X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

Bryan Singer was pretty much responsible for the quality of the first two X-Men films and, after a bit of an absence, started edging his way back in.  Although Matthew Vaughn was the director, Singer cowrote the screenplay for X-Men: First Class.  While it was in no way a big hit, at least in the United States, those who did see it started realizing there may be a bit of life left in the franchise after all.

Vaughn was supposed to direct X-Men: Days of Future Past as well, but one thing led to another with Singer returning.  The result was the last truly good X-Men film in the main series, as well as an opportunity for Singer to step in and clean the franchise up.  Between X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a whole lot mistakes were made.  Luckily for Singer the comics themselves presented a way to to make it all go away.

In the near future the Earth is a devastated wasteland.  Robots called Sentinels have been designed to hunt Mutants, but they eventually changed their programming to also hunt those who may have Mutant children as well as those protecting the Mutants.  The robots are able to counter any Mutant power, thus overcoming any attack or defense.  A small band has managed to stay ahead of the Sentinels by utilizing a power possessed by Kitty Pryde (Elliot Page) that allows her to briefly send one of their number, Bishop (Omar Sy) back to a significant time before the Sentinel attack in order to get everyone out.  The band is soon found by the remainder of the X-Men: Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart), Magneto (Ian McKellan), Storm (Halle Berry) and Logan (Hugh Jackman).  Xavier conceives of a plan to send one of them back to 1973 when the Sentinel plan started, and Logan ultimately volunteers as he is one of the few that can successfully survive the trip back.

In 1973 a man named Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) has been experimenting on Mutants in order to create his Sentinel program, which Congress so far has refused to fund.  Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) has got wind of this and intends to assassinate Trask.  Unfortunately, she has tried this numerous times, and in each timeline it has resulted in her capture and the use of her DNA in making the Sentinels.  Logan is tasked with convincing a powerless Professor Xavier (James McAvoy), who is being cared for by Hank (Nicholas Hoult), of what will happen and the need to stop Mystique.  Unfortunately, they also need the help of Magneto (Michael Fassbender), who is under lock and key.  With time running out before the Sentinels find out where the remaining Mutants are hiding in their present, and with the world possibly already sent down a darker path by Logan's interference with the past, their younger versions try to stop the nascent Sentinel program which, unfortunately, has just found a fan in President Richard Nixon (Mark Camacho).

Matthew Vaughn had a hand in writing this, as did Simon Kinberg, who was responsible for working on the original trilogy as well.  While not listed as a writer Bryan Singer was the one who largely decided to throw out much of the movie that Vaughn wanted to make, killing off the Mutants that had joined Magneto's Brotherhood in First Class and presenting Professor Xavier's School for the Gifted as a relic destroyed by the politics of the time.  While Fassbender gets to play the bad Magneto, with McKellan playing a version that has come to finally be helpful, the real villain is Peter Dinklage as Trask, and played with such understated immorality that it is sad that he won't be in more of these movies.  We get to see the influence he has on a young Major Stryker (Josh Helman), and how his casual racism leads to the destruction of nearly the entire human race.  It's an amazing performance in a genre that typically requires villains to go larger than life to hide the fact that they are usually one-dimensional. 

Both James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender have come into the roles, much like Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, and it is nice seeing them all acknowledged in one film.  We also get introduced to the X-Men universe's version of Pietro "Peter" Maximoff (Evan Peters), aka Quicksilver, who by contract couldn't be based at all on the version that appeared in Avengers: Age of Ultron.  He pretty much steals the show during the jailbreak of Magneto, and ends up playing an even more important role in X-Men: Apocalypse.  Even better, it led to one of the best inside jokes in WandaVision. 

Effects-wise the movie is decent, although I think the clunkier 1973 version of the Sentinels is better done than the later, evolved versions.  Pyro and Iceman's (Shawn Ashmore) powers are still horribly rendered, but Beast, Mystique and Colossus (Daniel Cudomore), all of whom one would think would be more complex, work.  Too bad the sets of New York, Moscow and a devastated China look much worse than they would if they had been done with miniatures.  It is also nice to see the bone claws once again on Wolverine, as this takes place prior to the events of X-Men Origins: Wolverine and, in many ways, negates them, although it is still clear Logan will end up with his adamantine skeleton - it's that the events may be different than before. 

The conclusion helps explain how Xavier was back and alive in his own body during the credits scene in The Wolverine, after last being seen killed and transferring his conscience to a whole new body during the credits scene in X-Men: The Last Stand.  However, I have some trouble placing what that scene had to do with Days of Future Past, as it took place in what was modern day - at the time 2013 - rather than in the past of future presented here.  Presumably Logan has no memory of anything that occurred during the time the future version of himself occupies his mind, and it is clear (by the time travel rules set up in the movie) that the future doesn't become the actual future until Logan returns to the point from which he started.  At that point he retains his memories of his own past, not knowing the events of the last 50 years.  Apocalypse takes place in 1983, so it doesn't even tie into the sequel to this movie.  It's possible it was there just to surprise everyone with Xavier being alive and well in the first place.

It is too bad the series decided to go off on the tangent with Apocalypse and take another swipe at the Dark Phoenix story, which had already been severely mismanaged in X-Men: The Last Stand.  After this it seems like they were either trying to mimic the Marvel Cinematic Universe - Apocalypse is a bit too interchangeable with Thanos - or, knowing that they were being bought out by Disney, suffered from 20th Century Fox just wanting to be done with the whole thing.  Either way, it's too bad that this successful comeback wasn't also made a successful finale, with Logan as its coda.  

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

Time: 132 minutes

Starring: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan, Peter Dinklage, Evan Peters

Director: Bryan Singer