Rating of
3.5/4
It seems there is a comic book God.
memento_mori - wrote on 05/22/14
As I wearily stumbled out of the cinema's auditorium, I was replaying the film's events in my head, asking myself questions of what I had taken in, and what I thought of it. I struggled to come up with things I did not like about it.
Days of Future Past is a film I have been anticipating for years, and to see it done right and even better than I had imagined it to be is something extraordinary.
It's not what you think it is going to be, but that's okay, because it surpasses expectations and does more than what you thought was possible: fixing the events of The Last Stand.
The two things I am still stand in absolute awe of are the screenplay and the direction. I don't know how Simon Kinberg could have pulled a job like this one off, but he had Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman to his aid, so that serves as a huge plus.
Bryan Singer's direction (although a little too flashy and color-saturated for my taste) is incredible, tying together the characters and story superbly.
I can just imagine them sitting down together before making this movie and saying: Look guys, we have one shot, let's cleanse what Brett Ratner sullied. And so they did. Because First Class was just the tip of the iceberg.
Wolverine is an undeniably iconic character by now. And I can't see him being played by anyone other than the brilliant Hugh Jackman. His character got enough screen time in the last two spin-off movies, so I'm happy more attention was being given to the slowly regenerating relationship between Xavier and Magneto, lavishing great line delivery from two excellent actors.
Much focus was placed on Mystique this time around, placing a lot of matters in her power while also linking her into the relationship of the two leads. Pretty much everything creates a central conflict which forces you to pay attention, also due to the brilliant time-travel element.
As for the disadvantages of the film, like I said, they're relatively hard to find.
The film feels a bit odd at times, especially in the beginning, jumping from line to line and painting a somewhat confusing and inconsistent picture of everything that has happened. But again, I can understand why not much emphasis was placed on introduction, since Singer needed to get the ball rolling to fit everything into an already very long runtime.
I also would have liked to have seen more from the character of Bolivar Trask, because they practically gave Peter Dinklage nothing to do.
Plus, something I hadn't noticed was the surplus of characters in the future, and the fact that they never did anything with them. Blink, Kitty Pryde and Bishop - among others - are brought out for extended screen time with no clear outcome. They just pop up to be there and that's that.
I believe the true purpose of this film was for Bryan Singer to officially fix what Brett Ratner ruined. And this product succeeds admirably in not only that category.
Very few outlying problems or plot-holes are to be found, it is coated with excellent acting, direction, story and entertainment and makes for the most satisfying blockbuster of the year so far.
Any true X-Men fan will love it.
