Good Story, Average Execution

Rating: 7/10 (1 June 2014)

I think the movie was pretty good, however I feel that my appreciate of the film is completely different from most people's. As such, I explain why it is imperative that I give my review of the film from a bias position, simply stating the facts of what the movie was trying to portray and what it actually portrayed, as well as the minor film details.
Lets look at the minor details first. The effects weren't something I didn't see before, and the acting was very basic. In fact I would say the acting was very mediocre. Even though Jennifer was supposed to have a really big part with her Mystique role, she didn't really shine. As much as I missed the old X-Men, they didn't have a lot of screen time either. Surprisingly, it was Wolverine who had the most screen time and for some reason he was less rugged then he usually is. Within his over 200 years of existence he has changed a lot in the last 5. I don't think this was done well.
The plot of the film definitely had a "Inception" type feel to it. However the idea of changing the past for the future is such a tricky thing to deal with that it gets irritating when looking at the context of the universe. The fact that the past is being messed with, indicates the fact that everything else that happened in the X-Men series did not happen. It almost adds a pointless element that I could overlook. However, they incorporated so much lore in one movie that its hard to look at the rest of the X-Men films and visualize that they actually happened considering the events that are about to unfold because of Mystique. One would also question the relationship between Magneto and Mystique that we have seen throughout every X-Men series after this movie.
The one key thing that I had problems with is the fact that film did not specifically state how the sentinels create the future they are in when the person responsible for their creation was not able to because of the events that led up to his demise of the uncorrected past. Its the small key points that makes a big hit from a great hit. I feel this was so essential to explain the rest of the series. Especially considering we don't see the government showing any signs of dealing with the mutants in such an extreme way. It was obviously an underground group and I feel they hinted to it very vaguely like a girl that looks at you once and expects you to ask her out.
One another key element that should have been elaborated on is the fact that the past effecting the future had a few different types of theorems. In one hand the idea that you could change the future if you went back into the past and the other that no matter what you did the future was inevitable. We see at the end all the good guys... but no bad guys all at the School smiling and having a good time. There should have been a point settled in here because no one actually pays attention to this fact. Did they really change the future or did they prolong it? But I feel I am making the movie more interesting than what it actually did. Did you come out of the movie thinking this? Also what happened to Stryker? He is the key antagonist of the films.
A movie can have awesome concepts, however, its the films job to really portray them effectively enough. When I see all these ratings of 10 stars, I say to myself, "give me a break." It was a decent movie, but people depend on you to give an accurate and fair analysis of the film.
Why did people grade it really high? Well for one thing this was the closest X-Men story to directly come from the comic books. Is that really enough to give it extremely high grades? They spent millions making the move, I'd expect an extraordinary story, and I feel people came from the film thinking how finite the time travel continuum really is when the story isn't really about that at all. Only comic book nerds would understand this. Except... nobody else read them and because of the ending they actually need to spoon fed. I also think the dark X- Men look of the future X-Men was completely awesome. It is definitely a new, modern, look that will inspire our current generation to appreciate.
As such, though I didn't give it a harsh rating, I am actually skeptical what grade to give it. The film's entire message didn't come out as should have, even though it had an awesome plot already created for it. Many movies have really awesome concepts to them but aren't expressed. I feel like I'm back in high school where a student speaker did all his research and knows what he should say in his speech but for some reason can't get it out. I am also very sad that the real X-Men nerds when all out in the ratings, like a bunch of kids that rated a film high because they saw a nude girl. Because it's the closest thing they've wanted to see they rated it ridiculously. I also know a few friends that went to the college computers and started rating it just to boost the score. Not cool. It's troubling considering their are potential stories that could possibly not be shown in all their glory because the direction of the film and script aren't able to show the important parts.