Bryan Singer gets this series back on track

Rating: 7/10 (3 July 2014)

After Singer's last film, the box office fiasco and poorly done Jack the Giant Slayer, Singer shows a command of his craft that has been missing from his big budget work since he left this series in X2. The film starts out in a hostile future where the robotic Sentinels hunt down and wipe out what's left of the mutants. Either this film is purposely ignoring most of X3: The Last Stand or there's some glaring continuity oversights in this series, such as Professor X being alive in this grim future. But Days of Future past has a strong enough narrative to stand on its own, so it's easy to ignore events from the previous entries without impacting this film. Things get going when Wolverine is sent back to the 70s to seek the aid of a younger Professor X and Magneto to change the course of history. Even with crossover casting, time travel and mutants entrenched in powerful political positions, Days of Future Past is remarkably straight forward and well written and never gets convoluted with so many characters and plot threads. The money spent is up there on the screen and even with this colossal budget, the effects and action set pieces aren't overproduced, but remarkably well rendered and the period detail is more than convincing. The 3D was adequate, but didn't add anything to the experience except a few extra dollars to the ticket - two dimensions are more than enough for Days of Future Past.