Was not sure what to expect, but I ended up enjoying the latest X-men film

Rating: 9/10 (9 June 2014)

I am one of the few people out there that apparently enjoyed X-men: The Last Stand. I thought the film had the best battle scene of the original trilogy as it actually had the first real team battle instead of being Wolverine versus various mutants and people. I had heard that this one was going to wipe away that film, but in reality, this film pretty much wipes all those films away, but does so in a bit more imaginative fashion. Like a reboot, but not in a way. We get the cast of the old films and the ones from First Class in a time travel story that works for the most part.
The story has the mutants in a desperate situation as Sentinels have been created to cleanse the Earth of all existing mutants. We witness, right away, the terror they can inflict as they wipe out some of the toughest mutants around with ease. This Sentinels adapt to their targets and are able to inflict great damage. Well after this group of mutants is wiped out, we see them alive and well as one of the mutants, Shadowcat, can now send a person back into their former self and that person then warns of the impending Sentinel attack and they then abandon their hiding spot and find a new location. Professor Xavier and Magneto are now on the same side and Professor X has a plan to send his consciousness back into his former self to the time the Sentinel program took off and stop Mystique from killing a man by the name of Trask as this leads to her capture and her ability to morph leads to the super adaptable Sentinels. Unfortunately, Professor X can not survive the time jump, but Wolverine can. He makes his way into the past and must convince not only Professor Xavier, but also Magneto that they must stop Mystique and thus stop the horrific future.
The story was pretty good and I liked that Beast played a huge role in this film. I also enjoyed Quicksilver's time in the movie. Still, the emphasis is on Wolverine, young Professor Xavier and young Magneto. Granted, the best action takes place in the future as the Sentinels once again locate the remaining mutants hiding place. They did a lot of good things here, but I am a bit perplexed as to why they insist on making Mystique such a huge part of these movies. I can understand Wolverine, as he was everybody's favorite and he was in the comics a whole lot, but when I collected comics heavily for three years I literally did not have but maybe two comics with Mystique in it. One a back issue featuring Cable's first appearance and another an annual that had a couple of short stories detailing the downfall of her group Freedom Force. While perplexed, it did provide for an interesting story and so I guess I will roll with it even though I find it highly unfair that the females who saw this got to see Wolverine's bare buttocks while all us guys get is a smurf with all the best parts distorted.
In the end, I really enjoyed this X-men film more than I thought I would and I am also very excited about the next film that will finally feature another X-men villain that should have been featured before now considering the amount of X-men movies there are now. The film did have some strange moments and there were some off screen deaths that were a bit puzzling and I did not care for, but overall the film had some nice action and an interesting enough storyline to keep it all together and not seem like a film where they were simply trying to shove every mutant possible into the film just because they could.