good X-Men: First Class. The  big question is how should FOX carry on with the franchise without rebooting it? With the audiences now reacquainted with the new cast, the most obvious route would be to continue with a sequel to First Class. Keep going until you reach where the first X-Men film begin. Another likely move would be that FOX make another Wolverine-centric movie, I mean the first Wolvie (Wolverine movie) was downright terrible but under James Mangold's golden hands, the Wolverine was made "gold" again. But just how far can you carry our favourite Adamantium claw mutant, how far can you ram the stakes up for him? Keep spewing out more Wolvies until you just don't know what to do with him anymore. And the near impossible route was to continue with the unite back all the original cast and produce another sequel to the original trilogy, bring on X-Men 4! But you know what? They did ALL OF THAT in X-Men: Days of Future Past! Brilliant move, indeed! Alright, let's focus back on this film.

XPOILERS AHEAD!

Days of Future Past storyline has been one of the fan's favourite and we finally get to see it played out on big screen with the characters that we're familiar from the X-Men cinematic universe. But is it truly the Days of Future past we're looking for? The story is sadly based loosely to the original, and much of it is a new take with only few elements borrowed from the original. Apart from the dystopian future with Setinels hunting mutants and that an X-Men has to time travel back to stop an assassination to prevent the future from ever happening, everything else is fresh. And these changes are actually good, I must say. I couldn't think of anyone better than Wolverine to be sent back to the past, and just by his bad-ass character and nature, we know the chemistry he has with the younger version of his friends and enemies, would be interesting and fun to watch.

In the original comics, Kitty Pryde was the one who travelled back in time

while in the Animated series, it was Bishop.

Although the tone is fairly dark and serious, I'm glad there are moments which let us escape from all the doom and gloom. There are some great moments with Wolverine, especially with him meeting Beast for the first time but then all the fun came from Quicksilver. With his quirky character, we are given plenty of humorous moment during Magneto's prison break scene and one awesomely done bullet time scene which Quicksilver stole all the limelight. I never felt a bullet-time scene could be so fresh again, after being bombarded with tons of bullet time effect from the Matrix series and the Resident Evil series. Having my doubts initially over Quicksilver's presence in this movie, I for one, am quite happy with how the filmmaker used him. I can only hope Aaron-Taylor Johnson's Quicksilver delivers a better performance in the upcoming Avengers: Age of Ultron.

We're going to get two Marvel's Quicksilver on the silver screen and we haven't seen a Flash movie yet.

I can't help but feel there's a Terminator vibe to this. Like the usual Terminator movie, we begin the movie with a look at the dark future and one have to time travel back to protect a MacGuffin. In this case, we replace John Connor with Mystique and instead of preventing an assassination on Mystique, Wolverine have to prevent Mystique from assassinating Trask. A clear goal laid out for both the hero to protect and the enemy to kill, all of which will decide the fate of the future. Heck, we even got our muscular Wolverine buck nude when he came from the future. The reference to the Terminator couldn't be more obvious in the original X-Men: Animated Series in the "Days of Future Past" two-part episode, where Bishop being the one sent from the future, was referenced as the Terminator from the future. You know what would complete the whole analogy? Wolverine with sunglasses and a big shot gun, coming up to Trask and say "Come with me if you want to live, bub!"

Hugh Jackman's body is a road map.. and those bullet holes are Google map's pins.

Although the story involves all of our favourite X-Men, the story is very much focused on Professor Charles Xavier. After the events of First Class with his close friends, namely Mystique and Magneto, leaving him and the failure of setting up his School of Gifted Youngsters, he ended up being a "drug" addict depressed hippie. He has pretty much given up on everything at that point of time, and it was only through future Wolverine entering into his life that he begins to find hope in what he's doing. Indeed an excellent theme delivered through this movie, and a funny role-reversal indeed if we compare this to the first X-Men. "You're going to have to do for me what I once did for you." Professor X couldn't have made it more clear for us. This time it's Wolverine helping the lost Professor and giving him hope and a purpose in his life when once it was Professor X who helped the lost Wolverine. What goes around, comes around.

Can you count how many X-motif are there in this movie?

