X-Men: Days of Future Past is an ambitious attempt to reconnect the disparate threads of the six previous X-Men flicks—the original trilogy, two Wolverine spin-offs, and a prequel—into one mutant-filled, time travel-y, ret-conned fustercluck. And it works.
There is a paradoxical cutting-the-chaff-meets-kitchen-sink quality apparent in Bryan Singer’s successful return to the behemoth that is the superhero genre (which he both helped birth and nearly destroyed). DoFP may have the highest concentration of mutant cameos and comics-referencing deep cuts of any X-Movie yet, but the crux of the story plays like an all-star game with all the best players plucked from the six films with Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) added to the mix for good measure.
In an apocalyptic future wasteland where mutants are hunted by hyper-advanced Sentinels, the A-team (Ellen Page, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart) works to send all-time QB Wolverine (Jackman) to the past, while Halle Berry’s Storm is demoted to guard duty outside with Blink, Colossus, Bishop and others, all using their powers in flashy yet frustratingly ineffectual ways. Once Wolverine is in nineteen seventy-something, his mission is to convince young Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and young Magneto (Michael Fassbender) to team up and foil Mystique’s assassination attempt on the inventor of the Sentinels, Dr. Trask (Dinklage). Accomplishing this mission will in turn prevent the fall of the first domino that sets into motion the great mutant war and thus the future (or, depending on your temporal perspective, present-day) X-Men predicament.
McAvoy and Fassbender once again channel their inner Stewart and McKellen (respectively) with an actorly aplomb perhaps undeserving of, though not unwelcome to, the X-Men franchise. But it is Mystique’s once-peripheral role that has been pushed to the fore, doubtless due to the so-hot-right-now Jennifer Lawrence donning the blue skin-suit a second time around. Despite some expected time-travel-related puzzlements, this combining-the-best-ingredients approach makes DoFP the best X-Men movie to date. It’s surprising then, that it is newcomer Quicksilver (Evan Peters) who gets the best scene in the movie: a masterful ballet of slow-motion tomfoolery set to Jim Croce’s bittersweet early-1970s hit “Time in a Bottle.” For this scene alone I can forgive this flick its few flaws.
