X-Men: Days of Future Past sets up to continue series

The X-men are back! However, this time, it’s not just the original movie cast or the new younger cast, but all the characters, spanning  several decades and geographical locations. Everyone, but a personified proverbial kitchen sink.

Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is the link between the two groups, mentally traveling back in time to 1973 with the powers of Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) to warn and help the younger versions of the X-men stop the development of the modern Sentinel robots.

These automatons were ironically originally created to hunt and eliminate mutants, who were perceived to be a threat to humans, but have now destroyed the very thing they were trying to protect.

Old foes Magneto  (Michael Fassbender, Ian Mckellen) and Professor X (James McAvoy, Patrick Stewart) must one again overcome their different views on homo superiors to change prevent governmental acceptance and development of the Sentinels after the rouge Mystic (Jennifer Lawrence) attempts to assassinate their creator Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage).

Questionable logic behind the consciousness traveling aside, the movie finds strength in its well-rounded characters, allowing the audience a greater understanding of the decisions of certain characters and generates sympathy for others. Trask explains his empathy towards to the mutants, and Mystique has a minor emotional break down which demonstrates that she has not yet transformed into the stone cold killing machine we know later in the series timeline. Perhaps the greatest of these characters, the perfect comic relief amongst the drama, is the newly introduced Quicksilver (Evan Peters), who managed to steal every scene he is in with sharp jabbing lines and visual humor. His stereotypical slow motion sequence had the audience rolling.

Unfortunately, with a cast so large, several of the characters have limited screen time, which left many of the secondary characters, redundant, under developed or replaceable, including the primary secondary character, Beast (Nicholas Hoult).

After being one of the delights of the first film of the new X-men series, Hoult’s character, with the except of a few key scenes, seems to have been reduced to the sidekick trope, only there to help out the real heroes by flying them around or give the back story to the situation such as explaining why young Charles had gone into exile.

Perhaps, the role was always intended to be this way, or perhaps I’m just in love with Nick Hoult and want more of him. I also felt rather disconnected from several of the new characters in the future time period as the audience is never properly introduced to them.

Understandably, the filmmakers want to explore their storylines in future movies; however, it’s hard to feel upset when something happens to one of these soldier X-men

Although I understand the attempt to unify the scenes of the older cast and younger cast by bringing James McAvoy and Patrick Stewart nose to nose for a pep talk, the scene felt very odd to me, both in idea and how it was acted out, most likely due to the logic about how Charles Xavier’s mind was able to travel.

Despite the dubious logical flaws, I really appreciated the incorporation of characters impacting history a la Forrest Gump, such as Magneto and the magic bullet of JFK’s murder.  There was something incredibly chilling about the dystopian opening sequence of mutants and their allies being rounded up into cages, paralleling the opening sequence of the first X-men movie, where Erik Lensherr and his family was being sorted during the Holocaust.Once again, his people are being persecuted. Overall, X-Men: Days of Future Past is a fun, fast-paced movie with nary a dull moment. It’s fully developed characters permits for a wider audience beyond action film buffs.

It is a wonderful follow up movie to X-Men: First Class, is a must see for anyone who loves this group of super heroes, whether they are die hard comic book fans or casual moviegoers.

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