Lives Up to Expectations

Rating: 10/10 (22 October 2014)

X-Men: Days of Future Past was a highly anticipated film and sequel to X-Men: First Class in 2011. This film begins sometime in the near future, we see a scorched landscape controlled, it seems, by autonomous machines. Mutants are the enemy and the machines have evolved to the point where no one is safe. A battle is still raging with several familiar mutant heroes fighting, mostly in vain, to gain a foothold against the frightful Sentinels. But all is not lost, Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen) hatch a plan to send the consciousness of one of the team back into the past. In doing so, the hope is that, armed with knowledge of a possible grim future, the wrongs can be righted and new present can be created.
The main highlight of the film is Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), whose unique healing powers prove to be very useful when it comes to tripping the time travel continuum. Falling back into the 1970s, Wolverine must convince a jaded and alcoholic, Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) to join forces with Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and change the future.
While not nearly as much fun as the last adventure that effectively rebooted the franchise, "Days of Future Past" has more narrative weight. The metaphor for racism that the mutant struggle represents is not lost as the United States recovers from the regretful setbacks in Vietnam and is forced confront a new Cold War menace. Enter Dr. Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), who has developed a machine that can detect the presence of a mutant. Once identified, Trask's solution to the mutant problem is to kill them. This terribly heavy-handed approach is a one of the film's narrative failings, especially considering that it does away with all judicial process that is one of the bedrock fundamental rights all American's share. Trask hints that mutants aren't even human, rather, they are a completely different species. One can logically imagine that that means no trials and the death penalty is okay. ==================================================================== ====== As a rewatch 07/07/17' X-Men: Days of Future Past remains perhaps the best X-Men film to date. Having all the great elements which made it great as it combines everything into one. This film works great because they focus on one main plot (unlike Apocalypse) and there aren't a loaded amount of characters. It is much more intense, thrilling and overall entertaining in comparison to Apocalypse after rewatching that as well. Also, the characters of Magneto, Mystique and Beast appear to be more engaged and aggressive where as in Apocalypse they seemed slightly bored. Rating changed from 9 to 10/10