Dion TohReview: X-Men: Days of Future Past
Imagine a dark, dystopian world where you’re on the run from murderous cyborgs who blast your kindred friends into smithereens. In fact, there isn’t much of your species left.
X-Men: Days of Future Past opens with a bleak and ominous outlook in 2023 where Professor X (Patrick Stewart), Magneto (Ian McKellen) and a motley crew of mutants are brought to their heels by the Sentinels.
From the get-go, director Bryan Singer throws the audience into a horrifying world where mutants and mutant sympathizers alike are culled in concentration camps Third Reich style.
Only a small band of mutant militants (which includes Blink played by Fan Bing Bing who was in town recently) are on their last legs, and it’s up to Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) to teleport the ageless Wolverine’s consciousness (Hugh Jackman) back to the 70s to stop Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from killing Dr. Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), the scientist responsible for creating the killer cyborgs.
What follows then is a high-octane sequence and elaborate time-travelling plotting (think Back to the Future meets The Matrix) where Wolverine reunites frenemies Eric Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender) and Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) while in pursuit of Raven/Mystique.
And what happens in the rest of the movie is obviously, not an easy ride for the mutants – and the audience considering the space-time continuum twists.
Fret not, as Singer manages to transform a multi- ensemble epic piece into an impressive summer flick with lots of action, banter and not so much exposition and character development.
Considering Singer has returned to the director’s chair after 2 great runs (X-Men and X-Men 2), he wastes no time in playing up the palpable on-screen chemistry between favorites Professor X, Magneto, Beast, Wolverine and Mystique, including a hilarious performance by Quicksilver (Evans Peter).
The gratuitous dollops of fight scenes between the formidable Sentinels and helpless mutants in both the past and future timelines result in an acute sense of suspense in a race against time to save their own race.
8 years since Brett Ratner butchered the X-Men universe in X-Men: The Last Stand, we have had 2 Wolverine spin-offs and 1 prequel, but not one continuation to a universe where Cyclops, Professor X and Jean Grey have been offed. Suffice to say, X-Men: Days of Future Past has provided the franchise with a way forward now and wiped the slate clean (spoilers in this handy infographic by MTV).
X-Men: Days of Future Past gives fans of the comic series something to cheer about and look forward to X-Men: Apocalypse (stay for the post-credits scene) in 2016, conjuring perhaps a sense of relief that the X-Men didn’t become Ex-Men in the future and are in fact, starting anew.
Rating: 4/5
Release Date: May 22
Runtime: 134 Minutes
Language: English
Censorship rating: PG13
Genre: Action
Director: Bryan Singer
Main actors: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Ellen Page, Peter Dinklage, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart and many more mutants actors.