It’s been a while since Fox released anything good in the X-men franchise. It all started to go a bit downhill with X-men The Last Stand, fell off a cliff entirely with X-men Origins: Wolverine, managed to grab an outstretched branch with The Wolverine and was left clinging for dear life over what was certainly a fatal fall. Then Brian Singer clearly noticed that someone had left his child unattended, lowered a rope and hauled the franchise back onto safer ground.
X-men: Days of Future Past is by no means perfect, but it is possibly the strongest outing for the franchise so far. The first two films were good, especially at the time when the competition in comic based movies was not exactly fierce. 14 years later, and with the likes of The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy knocking around, ensemble hero films have raised the stakes. Singer needed to bring his A-game, and bring it he did.
DOFP is by no means perfect. It’s a time-travel film, so was always going to contain flaws. Some flaws are unavoidable. Like the confusion around the time-travel. The laws are clearly laid out at the beginning of the film for all to see, but that doesn’t mean everyone will be able to keep up. Yet there are a few features of the film that could easily have been improved and just feel a little lazy in the writing department. The first fifteen minutes feel a little forced, with the audience expected to just jump on board an accept what’s happening. More intelligence within the writing could have laid down some solid ground-work, and the main offender here is the expectation that the audience will just accept that Kitty Pride has the ability to send people’s consciousness back in time. Just a line or two of dialogue could have addressed this, yet the writers didn’t deem it worth explaining…
There are a handful of other plot devices that feel a little clunky. Beast’s serum that allows him to control his powers is a necessary device for Charles Xavier’s journey, but feels like a slightly forced way to give Nicholas Holt some proper screen time. And Mystique’s character arc isn’t as logical as it could have been. Yet there is so much good in the film as a whole, these things are easy to overlook.
Singer has been smart. The risk with ensemble films, especially one of this scale, is sacrificing character development. Yet sensibly there are only a handful of characters that follow a proper arc. This is James McAvoy’s film. X-men: First Class followed Magneto’s journey, and Fassbender still does an excellent job of developing him throughout this film. Yet it is Xavier who truly changes. And it’s an emotional one as well, taking McAvoy from being a ruined, drug-addicted mess, to the moral and powerful mutant we see in Patrick Stewart’s Xavier many years later.
A few characters do fall into the lack of character development trap, but in most cases it’s not an issue. Peter Dinklage’s Trask could have been used more, but probably just because Dinklage is a joy to watch. Beast gets sacrificed in this regard. But it’s with Mystique that the damage is done. There are points that she feels like a convenient plot device, and if it weren’t for the always wonderful Jennifer Lawrence, it might actually be a real issue.
This all might seem overly-critical, and that’s the point. These are the worst offenses within this film, and it just emphasises what a good job Singer has done. The action is spectacular, not to mention brutal. He doesn’t shy away from killing off the future X-men in some pretty extreme ways at the beginning of the film, and then does it all again during the final battle, supplying the audience with some pretty shocking moments. Seeing Halle Berry get impaled is not something many will expect to see.
Yet the star of the film comes in the form of American Horror Story’s Evan Peters. Quicksliver is many a fan-favourite in the comics, and there was a lot of excitement and concern surrounding his inclusion in the film. It is not a disappointment. Peters is funny, charming, and every second he is on screen is a delight. He also brings out the best in some of the leading cast (Fassbender actually has the ability to be hilarious) and anyone who can watch Quicksilver’s main scene and not grin throughout needs to get their sense of humour checked.
Some interesting choices have been made concerning Quicksilver. In the comics his power varies between being able to travel around Mach 4 and potentially hitting Mach 10 in his more powerful forms. The version we see in the film is clearly Quicksilver at his most powerful (rivalling DC’s The Flash for speed), and makes for a few amazing scenes, but unfortunately means he has to be dropped halfway through otherwise he would have too much influence on the plot. Considering that the villain in the next film will be Apocalypse (revealed in the post-credits sting), it’s safe to assume we’ll be seeing more of Peters in the next outing. But we’ll be seeing more of the silver-haired one in next year’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, and the bar has been set rather high. Can Weedon and co. trump this incarnation of the speedster? With a certain Aaron Taylor-Johnson stepping into his shoes, it’s rather doubtful…
The most important element of DOFP however is the fact that this is effectively a reboot. Or a half reboot. The events of X-men, X-men 2, The Last Stand and the two Wolverine films have been cancelled out by this latest outing, allowing for the First Class generation to take over. It’s almost as if someone was apologising for some rather silly decisions made, especially during The Last Stand. Seeing Jean, and especially Cyclops back alive warms the heart. It could be great to see that generation strutting their stuff again, but it seems that the torch has been passed. But do not despair. We’ll likely see them again, just maybe a little younger…
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