‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ Review: The Perfect Re-Imagining of An Old Classic Tale

‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ marries together the casts from all of the recent mutant movies before telling one of the best adaptations of a comic book story, brought to life on the big screen…

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

There’s a delicate balance when it comes to comic books coming to life on the big screen, especially when dealing with long time comic book fans. Part of it comes from an accurate portrayal of the characters moving from page to film, but an even bigger aspect comes from the odd chemistry whenever an iconic storyline is used for a Hollywood feature.

Often times, comic book fans (like myself) ask over and over again why movie studios always feel the need to reinvent the wheel when there are so many classic stories already out there, drawn in pristine art with iconic tales that could translate so perfectly into film. Then again on those rare occasions when movie studios do decide to take a well known comic book story and turn it into a film, the fans are rarely happy with the results of how it turns out (The Watchmen comes to mind, which I thought was a brilliant and completely spot on accurate adaptation of the original material in case you were curious).

There’s also a strange marriage that fans have to characters and stories that they’ve grown up loving over many, many years only to see a watered down or altered version end up as the movie version of their favorite superhero. I truly believe loving Spider-Man from the time I was about four years old until now has always made me a harsher critic of the Spider-Man movies because I know that character inside and out, and believe in my heart of hearts there is a great web slinger movie on par with The Dark Knight to be told, we just haven’t gotten it yet.

So I was doubly curious how Bryan Singer’s return to the X-Men franchise would be received with his new film ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’. Here was the director of the original X-Men and X2 films coming back for his third shot at the mutant series after a disaster third movie (X-Men: The Last Stand) nearly killed the series before ‘X-Men: First Class’ jump started things once again. Singer put a cookie cutter, vanilla X-Men movie out for his first film, but then got everything right from characters to plot development in his second offering, X2. I mostly grew up on the X-Men from the cartoon series I used to watch on Saturday mornings, but for all the comics I read, this wasn’t a series I ever got truly drawn into outside of some key stories over the years.

In this movie, Singer adapts (along with writer Simon Kinsberg) perhaps the most classic tale of ‘Days of Future Past’ — one of the greatest and most loved X-Men stories of all time, written and released by Chris Claremont in 1981. As iconic as the story is remembered, some people may forget that the entire plot unfolded over two issues (unlike the sometimes endless sagas told in so many of today’s comics).

When this movie opens we are immediately caught in a dystopian future almost akin to something like what we’ve seen in ‘The Terminator’ series — humans and mutants alike are being hunted and tracked by the evil Sentinel robots, who have highly evolved into a much different state than the gigantic metal beasts best known from the comics or even the 1980’s cartoon series about the X-Men. It’s here that we meet a few familiar faces including Charles Xavier and Eric Lehnsherr aka Magneto as well as a cast of new X-Men including Sunspot, Blink and Bishop. Some other X-Men are also along for the ride such as Iceman, Storm and Kitty Pryde — her role most important because she’s able to transfer a person’s consciousness from the present into the past, which has helped the X-Men stay one step ahead of these Sentinels, who are capable of adapting and changing to stave off each mutant’s particular attack and then counter with deadly force of their own.

Xavier and Magneto have one last plan that will hopefully stop this future from ever happening and that’s to send one X-Man back in time to correct a horrific event, which sets in motion the chain of catastrophes which eventually lead to the world they are living in today. In the comics it’s Kitty Pryde who goes back in time, but for this movie, they send back Wolverine to do the dirty work, although there’s a good explanation given beyond the fact that they want Hugh Jackman to take his shirt off and do some heavy lifting.

Once Wolverine goes back in time, the majority of the film is spent with the cast from ‘X-Men: First Class’ from James McAvoy playing a disenchanted and addicted Charles Xavier to an imprisoned terrorist named Magneto played by Michael Fassbender. We also catch up with Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), who has struck out on her own and she’s a major player in everything that leads to the dystopian future we see in the opening moments.

The film does a great job of exploring the characters and the changes they’ve undergone since we last saw them in ‘X-Men: First Class’. We see how time and disappointment have taken their toll on Xavier, who seemed so hopeful in the first film while Magneto’s plots and thirst for vengeance have only grown stronger since last we saw him. There’s a brief introduction to Evan Peters, who plays Quicksilver, and I have to say my first thoughts about this character based solely on pictures and magazine covers with him dressed in character were on the verge of laughable. What actually resulted was one of the most fun and creative sequences we’ve ever witnessed in an X-Men film. While Quicksilver’s appearance is short and sweet, when he exited the movie my thought changed to ‘I hope we see him back in the next sequel’.

If there is a downside in the story and character development it comes from only one place and that’s the big bad for this movie played by Peter Dinklage as he portrays military scientist, Bolivar Trask. Now, Dinklage’s performance is fine (truth be told he’s one of the best actors going today), but the script didn’t give him much to work with outside of this inundated need to want to dissect and study mutants before destroying them. It’s an old trope used constantly in X-Men movies, and only one character (William Stryker, who also appears in this movie) actually got a backstory where you can find out why he hates mutants so much. This time around, Trask just seems like a curious scientist who wants to understand his enemy but also hopes to simultaneous use that information to stomp mutants into the ground.

Thankfully with Dinklage getting so little material to work with in this film, Michael Fassbender once against steals the show as Magneto, ticking all the boxes for a maniacal madman that you find yourself rooting for all movie long. His chemistry playing alongside McAvoy as Professor Xavier and Lawrence as Mystique continues to be the real story for this film, much like the work we saw started in ‘X-Men: First Class’.

The only other minor complaint I had (again, very minor) was the lack of action from the Sentinel robots in the 1970’s where we spend the majority of the film. Apparently in past versions of the X-Men movies, producers and studio heads thought bringing something like the Sentinels into a film would seem too cartoonish, so the idea of using them was shelved for the first few to make to screen. This time around, the Sentinels are front and center, but it would have been nice to see them in action a bit more in the past, although the future versions are all over the place and quite wickedly good.

One aspect that I absolutely adored about this movie is the fact that for most of the major beats, Wolverine becomes a secondary character. I know he’s the most popular X-Man in history. Trust me, the movies have beaten us over the head with that fact time after time after time (while also enduring two separate Wolverine stand alone films). But for this trip, Wolverine’s purpose is clear, but once he’s set on his mission, he quietly fades away into the shadows while Magneto, Xavier and Mystique shine. It’s a nice change of pace, and made me enjoy the movie a whole lot more.

When this movie was about 20 minutes from conclusion, I was starting to think this was going to be the ‘X-Men’ version of ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ where everything ends on a down note, the good guys don’t win, and it sets up the eventual next movie (which we already know is 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse). Without any spoilers, let’s just say I was pleasantly surprised with how the film actually ended, and there were more than a few Easter eggs dotted throughout the final few minutes that definitely made me smile.

All told, ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ is an excellent adaptation of a classic story while updating things for the 21st century with precise execution by cast, characters and script. This film deserves to sit right next to X2 and X-Men First Class as the best films for this series, and hopefully things continue to flow right into X-Men: Apocalypse, which will quickly go into production next year.

One final note — there is most certainly a post credits scene worth sticking around to see, and that will give you a clear nod for what comes next in the X-Men universe.