Big Screen: X-Men: Days Of Future Past

June 3rd 2014

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I have thought a lot about how to contextualise the new seventh X Men movie ‘Days Of Future Past’ for you and this is what I have come up with:

It is both a sequel and a prequel to the original and its two sequels. But it’s also a sequel to the existing prequel and a prequel to the spin off and its sequel. And also their sequel as well.

Sort of.

… Are you following me?

What this means you need to be pretty familiar with X Men to even begin to understand what the hell is going on here. This is some complicated shit.

All the old and new cast are included, including a bunch of rubbish mutants you forgot about about – like teleport lady, weird frog man and frozen guy. I think frog guy’s superpower is that he has goggles stuck to his face. Maybe he is a swimmer. It’s not clear.

See, in the future, morphing robots have wiped out all the mutants and most of the humans, so Professor X and Magneto send the consciousness of Wolverine back in time so he can STOP Mystique from killing the guy who invented the robots… because paradoxically this will actually make everything worse. I think.

Again, are you following me? This is a complicated review…

Also, Magneto killed JFK so now he is locked underneath the Pentagon, so they have to break him out, although it’s not clear why because he is not very helpful. In fact, he is almost the opposite of helpful. It’s a good thing though, because this is the best scene of the movie. Michael Fassbender is great as the young Magneto. It is tempting to get excited about this cast, but don’t: it’s mostly just glorified cameos. Several Oscar winners and nominees are in the movie just to dress up like an idiot, swing about on some wires and wave their arms for a few minutes.

It’s the cinematic equivalent of spending a fortune on lobster then mincing it, burning it and eating it with that cheese that comes in a can.

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For example, Oscar Winner Anna Paquin is in the movie for literally two seconds. Richard Nixon gets more screen time.

To be honest, I found this generally underwhelming. These tricky time-travel plots tend to irritate me and this was no exception. To its credit, Days Of Future Past does establish rules and follow them, but it still makes the whole thing sort of weightless and inconsequential. I’m no expert on these movies, but even I could see little inconsistencies and paradoxes. It feels longer than it is, probably due to the enormous cast led by poor old Hugh Jackman who gets almost no action sequences and has to stand around explaining the plot to everyone. Besides can we all agree we are a bit sick of Wolverine.

I loved the last film so its great to see Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence and James MacAvoy back and slumming it in these roles, but the movie never really rises above competent.

If you feel like some junk food, there are better varieties in cinemas at the moment.

 

 

 

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