The cast all round gave an excellent performance. James McAvoy played Professor X hitting rock bottom wonderfully. He certainly sold that Professor X is the one person who could tell Wolverine to f*ck off without Wolverine getting his claws right through him. Jeniffer Lawrence perfectly delivered her Mystique as coming closer to Rebecca Romijin's Mystique. So beautiful, yet so deadly. One performance that is of note worthy but completely over-looked by many is Michael Fassbender as Magneto. He nailed down Ian McKellen's Magneto in his performance. Every line delivered and every mannerism he gives, you could imagine very well Ian McKellen doing the exact same thing with his Magneto. You can't quite feel this in First Class, but it's pretty obvious in this one. As for the original cast, not much focus was given to them apart from their presence in this movie, which is good enough for me. I'm already happy that they all return to their original roles. However, I am disappointed that Anna Paquin's role as the future Rogue is completely cut. For someone who played a major role in the first movie, I personally feel she deserved a place among the original cast. But be that as it may, I'm really happy to see her blink-and-you-miss-it cameo, as well as other X-Men cameo which you never thought would show up.

Michael Fassbender is pretty much Ian McKellen's young double.

As good as this gets, it's not all sin free. If you watch the series as awhole, especially the first two X-Men film, we get a feel that there's going to be a terrible war coming between mutants and humans, and somehow the ball has dropped when we reached X-Men 3. The last we saw Professor X, Magneto and Wolverine was at an airport during a relatively peaceful time, although "dark times are coming" was hinted. When we begin Days of Future Past, we are already deep into the dark times. So much has happened in between The Wolverine and Days of Future Past and we pretty much leaped through everything in the beginning narration. I believe all of that certainly deserved another good X-Men movie to build up to the events of Days of Future Past. With just approximately 2 hours of this film, the setting up of the plot came way too quickly. In just 15 minutes in to the movie, we are quickly introduced to a lot of things; the apocalyptic future and the dire situation our heroes are in, Kitty Pyrde has powers to send someone back in time through their mind, Professor X deviced a plan of sending someone back in time this future from happening, the one key event to stop is the assassination of Bolivar Trask by Mystique, and Wolverine is the perfect candidate to go through time because of his healing factor. If this film running time is stretched to around 3 to 4 hours, perhaps we could do a proper build up.

You know what else is a sin? The sentinel's design... looks nothing like the one we know and love.

Actually, you know what's best? Do a two parter! Have the Days of Future Past storyline be made into two feature films. One focusing on the future with the original cast, and the other focus on the past with the younger cast. Do a proper build up to the dark future, take time to explain how Wolverine get back his Adamantium claws and how Professor X resurrected from the dead. Show the growing persecution of mutants and the ultimately end the movie with a massive war between mutants and humans, but with humans having the upper edge with the introduction of the Sentinels. (And yes, please show Wolverine kicking some Sentinels' asses! Future Wolverine wasn't kicking anybody's butt in this!) Somewhere in there, explain how the key was to prevent the assassination of Bolivar Trask to stop everything from snow balling. When all hope seems lost, have Kitty Pyrde discover her new mind time-travelling powers. Follow this with the next movie where you can take time to actually show the younger X-Men story following the events from First Class. I personally believe Bryan Singer had a vision to bring Days of Future Past into fruition if he had been allowed to continue with the X-Men series. I can certainly tell the growing mutant persecution in X-Men 1 and 2 and the coming of war between mutants and humans, these could make an excellent lead into the dark future. But the ball was dropped in X-Men 3 and the studio decided to go on "spin-off" mode. But with what we had, I'm glad this entry pretty much saved the entire franchise. Now, if only I could time travel back...

So little time given for an X-Men 4...

Finally, I especially love the end scene, seeing everybody back in the school again like X-Men 3 never happened. And when I meant everybody... I meant everybody! (Ultimate spoiler alert!) Cyclops and Jean Grey are back and alive! It's good to see the President Beast from X-Men 3 and "the-blink-or-you-miss-it" Rogue's cameo. As for Wolverine's origin, we know now for certain Origins don't exist in this new timeline anymore. We are left with Stryker fishing Wolverine out of the waters and.. surprise surprise, it's not really Stryker is it? Our heroes and villains from the 60s are left in an interesting place where I really wonder where the next movie will take them, and as for our future X-Men, please give us X-Men 4... and give them their iconic costume for goodness sake, it's about damn time!

So with all these things considered, I would give this X-Men film a 9.5 out of 10 Sentinels. Why 9.5 and not 10 like the first two X-Men movie? Pacing. There are just too much crammed into the 2 hour run-time. We finally got the original cast to unite back together again but they weren't under as much spotlight as I hoped they'll be. Nevertheless overall, a great and ambitious X-Men movie!

 Click above to see the animated "Days of Future Past"