Spectacular

Rating: 9/10 (23 May 2014)

Watching an X-Men movie always felt like putting on a pair of old shoes. They are predictable yet makes for a comfortable viewing. 2011's X-Men: First Class was actually first class, reinvigorating a franchise that had kind of lost its shine. It explored the origins of the mutant superheroes and villains, and a youthful, talented cast multiplied its impact. But what of the actors in the older series? They never achieved any real closure. So out comes Bryan Singer with X-Men: Days of Future Past, which with its past and future backdrop, effectively serves as a bridge between the two different star casts. Two movies for the price of one? Read on.
"So many battles waged over the years... and yet, none like this. Are we destined to destroy each other, or can we change each other and unite? Is the future truly set?" – Charles Xavier
In the X-Men universe, the future is dystopian. War has erupted between humans and mutants, with the former close to annihilating the latter with their terrible weapon- the Sentinel robots. In addition to shape shifting, the Sentinels unique strengths include locating any mutant, and the ability to absorb and use mutant powers. The mutants do fight back, but it is useless as shown in the first few minutes of the movie. The futility of their actions do highlight the ingenuity of their solution- changing the past, terminator style, to protect the future. The Sentinel robots came into existence on public support because Mystique assassinated its creator, Bolivar Trask, and they gained their shape-shifting abilities from Mystique herself, who was captured. So The Wolverine's consciousness is sent back to his groovy younger self, back in 1973, just before that fateful incident. He has to convince a younger professor Charles Xavier, and Magneto, among others, of the apocalyptic future, and work together to prevent the assassination.
The cast is gargantuan- Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, Jennifer Lawrence, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Ellen Page, Shawn Ashmore and Nicholas Hoult reprise their roles with familiarity, while Peter Dinklage as Trask is their pint sized yet towering adversary. The visual effects are spectacular, and for a movie about people with superhuman abilities, the movie though is more about the human in them. The script is witty, the screenplay is tight, the music is apt, and though the premise is ridiculous, anyone stepping into the theater know what X-Men are after all, a figment of our imagination.
Despite Jackman's imposing physique, Lawrence's beauty and Fassbender's charisma, to me though the standout character was Quicksilver (comics) played by American Horror Story's Evan Peters, the Marvel version of The Flash. A smarty-pants, super-speed endowed kleptomaniac ("Prison break? That's illegal, you know"), he probably gets the best sequence in the film shot from his perspective in which everything else in the world moves so slowly- a super slow 3000 frames per second round the room shot while he moves at warp speed to rearrange bullet trajectories among other things. Pity though he disappears after that. If I were to nitpick, I think Bryan Singer has committed the same mistake that he did in Superman Returns- for a movie that is touted as an epic battle for survival, the action is too little. Agreed Magneto gets to lift up a stadium among other things, but unlike the action in Avengers, which left a satisfied feeling, I felt a bit cheated here, wanting more.
In the end though, X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) is entertaining, absolutely reveres its characters and makes the only truth in comic book world- that anything is possible, believable. 9/10