X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) Review

"You abandoned us all!"
-Magneto



All across the globe, mutants face extinction as they are hunted down by robotic Sentinels.  In a desperate move, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) goes back in time to stop Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from assassinating Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), the man who designed the Sentinels.  But in order to stop the death of mutant-kind, Wolverine has to reunite the young Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender).


What Works:

Days Of Future Past finally brings together the original characters as well as the younger versions from First Class and it is truly awesome.  The time-travel elements are an absolute blast and a really ingenious story.  For the most part, it takes the best elements from the previous movies in the franchise and combines them together.

The scenes with the original characters are really well done and very moving.  The movie kicks off with a bunch of mutants, including Bobby Drake (Shawn Ashmore), being killed by the Sentinels only to be saved via time travel.  We've grown attached to Bobby over the previous movies and to see him killed so graphically in the opening is a great tone-setter.  Then at the the end of the movie as the mutants make their last stand, we see them killed off one by one.  It's incredibly emotional and hard to watch, but excellent filmmaking.

The acting is pretty amazing in this film.  Jackman, Fassbender, and McAvoy are all fantastic and I'm glad they are the focus of the film.  McAvoy has one scene in particular where he meets his older self (Patrick Stewart) and it's crazy how great the acting is.

Finally, the action scenes, though surprisingly small scale, are a lot of fun.  This movie focuses on a smaller group of mutants and the action sequences serve that story.  The best one is definitely Quicksilver's (Evan Peters) raid on the Pentagon.  This version of Quicksilver is vastly superior to Marvel's with some great humor and a lot of entertaining moments.


What Sucks:

I gotta say, I don't love Jennifer Lawrence's performance in the film.  I'm not sure what it is really.  It feels like she didn't want to be there and I never felt much emotion from her scenes.  It makes the ending of the movie less impactful and I wish she hadn't been made as important as she was.


Verdict:

Days of Future Past is a great X-Men movie with excellent acting, an engaging story, fun action, and plenty of emotional moments.  Jennifer Lawrence is lackluster, but this movie has still got it going on no matter what timeline we're in.

 9/10: Great 

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