Great X-pectations
ou c a n t e e p a g o o d mutant down. hat s why ogan otherwise nown as olverine played by Hugh ac man is still the heart and soul behind the X-Men franchise. he
latest installment X-Men: Days of Future
Past is loosely based on a comic boo and it brings bac a lot of familiar
X- Men names most notably director Bryan Singer who helmed the first two installments before ta ing a long brea . Here s he s bac in good form reuniting the original cast and bridging the previous prequel outing featuring ames Mc voy ennifer awrence and a very nasty Michael assbender with a future dystopian tale that has shades of Back to the Future and It’s a Wonderful Life.
How s that ell consider olverine as oc Brown heading bac to the past in his e orean to e plain to a young Marty Mc ly Mc voy as a young bitter harles avier that he has to do things differently or else the future is gonna greatly suc .
r maybe he s li e acob Marley guiding bene er Scrooge through his misguided past and warning him what will happen if he persists in his miserly ways. cept Scrooge is a very badass assbender hell-bent on war with the humans.
nd ogan is ust the right -Man to go bac to the past and tal some sense into the feuding avier and Magneto and convince an e tremely blue ennifer awrence Mystique not to gun down a scientist who wants to build robots to protect human ind from the mutant race.
oes all of this only ma e sense to X-Men fans ell my -year-old daughter could easily grasp it and she s never read an X-Men comic or seen any of the films before.
hat we have is one of those future dystopia openings in which the earth is so fra ed up giant iller robots called Sentinels are tearing the planet s remaining few mutants limb from limb. ou see the Sentinels were designed by the military to guard humans from mutants but in the way of all dystopian futures everything goes wrong Moscow and ew or are doom-shrouded craters in which passing Sentinel transports deposit iller robots to ill off remaining mutants. t s an ugly future that we learn could be prevented if avier and Magneto can unite in the past and turn Mystique from her pursuit of government scientist ras eter in lage who s using samples of Mystique s to construct techno-robots who can spot a mutant in any situation. nd before you can say obocop that mutant is toast. here s a lot of emphasis on merican history in Days of Future how it can be bent and reshaped that reminds one of lan Moore s The Watchmen. here s even an intriguing theory that Magneto controlled the so-called magic bullet that illed in with Magneto raising the possibility that himself was a mutant.
in lage serves under resident ichard i on it s and he has his own conflicted feelings about mutants. He admires their s ills but can only thin of using them to build up defense.
Days of Future Past has a lot of fun dwelling in its s past inserting everything from Sanford and Son clips of edd o to a truly mind-blowing sequence set to im roce s
Time in a Bottle in which super-fast mutant uic silver van eters helps the older slower mutants escape from encroaching military weapons in a entagon loc up facility by ipping around the room while everyone else is simply fro en in place rearranging bullet tra ectories and giving soldiers wedgies into the bargain. t s a great scene and it ma es you wonder why they didn t eep uic silver around for the rest of the movie. He s a trip.
s Mystique awrence trots out a pretty toned bod under all the blue paint and mutant scales one that she uses to ic the be esus out of many unassuming assailants and she also delivers some heart and soul to the mi . Mc voy too brings more dimension to his younger avier character one who has pretty much given in to self-pity after Mystique has flown the coop. assbender is harder to read e cept as a haw ish Magneto who believes humans will never change.
his is a step up from the prequel X-Men: First Class mostly because it brings all the best elements of the series together. hat is it focuses on character and doesn t overdo the special effects set pieces though there are some ama ing sequences Magneto levitating a baseball stadium into the air and using it to encircle the hite House to name one.
he dude holding it all together is ac man s olverine. t s amusing to see him sent bac to sporting still-developing not-quite-metallic s ewers from his nuc les they loo more li e breadstic s actually . He has to be the one to give pep tal s to avier and dispense future wisdom to the cold-as-ice Magneto. tough ob that.
He even has a Groundhog Day moment. s in the Bill Murray comedy in which Murray wa es up to the same day over and over again with Sonny and her s I Got You Babe on repeat. Here it s olverine wa ing up to oberta lac s The First Time
Ever I Saw Your Face.
he X-Men universe has e panded so much that other past characters Halle Berry s Storm nna aquin s ogue have little to do here amounting to mere cameos. More time is given to new character itty r y d e l l e n age who can pass through solid ob ects though this mutant s ill sometimes ma es you wonder why didn t she ust open the door or ta e the stairs She spends most of the movie with her hands hovering around olverine s s ull in order to send his consciousness bac into the past it ind of reminds you of her gig in hristopher olan s Inception where she sedated sub ects so they could dip into other people s consciousnesses to e tract information. n any case she doesn t do much but is promised a bigger role in the ne t installment X-Men: Apocalypse.
s always the X-Men franchise is one that focuses on outsiders marginali ed people with special talents whether those talents amount simply to turning blue and growing sideburns as Beast does or e hibiting truly awesome power such as Magneto s or avier s. lmost from its inception in the s it was an idea that resonated with comic boo fans who often found their strongest powers lay in the realm of imagination. owadays some of those marginali ed comic boo fans and creators are not only quite rich they practically control much of Hollywood s output. ind of ma es you believe the mutants won after all.