With Bryan Singer returning to the X-Men series and the film tapping into one of the comic books’ most well-regarded storylines (written and drawn by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, the guys who made the X-Men cool), X-Men: Days of Future Past represents the franchise’s best opportunity for something special in a while.
The resulting work does a pretty nifty job of tidying up the series’ convoluted and contradictory chronology, and features a couple of pretty cool set-pieces, but it’s not the triumph it was surely designed to be.
Despite the ambition of the time travel story, the narrative feels narrow. The epicness is stated rather that shown, and the world created consequently feels a bit small. The films’ treatment of the Mystique character has always veered away from the source material, but it’s hard to see her centrality here as anything more than a reflection of Jennifer Lawrence’s rising star.
Evan Peters makes am impression as Quicksilver, but he checks out of the movie early on, suggesting that he was perhaps a last-minute addition. The awe-inspiring set-piece focused on his super-speed abilities is the best thing in the movie, and nothing that happens afterwards lives up to it.
X-Men: Days of Future Past veers between interesting and insipid for much of its running time. Singer’s affection for the characters is clear, but the script is mostly sombre platitudes, and lacks the critical playfulness that Joss Whedon brought to The Avengers.
Could’ve been much worse though.
‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ Movie Times (also in 3D)
