This is the BEST 'X-Men' movie to date and is well worth one-hundred viewings.

Rating: 8/10 (17 August 2015)

The big blockbuster movies for the summer of 2014 have officially kicked off and 'X- Men: Days of Future Past' might be the best one yet. For the past year, I've been looking forward to seeing this and original X-Men director Bryan Singer returning to this storyline. If you remember, back in 2000, Singer was the first director to take on a big budget comic book movie with the first 'X-Men' film, and the studios were waiting to see if it was going to do enough business. Made on what seems to be a modest budget of only $75 million, the first X-Men film made $300 million domestically, and that's before 3D and all of the IMAX screens. Well, the rest is history, as we have had tons of comic book films come out since then. But it feels great to be back with the one that started it all.
First off, this 'X-Men' film is superbly shot and told. It deals with time travel, and not every director and writer in the business can tell a good time travel story without some people getting thrown off course. But here, it is done exceptionally well and is easy to follow. If the title 'Days of Future Past' confuses you, don't worry, I'll explain it. The title refers to a story arc of the X-Men comic books and focused on a desolate Earth where these large and highly adaptable robots called Sentinels destroyed everyone and everything. You might remember the Sentinels as the giant purple robot bad guys from the comics. It's as if the worst possible outcome of a 'Terminator' were to come true, only with no Arnold Schwarzenegger to handle things and save the day.
These Sentinels are zeroing in on the X-Men, as it seems they are the last of the mutants left on Earth. In an amazing opening scene, we see Magneto (Ian McKellen), Prof. Xavier (Patrick Stewart), Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page), Bishop (Omar Sy), Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), Blink (Bingbing Fan), Sunspot, Warpath, and Colossus, Halle Berry returning as Storm and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine trying to fight off these Sentinels. Singer must be a huge 'Portal' fan, because there is a lot of portal opening going on here in the style of the game. And it's so much fun to watch. Pryde is able to take somebody's mind and soul and send it back in time, which Xavier and Magneto want to do to stop this Sentinel war from starting. But the ability to go back in time to the early 70s would rip apart anyone's brain.
But since Wolverine can regenerate immediately, he is sent back in time to find the young Prof. Xavier (Jame McAvoy) and the young prisoner Magneto (Michael Fassbender) to help stop Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from killing Dr, Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), who is responsible for creating the sentinels and selling them to anyone who wants to buy them. We find out that Mystique killing Trask is the one event that sets in motion the destruction of the future that we see in the first scene.
The bulk of the film is running around with Wolverine and the younger versions of Magneto, Xavier, and Beast (Nicholas Hoult) as they try and fix the past so that the world is not destroyed and they can keep their lives. It literally is a race against time. One of the coolest scenes involved Quicksilver (perfectly played by Evan Peters), when he broke Magneto out of prison. I could watch that scene on loop for hours. If you can believe it, Wolverine plays the level-headed man through the entire film this time around and focuses more on the young Xavier coming to terms with his handicap and dealing with his super power and McAvoy shows his struggle flawlessly.
Fassbender is cool as ice as Magneto again and Peter Dinklage is as good as ever as the evil Dr. Trask. One of the only complaints is the lack of a big epic climactic fight scene at the end. Sure, there is a big climax, but it offers very little fighting. But that's nit-picking. And of course, stay till the end of the credits for a great scene of what's to come. The acting, filming, and special effects were all top notch here and I want Quick Silver spin off movie for sure. This is the BEST 'X-Men' movie to date and is well worth one-hundred viewings.