The First Marvel Movie that is actually a Movie that's not by Marvel
From that title one should already know my opinion of Disney Marvel film versus Fox Marvel/Sony Marvel films. However while Sony seems unsure about how to handle their one remaining Marvel character (Spider-Man) Fox on the other hand knows full well how to use their properties.
Make a good movie first! Not try to compete with the Parent Company by trying to shove in an entire universe to expand on later into one movie. Make a good movie! That is what Bryan Singer does with X-Men Days of Future Past. He makes a great movie. Not an entertaining movie. A GOOD MOVIE!
The Plot
If you are an X-Men fan then the plot of this film should be no surprise to anyone. But for those who are not aware that this is one of the most famous story lines in comic book history then here's the plot:
In a dark grim future where humanity has control of these monstrous gigantic robots called Sentinels that hunt mutants as well as humans who will later produce mutants, one can expect the X-Men are not doing so good. Enter the surviving members of the X-Men team: Prof. X (Patrick Stewart), Storm (Halle Berry), and Magneto (Ian McKellan) who join forces with refugee mutants led by Bishop (Omar Sy). Among the refugee mutants are former X-Men Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) who has developed the ability to send a person's mind back in time to their younger bodies. The plan: send Prof. X's mind to his younger self (James McAvoy) in order to stop Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) from assassinating the creator of the Sentinels, Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), and becoming the seductive villainess known as Mystique. However the strain of sending an elderly Prof. X's mind several years into the past would prove too dangerous, so Wolverine volunteers to go through with the mission. This mission will not only require the help of a young Prof. X but the "help" of a young Magneto (Michael Fassbender) as well.
Analysis
The film combines the casts of two different time periods of the same franchise. For the future scenes: the original X-Men franchise actors, and for the past: the new younger actors from the semi-reboot X-Men First Class. The story utilizes the time travel plot in order to bring these two massive casts together into one really really large ensemble. Now, I'm going to immediately compare it to three films. Those films are Spider-Man 3, The Avengers, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
Why those three specifically? The Avengers is often lauded as being the greatest superhero movie to bring together all theses individual characters into one film. An ensemble. Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 are often criticized for having TOO MANY villains in their movies which becomes the widely accepted notion as to why they failed.
The Avengers comparison? This is pretty much "The Avengers Event" for the Fox created X-Men universe in that it brings together the old cast and the new cast. It is a large ensemble that spans through time connected by a singular character, Wolverine. One can argue that the strength of The Avengers is the ability to juggle six characters (Iron Man, Thor, Capt. America, Hulk, Black Widow, and Hawkeye) in leading roles. While Hawkeye was merely shafted to silent villain for most of the film, it does a pretty good job in balancing out the character screen time. This is where Days of Future Past has a slight weakness. There are SO MANY characters crammed into this one film. The thing that might upset comic book fans is that most of the new characters and even some of the old ones are merely just small cameos. They don't have much depth other than they're present. Essentially the focus of Days of Future Past is mostly on Young Prof. X, Young Beast, and "Young" Wolverine with supporting roles from Magneto and Mystique. That is a total of... FIVE characters to focus on as opposed to the SIX in Avengers.
Also while there are the Six Avengers there are the four supporting roles including the villain. In Days of Future Past there are.... 12 supporting roles. And that is also including the two primary villains: Trask and Stryker. Though the total should really be THREE villains as Young Magneto is clearly still an antagonist unlike his redeemed Older self in the future.
That is where the Spider-Man comparison comes in. TOO MANY VILLAINS. That is the argument for many people as to why those films failed. Spider-Man 3 had Sandman, Green Goblin 2, and Venom. Amazing Spider-Man 2 had Rhino, Electro, and Green Goblin. As I stated before, Days of Future Past has three villains. The same number as the other Spider-Man films. Yet what sets them apart, is that they are utilized perfectly. In Days of Future Past the villains are given the amount of time they need to clearly become a threat as well as get their motivations clear. In both Spider-Man sequels the villains are merely put there for the sake of being put there either to appease fans (Venom) or for plot device (Green Goblin). The fact that writer Simon Kinberg (with some help from First Class writers Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman) was capable of handling these three villains in such a natural way shows that the excuse of "TOO MANY VILLAINS" is not a genuine excuse anymore.
In fact, the same argument can't be said about how the HUGE ensemble was handled. While I pointed out there are five main characters and 12 supporting, it could be easy to say The Avengers have the upper hand of which one used ALL of their characters for the best. But the fact that Days of Future Past has 27 characters given enough to make them important to the story while funneling down the focus to the primary five shows just how incredible this is.
The Avengers may have screen time for all eight of its characters, but Days outnumbers it with enough for all of them. In fact, the Sentinels in Days of Future Past are far more threatening than the easily killable Chitauri in The Avengers.
Review
This is the best storytelling seen in any superhero movie. This is the first film that I believe rivals The Dark Knight in terms of being a genuine film. Marvel has made ENTERTAINING movies but never an actual MOVIE. Iron Man and Captain America: The Winter Soldier could fall into that category, but they are nothing at the level of The Dark Knight or Days of Future Past.
First and foremost, this is a Science Fiction film that just happens to have comic book characters in it. And good sci-fi is hard to come by these days. Especially good time travel movies. And this one excels at being both. What makes the X-Men film franchise so great is that they are first and foremost sci-fi dramas first with the spectacle coming second. Having been created in a time before the Marvel Film domination and the death of the Burton/Schumacher Batman franchise, it was touted as being real and serious. What gives this film an edge over the Marvel films of the current age is that it doesn't lose sight of its realistic yet fantastical roots. And by real I mean the drama.
The cast is perfect. James McAvoy delivers a powerful performance as a broken young Prof. X who has to learn to accept that he will become the great leader Patrick Stewart portrays. Michael Fassbender shows us a Magneto in his prime that compliments Ian McKellan's more redeemed older self. Hugh Jackman is brilliant as ever as Wolverine. Jennifer Lawrence was not my favorite part of X-Men First Class mainly because Rebecca Romijn as Mystique was just so vicious, but in this film Lawrence shows the turning point in which she is starting to turn into the vicious and sexy Mystique from before. While I could go on and name the rest of the cast as great in their performances, the real stealer of the show is Evan Peters as Peter Maximoff aka Quicksilver. His scenes will have one hoping and begging that he comes back in the sequel.
While the continuity of the film series may not exactly make sense, this film's mission of not only being a good movie but to fix all those problems was accomplished beautifully. This is truly a great film that showcases the return of Bryan Singer as well as a proper send off to the original cast members. Because as sources have stated, from this point onwards it is up to the First Class cast to carry the franchise now...and maybe Wolverine.
Final Thoughts
A well layered and complex movie that does not lose sight of itself in the complications of Time Travel. However I'm not sure how an audience member would feel about the ending of this film if one has not seen the previous installments. Regardless, they should walk away believing that it was a good film. But for those of us who love X-Men movies, this is an E-X-CELLENT film!
SCORE: 9.5/10 - The Best Marvel Film is made by a Non-Marvel Studio
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