Saving The Future

Rating: 6/10 (23 May 2014)

The timeline of the X-Men movie franchise has been troubling ever since the supposedly conclusion of the series, X-Men: The Last Stand. The studio continues to make more of these by telling each of the mutants' origin stories, but it wasn't quite a success due to leading to a grope of making two awful Wolverine movies and a main prequel that doesn't know where to go afterwards. A solution to fix this is simply time-travel. With all the space time continuum and stuff, it finally has the chance to amend the universe and unhappen the unwanted events of the last movies. In that way, X-Men: Days of Future Past triumphs. The movie itself does need to be a little economical in its exposition, but as a blockbuster it is quite a solid entertainment.
The plot isn't actually a big of an adventure as it sounds. This fact may blind the audience by the vast amount of references from the past films, astounding action scenes, and extended character work. Take all of that away, you'll just get a breezy little mission that just walks in to historic periods and places. Not saying this is a bad thing; the action scenes are in fact a huge benefit of providing real momentum, and the pathos of the main characters are also worth exploring. It's a real joy just seeing these mutants get back together again. But the weakness here is it's too drawn to nostalgia. Don't get me wrong, it is fun remembering the best parts of the old X-Men, and as a time travel movie, this is absolutely essential, but only few become helpful to the plot. The rest of them is just a fan service which doesn't always elevate the overall story.
Then again, the real pleasures are the basic appeal of the series. Most X-Men movies are usually more focused on Wolverine than anyone else, and this sequel might do the same. Surprisingly, it was able to juxtapose each of the major character's arc. The young Professor X and Mystique remain the most intriguing among, the script doesn't always give enough detail to it, but their actors bring the gravity they deserve. The action, once again, is pretty well done. Besides of the future scenes, it provides more than just explosions. There is a real direction going on to these sequences and the camera perfectly shows its every action which makes it totally entertaining.
X-Men: Days of Future Past stands as perfect as a fan service. What exactly matters in this installment is to erase what was messed up by the last few movies by taking the concept of time-travel, butterfly effect, etc. The whole film is still too burdened by the past which sometimes hinders the plot, it would have been a much compelling movie if it goes deeper within its intriguing subtext. In the end, the film still succeeds in their goal, and it is a simple one which comic book fans will definitely appreciate. Therefore congratulations, this sequel just saved this franchise's future.