X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)



Directed by Bryan Singer
Produced by Lauren Shuler Donner, Bryan Singer, Simon Kinberg, Hutch Parker
Screenplay by Simon Kinberg
Story by Jane Goldman, Simon Kinberg, Matthew Vaughn
Budget: $200 million
Box Office: $747.9 million


What is, to date, the most financially successful X-Men film of all time (beating its closest runner-up by $200 million) is also, in my opinion, its strongest. Considering that Bryan Singer had no part in the writing of this film and that Simon Kinberg was the one who brought us Last Stand, I'm beginning to wonder if the success of these newer films is more attributable to Goldman and Vaughn, who came aboard for First Class and continue their work here.

To begin with, I have to mention that this film was not originally conceived of as a sequel to First Class. As of March 2011, Lauren Shuler Donner was still promoting the film as "X4" and promised it would setup an "X5," and that ending teaser for The Wolverine (2013) certainly seemed to be setting up the same kind of film. First Class did not do a stellar job at the Box Offices, so the change in direction for this film is a bit surprising. You'd expect the big wigs at Fox to be looking more at numbers than at what fandom was saying (Last Stand outperformed First Class by $100 million), but apparently someone (Singer?) was listening to the fandom in deciding to use this film as an opportunity to legitimize and perpetuate the First Class continuity.

The first time I saw this film, I viewed it as an annihilation of Last Stand continuity. Certainly, by the end, we see that the events of that film never took place, Beast working at Xavier's school, and Scott and Jean both very much alive, and yet this film is also careful to acknowledge Last Stand's continuity throughout, the romance between Bobby and Kitty having progressed since that film, and our witnessing their recognition that changing the past might very well change their history and even their existence. It's, perhaps, a more touching goodbye than that continuity deserved. Still, the ending does leave open the possibility that X-Men and X2 still occurred -- a fourth film could still be made with those actors in which Last Stand never happened.

This film also does a lot to acknowledge some of the continuity from the Wolverine solo films. It doesn't align well with X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) in that, in 1973, Wolverine should either have been stuck in military prison or already been on Stryker's Team X, but it does align with The Wolverine (2013) in briefly showing a flashback from that film when Xavier reads his mind and also in Wolverine referring to himself as "The Wolverine" to Quicksilver's little sister.

So this sequel to First class acknowledges Last Stand (a film that First Class contradicted in several places) and The Wolverine, and yet contradicts X-Men Origins: Wolverine (which The Wolverine acknowledges). Talk about a mess.

Still, at its core, this is clearly a film about the First Class characters and story, jettisoning the supporting cast from that film that weren't working out (they were all captured, experimented upon, and killed off camera) and giving young Xavier, Magneto, and Mystique room to play and come into their own.

McAvoy's work with Xavier continues to stun me here. Just when I thought he'd nailed the character in the first film, what he and the script do next, allowing the character to fall so thoroughly low before beginning to rise up again, continued to bring rich and appropriate characterization to a classic character who'd always been rather dry. McAvoy's scene with Stewart truly seals the deal -- we can truly begin to see here how the Professor X we've always known is a flawed human with a flawed history beneath the polished exterior.



In the previous film, I complained that Fassbender wasn't given enough room to play with the character and show us someone who would one day become McKellan's Magneto. This time around, he gets the necessary space, no longer simply killing and doing in each scene, but now given time to brood and grow a little more theatrical in those moments. I can finally begin to believe that this guy will eventually become that guy.

Mystique is the piece that still doesn't fit. Yes, she fights and thinks a lot more like the Mystique of the first three films, but the bridge isn't quite working. When/how did she become this perfect assassin who (somehow) doesn't kill? Did Magneto teach her this? Did she learn it after? Sure, we're shown in this film how willing Eric is to kill her (which makes his actions in Last Stand more believable), but it doesn't change the fact that neither he nor Xavier seemed to give her a second thought in the first two films, nor did she show any signs of awareness/sadness/hesitation when she snuck into the mansion and sabotaged Cerebro in the first film. This is one element that just isn't going to synch up between the two film continuities.

Going along these lines, it sort of feels like we skipped a film. Magneto launching the Brotherhood, but all of his teammates getting captured, Xavier's first actual class, Banshee's being captured, Mystique's training, and Eric's attempting to prevent Kennedy's assassination -- that sure sounds like a good movie.


As for this film, one thing that strikes me is just how many iconic scenes it had, from the two Xaviers meeting, to Quicksilver's big scene in the Pentagon kitchen, to Xavier contacting Raven through various passerbys in the airport, to news outlets capturing their first glimpses of mutants with Mystique, Magneto, and Beast fighting by that fountain. Just a stunning film at so very many points.


Still, there was a ton of nonsense in this film that its only fair to discuss:

- How is the government first becoming interested in mutants now, one advisor to the president outright stating that mutant involvement in Cuba was never proven, when Xavier outright outed himself to the CIA and allowed them to retain their memories (MacTaggart aside) by the close?

