An instant classic in the genre

Rating: 9/10 (24 May 2014)

This movie is close to flawless. X-Men: DoFP has substance as well as virtuoso technique. And once again, as happens so often in the "superhero" genre, the bad guys-- the ruthless and powerful humans who destroy what they cannot understand or control-- are Americans, often the government itself. That alone merits my admiration every time, from Iron Man ironically fighting against his own iron weapons, to José Padilha's Robo-Cop, where a scientist (Gary Oldman) has to try to turn Alex Murphy into a mindless killing machine because the military-industrial complex (Omnicorp in this case) funds his research. It reflects reality all too well, sugar-coated though it is in fantasy.
Casting Peter Dinklage as Trask, the mutant-hating scientist, takes full advantage of that actor's skills and his stature. Dwarfism is usually caused by a genetic disorder, and to quote Wikipedia, "A condition caused by mutations in one or more genes is called a genetic disorder." So he is self-hating, but when asked if he really hates mutants, he says no-- he admires them. He has to; in a way, he's one of them. You don't find that kind of complex insight in many 3-D action pictures.
Trask's warning to the Senate about underestimating the enemy refers to mutants, but he's speaking in 1973, as we are evacuating Vietnam and entering the Paris Peace Talks (scenes of both are included). We lost that war and he doesn't know this, but we do: Iraq, Iran, and global guerrilla warfare (a.k.a. terrorism) are in our future. Americans -- especially Americans -- cannot be reminded often enough that underestimating an enemy is a deadly and arrogant mistake.
It is not an original idea, but using time-travel to start new time-lines is a game-changer, and well adapted here. The whole franchise is re-booted now, and everything that happened in earlier films was just an alternate time-line-- meta-universe stuff, much like J. J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot.
Oh, and one more thing: the scene where Quicksilver (Evan Peters) is shown at normal speed while everything else appears frozen already stands as one of the best scenes ever conceived in science fiction, and its execution is breathtaking-- a thrilling mixture of comedy, chaos and explication.
There's more, of course. The humor is fresh, and it's both visual and verbal. The writer, Simon Kinberg, does such a beautiful job with the script-- it smart, brisk, and witty-- that I think we should forgive him for THIS MEANS WAR. There are underwhelming performances, particularly Shawn Ashmore as Iceman, but a few low batteries in this powerhouse array hardly matter. A mere quibble. Because, if we leave aside the inevitable time-travel paradoxes and don't ask too much about how Kitty Pryde's quantum tunneling ability allows her to send a disembodied mind through space-time, we have a new classic in the Science Fiction genre, worthy of multiple viewings. It was a stroke of genius in 2011 to cast two screen-commanding talents, James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, in a movie series that already had the Sirs Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, and that genius is back on display here.