By: Justin Pomerville
We have now reached the end of our journey. If you are reading this and have not read the other ones, I strongly suggest that you go back and read the other four just so you can get a good idea of how I've progressed while writing these.
X-Men: Days Of Future Past (2014)
This film was considered to be the passing of the torch for the X-Men franchise. Bringing together both the casts from the original "X-Men" trilogy and "X-Men: First Class" to tell probably one of the biggest and most popular X-Men story; "Days Of Future Past". So, buckle up for this one.
The film opens with a destroyed New York City and a voice over of Professor X (via Patrick Stewart) explaining how the war of mutant kind has been lost to both sides. Everything is destroyed, mutants are enslaved, and everything is very dark and depressing. This totally sets the tone for the film and great way as we then travel to Moscow, where you are first introduced to the Sentinels. They are infiltrating a base of mutants, which introduces new mutants Bishop, Blink, Sunspot, Warpath, the returning Colossus, Iceman, & Kitty Pryde, played by returning actors Daniel Cudmore, Shawn Ashmore, & Ellen Page respectively. What we see is basically everyone dies except for Kitty and Bishop, who escape.
We then see Professor X (Patrick Stewart), Magneto (Ian McKellen), Storm (Halle Berry), & Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) travel to China to meet up with Kitty, Bishop, and everyone who we thought have died in the attack with the Sentinels. Turns out, Kitty has been able to warn the mutants of the attack by sending Bishop's mind back into the past to warn everyone of the attacks. This was my first red flag in this film. In the comics, Kitty Pryde has the ability to phase through objects. That's it. She does not have the ability to send anyone through time. It makes no sense. And they don't even explain how she has this new power. They just expected us to be alright with it.
Anyway, they then talk about their plan to go back in time to stop the Sentinels from being made. How were they made? By Oliver Trask (played by Peter Dinklage) as he was murdered by Mystique (Jennifer Lawerence) which caused the government to kidnap Mystique and use her shape-shifting powers to make the Sentinels unstoppable. The plan: send Wolverine back to 1973 into his younger body and stop Mystique's assassination attempt. But he will need help, he must find young Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) & Erik (Michael Fassbender) and must convince them to help out to change their future.We are now in the past with Wolverine, who is his younger self before he gets put into the Weapon X program. So he has his bone claws.
We now meet Oliver Trask as he is explaining why the Sentinels program needs to happen. This is after the events of "X-Men: First Class". It's very brief intro to his character as we are then traveling to Saigon, where armed forces stationed and are holding mutants that are going to be shipped off to Trask labs to be guinea pigs. Of these mutants, were see Havok (Lucas Till), Toad, and some random mutants. Mystique saves everyone and then vanishes off to the next part of her vendetta. As for the rescued mutants, they are never seen again in this film, but will probably show up in "X-Men: Apocalypse".
We then go through a whole bunch of Wolverine trying to get the team together. Convincing Xavier to sober up and not be a depressed little human and breaking out Magneto from a maximum security prison buried beneath the Pentagon. We get to see Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) as Beast and we get to meet Quicksilver (played by Evan Peters). I going to say this now, I'm not a fan of Quicksilver or the actor who plays him. He just comes off as ridged, annoying, and very two dimensional. But, with that said, the effect/scene where he shows off his super speed was pretty impressive.
We now are at the point where Trask is now sharing his Sentinel project to a world peace conference, and where in this time line, is where Mystique murders Trask. But now, with the failed Trask murder, Magneto decides to shoot Mystique, to ensure that her DNA does not fall into the hands of the government. It fails as well, and Magento flees Because of this botched attempt, it actually helps Trask's cause to build the Sentinels.
We move forward to the point where young Charles talks with old Charles on how to change the future. It's a cool scene to have, but it's very confusing on how exactly it works. He reaches into Wolverine's brain and is able to see is future. It's not exactly the most thought out scene, kind of along the lines on how Kitty can just send minds into the past. But still, it was good way to bridge the gap and get the two to interact.
We've reached the big ending of this film. The president and Oliver Trask shows a demonstration of the Sentinel, but does not know the Magneto has taken control of them be putting metal into their exoskeletons. As this happening, the future mutants are being attacked by the Sentinels while they are trying to protect Kitty and Wolverine. See the struggle between the two worlds, as the past is trying to rewrite itself and watching the future be destroyed a mutant at a time. Overall, everything ends well and it begins the new chapter of the X-Men series.
This movie is great. It was a gap between the two separate timelines that was needed to put the rest the original trilogy and to essentially, restart. It pretty much erased everything that the "The Last Stand" did as well as closing that "future". And it seems the majority of the films for the future are not really going to touch on that particular future so much. Maybe a cameo or too, but that's basically it.
My biggest complaint with this film though is some lack of explaining particular powers for characters, the amount of new mutants they threw in to make it feel more like they needed to use characters, and that the majority of this plot is based around Mystique. She is not that big a of character in most of these major event books, but because it's Jennifer Lawerence, they have to make her more of a prominent character. This is the Wolverine of the franchise now. It will be interesting when Apocalypse comes out and see how much they stick with the comics and how much they throw in. I give this movie a 7 out of 10.
Stay tuned, because "X-Men:Apocalpyse" comes out May 27th and I will probably be reviewing that as well.