- The Terminator-style dystopian future is approximately 2023 (Wolverine indicated it's about fifty years after 1973). If the original X-Men franchise took place in "the not too distant future" and the characters in those films appeared to age and progress in real-time, that means a hell of a lot went down between the "not too distant future" following 2013 (when The Wolverine was released) and 2023, when the world looks pretty much destroyed by Sentinels. And, by the way, the idea that human leaders ordered the Sentinels to pretty much destroy the world in order to round up anyone with even the potential for mutant offspring just seems absurd to me. Hitler carried out his plans in order to make the world"better". But it looks like the world of 2023 is a graveyard. Couldn't they at least have said the Sentinels took over, no longer obeying human orders, and do a whole Mastermold thing?

- As with any time travel story, why not just go back further? Go back to 1960 and talk to Raven and Xavier then about preventing Raven's assassination of Trask.

- Yeah, I can't make any sense of Kitty's secondary power. And I really can't make any sense of how she is able to explain the limits and extents of it to Xavier and Magneto when, every time she's used it, time reset itself and (thus) she'd never used it. Theoretically, wouldn't she have to figure out how to do it all over again each time around?

- Why would Wolverine's healing factor extend to his mind? That's the entire rationale for why he goes back instead of Xavier.

- Why would Beast's cure for mutation cause Xavier's legs to work?

- Come to think of it, Beast found a cure for mutation in 1961 (First Class) and yet is excited and enticed by the Worthington Foundation's cure in 2006 (Last Stand)? I should have caught that one before.

- How does Quicksilver hear his Walkman while he's moving so fast that everything around him has slowed down to a crawl? Hey, wait -- Walkman's weren't around yet in 1973. If that's a radio, this makes even less sense.

- What happened to Stryker's accent?

- Is Raven a love interest to every damn character in this film?

- How exactly did Magneto reprogram those sentinels? Do his magnetic powers somehow afford him a superhuman understanding of complex (non-metal) machinery?

- Some of the CG in this film was abysmal, especially in the previously mentioned scene.

- Seriously, it's like there's one studio exec who, every X-Men film, has a stupid idea for a location for the big climax -- Statue of Liberty, Golden Gate Bridge, Bay of Pigs, and now a stadium around the White House -- it ALWAYS feels forced and often seems like a disruption to the momentum of the story.

- At the end, when Wolverine returns to the corrected 2023, why don't Scott and Jean look like they've aged at all?

- Why would Wolverine still retain memories of the old timeline in the corrected 2023?

- Wait. Does Wolverine have metal claws in the new 2023?

- While this isn't a problem inherent to this film, X-Men Apocalypse will show that Mystique's actions on camera here make her a hero and icon to the world, but let's be clear -- we saw her shouting at someone named "Charles" who wasn't there while pointing a gun (seemingly) at the President for a long time before dropping it. Yes, Xavier did his time-stopping thing, but unless he stopped time all over the world, those cameras were still relaying what was happening to the viewers at home, and The President saw it too.


And yet, in spite of ALL of this, and in spite of once again being bogged down by an enormous cast (which this film did a fine job balancing once they cut the Rogue scenes), my only real gripe with this film is the Sentinels. We've been waiting since X2 for the Sentinels to show up, and we're given two kinds here, but one type (from 1973) is awkward, ineffective, and weirdly resembles The Iron Giant, and the other type (from 2023) is so advanced that it doesn't even resemble a Sentinel. How hard would it have been to give us the giant robots we'd been waiting for? Heck, give us those guys in 1973 and give us Nimrod in 2023.

Really though, this film did so much right in terms of character development, writing, and stunning scene after stunning scene that only seemed to slow to a crawl once the obligatory climactic location-based struggle began. I can put aside the ridiculously long list of things that made no sense in this film and respect all it did right, telling a compelling story in two different timelines with strong action and a surprising amount of respect (for once) for the source material.



Continuity Issues not mentioned above:

- In Last Stand, we had a Bolivar Trask who was also black and in his forties or fifties in 2006. In this film, we have a Bolivar Trask who his white, extremely short, and in his thirties or forties in 1973.

- Wolverine notes "I've been in a lot of wars" and still gets freaked out while flying. These are nods to X-Men Origins: Wolverine, even though the film contradicts key elements of that film, most importantly Logan's involvement in Vietnam and Team X.

- A lot of attention is given to a mutant who has the ability to make people sick. We see him in the opening scene in 2023 and also as one of the soldiers rescued by Mystique in 1973. Was that supposed to be Pestilence? Maybe there was originally a plan to use him in the Apocalypse film.

- Quicksilver has two sisters in this film, a young one dressed like a princess, and an older one said to be upstairs. Presumably the one upstairs is Scarlet Witch, but then who is the girl watching TV?

- First (pretty obvious) clues that Magneto is Quicksilver's father. Timeline-wise, this would have occurred several years before Eric met Xavier for the first time.

- I know very little about the legal issues surrounding Marvel and Fox both releasing versions of Quicksilver in their films (though I don't think this one ever actually goes by that name), but I wonder if Singer inserted this Quicksilver (who is clearly ancillary to the main plot) into the film at the last moment just to one-up Marvel's depiction of the character in Avengers: Age of Ultron, released a year earlier, presumably while this film was in production. Clearly, this version wins.




