Pure fan indulgence with great production values

Rating: Null/10 (2 July 2014)

X-Men: Days of Future Past is certainly an ambitious project, attempting to stitch together both film franchises, the original X-Men trilogy as well as the 2011 semi-reboot X-Men: First Class. And the way it accomplishes this is certainly both effective and commendable. The story is believable, most of the important loopholes get closed and as a whole it's just a lot of fun.
The best thing here are the actors. Pretty much all the actors from both franchises reprise their roles, which is an impressive feat and all around heartwarming. The main show belongs to Hugh Jackman (Wolverine) as well as Patrick Stewart/James McAvoy (Charles Xavier) and Ian McKellen/Michael Fassbender (Erik Lehnsherr). All five are talented actors in their own right and they absolutely nail these characters and give us some really good character moments. The rest of the cast is equally up to the task and it's great to see so many of them in the same film, seeing that X-Men has always been about a group of people coming together to fight greater evil.
But here I have to be honest and admit that I was kind of expecting more from the story. Once again mutants are threatened by evil, bigoted men and it's up the X-Men to stop this threat before the society slides out of balance. We've seen this before, and while the execution here is superb and allows an old story to feel refreshing, it's still an old story. And there were a couple of clear points in the movie, where they could have broken the mold, but instead they went with the expected. Sure it's faithful to the comic books, but these characters are so huge that there would have been room for variance.
And that leaves me with a conundrum. I loved the characters, I loved the action scenes, I loved the production values, but I honestly cannot say the same about the story. I didn't dislike it either, but it could have been so much better with so little effort. The film is still worth seeing, easily, but you should be advised that if you're expecting something new story-wise, you're not going to get it. Although the final ending is great in its own indulgent way.