Review: X-Men: Days of Future Past
By Christine Petralia
Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox
May 26, 2014
While the trailers may seem confusing, this 100th (OK, it’s not 100 – but it seems like it) installment of the X-Men series isn’t all that hard to follow. However, if you try to remember other films’ plots and try to factor them into the timeline of this film, it will make your brain hurt. So, really just sit back and enjoy this film for what it’s worth, good effects and pretty faces.
In the future, robots known as Sentinels are hunting down and killing mutants, while oppressing humans. It’s basically a bad situation for everyone. A group of mutants, however, have found a way to evade the Sentinels by ‘going back in time’ to warn their past selves of the imminent attacks and thus saving themselves. Kitty Pryde’s (Ellen Page) group meets up with Storm (Halle Berry), Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen) to discuss a plan to stop the Sentinels from ever existing. Professor X says they must send someone back to 1973, the year that Mystique/Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) killed the Sentinels’ creator Trask (Peter Dinklage). After she kills him, it sets off a chain of events and the Sentinels’ are designed when the government captures her and gets her DNA.
Wolverine volunteers to go back in time, as he is the one who can heal the fastest. He seeks out Charles (James McAvoy), who is upset that Raven has left and lost his powers after taking a serum so he can walk again, and Erik (Michael Fassbender), who is locked up at the Pentagon after they believe he killed JFK. Living with Charles is Hank/Beast (Nicholas Hoult), who is basically his caretaker. Wolverine convinces Charles about the future and to go find Erik and then Raven. They manage to break Erik out and, of course, when they stop Raven from killing Trask, Erik turns on her and tries to kill her. He steals the Sentinel plans and manages to alter them to be his robots.
At the unveiling of the Sentinels, Erik controls them to destroy humans and mutants, surrounding the White House with a baseball stadium he lifted up. He attempts to kill the president and staffers, but Raven manages to stop him. And while this is all going on, back in the present/future, the Sentinels are wrecking havoc on the compound where Pryde is still controlling Wolverine back in time. But when Raven drops her gun and doesn’t kill Trask, everything gets righted. Wolverine, however, is drowned by Erik before everything is fixed. When he wakes up, he’s back at the academy, which seems to have never ended. All of our favorite mutants are there, Rogue, Storm, Jean Gray and Cyclops to name a few. Wolverine lets Professor X know that ‘he’s back’ and that they need to catch up.
After the credits roll, we see a cloaked figure in the desert controlling sand and a crowd chanting his name. He will be the next villain in the 2016 installment.
I really loved all the action and destruction, but that’s just me. I liked how Erik became evil halfway through the film again, because afterall, he is evil. There was a lot of character building in this one, more so than in previous films. And as I said, it didn’t really get as confusing as it could have been. Jackman is funny throughout and really fun to stare at. That man is jacked, it’s amazing. And Fassbender is nice to look at too. So, ladies, when your man wants to go see X-Men, just say yes and enjoy the pretty boys.
I skipped the 3-D and RPX, but it was probably cool in both.
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