Adaptation Issues:

- For the first time, an X-Men film does a pretty respectful job adapting source material. While I'm still disappointed with The Sentinels, the film captured the flavor of the original Days of Future Past quite well while also offering gentle nods to the other major X-Men dystopian future storylines, giving us Bishop (never liked him in the comics, but they made him work here), advanced sentinels that loosely resemble Nimrod in terms of abilities (obviously, they couldn't do Rachel Summers if Scott and Jean were dead), and setting up Apocalypse for the next film.




All in all, this is by no means a perfect film, but it does so much right and finally gives the X-Men franchise a clear path forward, lovingly acknowledging the old with a time travel reboot executed far more tastefully than Star Trek (2009)'s.



Grade: A

The mother specifically tells the girl to go bother her sister upstairs, to which she replies something like "but she messes with me."


Edit: The exact lines --

Mother: "Go upstairs and bug your sister"

Girl: "But she bugs me!"

I kind of wish Mystique weren't in any of these films, but I'll take the Jennifer Lawrence version over the Rebecca Romijn version anyday. The Romijn version had absolutely no personality; she was just eye candy that furthered the plot. At least the Jennifer Lawrence version has a character, backstory, and internal conflict, even if it still feels imposed upon a series of storylines that don't actually want her in them.

Deadpool, actually , followed by Apocalypse.

Yeah, I've really got to see this one again. I really enjoyed it the first time, but looking back, everything I remember about it seems dumb in hindsight.

As noted previously, The Last Stand continuity seems erased right from the start, as Xavier is alive and in his own body. My No-Prize explanation is that the film starts in "a" continuity, but not the one from The Last Stand.



Didn't Logan lose his adamantium at the end of The Wolverine? If not the bones, I recall that he clearly lost the claws and the healing factor. (Although the healing factor might be so efficient as to repair its own loss! It's that close to magic).



Fair point. Could a newly-elected president have decided that a part of the US population suddenly represented a grave internal threat? Nah... That could never happen...



It is absurd, but that's why I like it. That's exactly what heads of state do when they let ideology run over common sense. The first world war was an incredibly stupid and gory mess caused by a stupid, stupid dispute over jurisdiction and, essentially, who could piss the farthest. The collapse of Yugoslavia had no reason other than a few evil men deciding to fan hatred of one group against another and thus gain political leverage. The current world situation is deteriorating quickly because our heads of state are more interested about the next than the welfare of the planet and its population. I can fully believe that our governments could turn the Earth into a graveyard in less than a decade if they disposed of giant killer robots; all to get rid of "terrorists" or mutants.



Not as flagrant as in Star Trek: generations, but a genuine problem with this plot. I'd even go further back and prevent the whole mess by contacting a very young Xavier and telling him everything about the future. (There's a parallel in the X-Men comics from a few years ago: if Tempus was fine with going to the past to warn Xavier about the super-mutant who would one day destroy everything, why not also prevent the AvX war that caused so much misery?




Wolverine's healing factor is magic. It does whatever the plot demands of it. Heck, back in the '80s, it reconstituted Logan's entire body from a single drop of blood... adamantium and all!!!



It's a Synthetic Wolverine Healing Factor ^tm!!!! It can cure anything!

I had forgotten that Beast's cure was the same thing as what kept Xavier walking. I had assumed they were two independent discoveries, and that Xavier's losing his telepathy was due to some temporary reorganization of his nervous system making it possible to send nerve impulses through his damaged spine, but hindering whatever makes telepathy possible.



It could also be that Beast's cure only affects him and his furry appearance. (Or this film really is in a different reality as that from The Last Stand).



Woooooh! Good call on the walkman!!!

Perhaps Quicksilver has rigged his walkman to go through tapes much faster. That might be why he likes it so much: it's the only way he can listen to music that isn't s-l-o-w-e-d   d-o-w-n to his senses.

As for the anachronistic nature of the device... I have no clue! Perhaps Trask enterprises were also into Hi-Fi and not just giant killer robots?




Comic-book people don't age! (Or they partook of Hank's Synthetic Wolverine Healing Factor ^tm!) It just didn't work as well for Xavier, who shows his age. Stress?



That was the main problem I had with the film. If the whole timeline changes, you're supposed to change along with it. I can accept Logan's consciousness remaining in his old body, but I don't see why he should black out and regain his senses in 2023. What happened to him between the moment he was fished out of the Potomac and that final scene? For all these decades, was he unaware of what had transpired? Did he just suddenly wake up one morning thinking "Woah! I remember all of a sudden that I come from a dystopian future and caused a time-shift forty ago"? It really doesn't make much sense.



I guess Stryker put them back in in the interval (as per, retroactively, X-Men: Apocalypse); I just wonder why he had them at the start of the movie, having lost them in The Wolverine!



My favourite thing about the movie: that Peter Dinklage got the role of Bolivar Trask, whose height was not a factor. Dinklage has such presence on screen... With him, Fassbender, Stewart, McKellen, McAvoy and more besides, the film had a lot of excellent actors for what could be seen as "just" a comic-book movie.