NO. Just...no!

Rating: 4/10 (13 June 2014)

Originally, I came home from the theatre and gave this a 6. I enjoyed it marginally more than the other blockbuster. But I have come to realise that 6 is unfair to the other movies I've given a 6 to, and the absolutely dreadful and badly cut together script for this film dials it down to a 4. Not even the dream team of Sir Patrick and Sir Ian with their mini-mes, McAvoy and Fassbender can drag this film up. Hugh Jackman is a great tough guy. He has made Wolverine his own, and usually that would be a good enough reason to watch, but not this one.
The good. The CGI is spectacular.
The bad. The plot. It leaps about from seventies to the future. Backwards and forwards, half the time the timeline of the story is so fudged you don't actually know what is happening. For instance, you clearly see Bobby (Iceman) die. Killed by the robots. But a little later he's alive and well. This is apparently caused by the few embattled X-Men leaping back in time so that they were "never there".
The hook is Logan going back to the 70s to prevent Mystique killing Trask. Because if she kills Trask (who designs the robots), after his death they take her DNA and are somehow able, because Trask's design exists to make his design really work just from a basic prototype. Trask really, really hates mutants. In fact his fellow mutant-hater Stryker comments on this. The reason for Trask's hatred and cruelty to those different to himself are completely unclear. We know why Stryker hates mutants. But Trask. No idea, and his answer to Stryker's question doesn't explain anything. It also seems a very strange hook to hang the story on. A scientist in the 70s develops a rabid hatred for mutants, and unilaterally creates a robot to destroy this one MAYBE threat. (Which wasn't any kind of threat until he started tinkering).
The CGI is spectacular. It is big, loud and utterly summer blockbuster. But without the humanity in the film, and the message that Xavier is more humane than most humans, we did actually get from the first movie thank you very much, without any real honest motivation for what Trask was doing, and the dizzying leaps back and forth in time this film is hard to follow or care about the fate of the characters. I have nothing against Jennifer Lawrence, she's a fine actress, but Rebecca Romijn's natural grace and calmness would have made for a more interesting protagonist. Jennifer simply isn't as graceful or as magnetic. (At least in this film). Mystique's reactions to the files she finds in Trask's office safe seem curiously out of character for the beautiful and deadly Mystique.
This is supposed to be a superhero movie. On this showing there was nothing that super, and certainly not that heroic about the film. Jossing every single thing that went before also seems to be an error of judgement. Watching it, I was basically praying for it to end. Not the way I want to feel about an X-Men film. Thoroughly disappointed.