Saturday, May 24, 2014

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Plot: In present day, killer robots have nearly killed off all the X-Men. In desperation, they send Logan/Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back to the past to prevent the deadly robots from being built. They identify a key event, when Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawerence) kills robot inventor Bolivar Trask, and then is captured: her mutant DNA is built into the new robots making them unstoppable.

Logan/Wolverine finds the younger Charles/Prof. X (James McAvoy) and Erik/Magento (Michael Fassbender) and they find Raven/Mystique, but not in time, so they have to improvise. In the end, it is a struggle between the use of force to defend themselves versus the hope for peace -- like previous X-Men stories. [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Good characters with interesting relationships between them,  a suspenseful story, and top special effects. It is a great "Action Movie", and I am glad I saw it.

The best part was the team-oriented fighting scenes as it plays up the cooperation between the characters in the present, and it is punctuated by the terrible death scenes of so many characters -- this amps up the intensity. Even though there are a lot of death scenes, it is comic book action (breathing fire) so the high body count does not seem morbidly gross.

Also tops is the relationship between Charles, Erik, and Logan both with the old actors and the young actors. Very well written. I loved both Charles, but I did not like Michael Fassbender at all. Jennfer Lawrence's character is in many scenes, but often disguised. She did not have too many scenes to show her acting, and she missed a chance at the final climax, but underplayed it. I think it called for tears, or hair-pulling or maybe shape-shifting into a pretzel.

The cast is so big that I only see my favorite characters for a few minutes, and there are teases of so much comic-book backstory.

The music drifts between boring 70's pop and drum-heavy orchestral music -- nothing special here.

A top popcorn movie. Never dull. Often fun and gripping.

Cast: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Peter Dinklage, Michael Fassbender; and many many more

Directed by: Bryan Singer

Rating: 3.5 stars: Well made. Well acted. Gripping. Extra points for intensity. Misses a perfect score because the societal message is stale, and 2-3 quibbles.


More: They quote Star Trek episode "City of the Edge of Forever" about the rules of time travel, and cleverly have the episode playing in the background. 

Even More: No cameo for Stan Lee, but two of the senators were comic book writers. 

Yet more: In the preview at the end, En Sabah Nur is the other name for X-Men bad guy Apocalypse, who will be in the next X-Men movie called X-Men: Apocalypse. 

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