X‑Men: Days of Future Past

The lat­est instal­ment of the stub­born­ly endur­ing X‑Men fran­chise plays like a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar vic­to­ry lap. Epic in scale and ruth­less in exe­cu­tion, Bryan Singer’s super­hero slam-down is a slick, exhil­a­rat­ing enter­tain­ment that suc­cess­ful­ly fus­es both the orig­i­nal and First Class uni­vers­es for the very first time. And if it doesn’t quite match the water­tight nar­ra­tive per­fec­tion of X2, then so what? There are enough set-pieces – some of them daz­zling – to war­rant con­tin­ued attention.

The film kicks off in the grimmest of futures. An army of mur­der­ous robot­ic over­lords, the Sen­tinels, has tak­en over the world, dec­i­mat­ing most of civil­i­sa­tion and enslav­ing the sur­vivors. The remain­ing X‑Men, led by Pro­fes­sor X (Patrick Stew­art) and Mag­ne­to (Ian McK­ellen), con­vene to send hir­sute bruis­er Wolver­ine (Hugh Jack­man) back in time.

His mis­sion? To pre­vent Mys­tique (Jen­nifer Lawrence) from assas­si­nat­ing evil genius Boli­var Trask (Peter Din­klage) there­fore negat­ing the require­ment for Trask’s anti-mutant Sen­tinel pro­gramme. In order to do this, Wolver­ine will need the help of 1970s Pro­fes­sor X (James McAvoy) and Mag­ne­to (Michael Fass­ben­der). There are just two prob­lems: the Professor’s a drunk, and Magneto’s impris­oned sev­er­al lev­els below the Pen­ta­gon. It’s all in a day’s work for our gruff hero.

As you can imag­ine, this requires a hell of a lot of expo­si­tion, and it’s to screen­writer Simon Kinberg’s cred­it that much of the heavy lift­ing is whipped off with an unex­pect­ed­ly light touch in the film’s open­ing scenes. That leaves Singer to get on with the good stuff, and there’s plen­ty of that.

An intro­duc­to­ry mêlée twixt the X‑Men of the future and the all-pow­er­ful Sen­tinels sets the tone, with Singer rev­el­ling in the pow­ers pro­vid­ed by his expand­ed cast list. Take, for instance, the tele­port­ing skills of new addi­tion Blink, who evades cap­ture using an elab­o­rate sequence of por­tals. The effect is eye-pop­ping, and the action more fre­net­ic and per­ilous than before.

Lat­er on, we’re intro­duced to the light­ning fast Quick­sil­ver, played by Amer­i­can Hor­ror Sto­ry star Evan Peters. He gets the best scene in the film by a coun­try mile, stag­ing an auda­cious prison break in super-advanced bul­let time. His abil­i­ty to ​“freeze” a room and pick off his assailants one by one is deployed to joy­ous effect. Of the return­ing cast, the ultra-mas­cu­line tri­umvi­rate of Jack­man, McAvoy and Fass­ben­der get the most screen-time. Jack­man looks like a moun­tain these days. Fans will be pleased to note that his per­for­mance in this film requires both gra­tu­itous nudi­ty and bru­tal claw action. We don’t real­ly learn any­thing too new about Logan this time around. The script requires Wolver­ine to act as a plot device, and that’s what he does.

McAvoy is fun as a down-and-out ver­sion of Charles Xavier, who gets the film’s most ful­ly realised char­ac­ter arc as he evolves from dis­il­lu­sioned junkie to charis­mat­ic leader. But the star of the show is Fass­ben­der, who uses Days of Future Past to trans­form Mag­ne­to from rev­o­lu­tion­ary ide­al­ist into all-round super-vil­lain. He is a trans­fix­ing actor, the kind of per­former who could stop you dead with a glance, and his pres­ence ele­vates the mate­r­i­al. See­ing him wreak hav­oc dur­ing the movie’s humon­gous finale is a treat.

Singer occa­sion­al­ly, how­ev­er, bites off a lit­tle more than he can chew. He expands the mutant uni­verse to such an extent that many of these new faces – and quite a few of the old ones – get stuck in the periph­ery. In par­tic­u­lar, many of the female char­ac­ters get side­lined. Jen­nifer Lawrence, for exam­ple, appears to be star­ring in a stand-alone movie, one that occa­sion­al­ly col­lides with the very mas­cu­line action tak­ing place else­where. Ellen Page appears briefly as Kit­ty Pryde, repris­ing her role from 2006’s sub-par effort The Last Stand. As the mutant whose abil­i­ty to send peo­ple through time insti­gates the whole she­bang in the first place, Pryde should be a key play­er in Days of Future Past, but all she real­ly has to do is sit there and hold onto Jackman’s face for a cou­ple of hours.

To be hon­est, some of them make the final edit by what appears to be the skin of their teeth (here’s look­ing at you, Anna Paquin). Remem­ber when com­ic book movies would fea­ture one hero and maybe one or two vil­lains, and make them fight it out in the mid­dle of a shon­ky back­lot? In the post-Avengers land­scape, more is def­i­nite­ly more, though not nec­es­sar­i­ly bet­ter. The same holds true here.

As a result of this excess bag­gage, X‑Men: Days of Future Past per­haps lacks the steely-eyed focus of Singer’s pre­vi­ous two entries. Nev­er­the­less, it’s an ambi­tious, thrilling and fit­ful­ly wit­ty block­buster. Clever, too, as Singer and Kin­berg seize their chance to cheek­i­ly relaunch the entire enter­prise from scratch, cre­at­ing an alter­na­tive time­line through which to weave prospec­tive new strands. Time trav­el can be a hoary old con­ceit, with para­dox­es and plot-holes aplen­ty, but it’s also a remark­ably con­ve­nient one. Bring on the Apocalypse.