Seven Movies in and still no Lockheed.

So, given my little rant earlier about why I was not looking forward to Days of Future Past, I figured I should give my thoughts on how it actually turned out.  I can say right now that I was pleasantly surprised to have been mostly wrong about this, but that doesn't mean the film doesn't have some pretty big issues, and to discuss them I am having to go into spoiler territory.  So the short version and overall is that the film is so much fun, it's able to overcome problems that would cripple most other films, it's one of the better X-Men films, but not quite up there with X2, First Class or The Wolverine.  For more details, read on, but be aware that spoilers a-plenty lie within...

It passed the first test; it was better than this!

Let's get most of the positives done; the film has plenty of good action beats, the overall story is pretty strong, it's great seeing so many familiar faces back, it works quite well as a follow-up to First Class, and there are some genuinely great performances.  I was surprised in quite a few regards, not least in how much I actually Quicksilver.  I'm still not convinced by the costume entirely, not least the seriously anachronistic headphones, but his action scene was a barrel of laughs, and Evan Peters was good in the role, staying just the right side of cocky without getting too annoying.  It's fun for those with a lot of love for the franchise, especially Bryan Singer's entries and First Class.

Next movie, can the theme be a full orchestra version of this?

However, in my early fears I was exactly on the money in quite a few other respects.  There are some aesthetic points, like the Sentinels, Cerebro and a few other things really clashing with the otherwise near perfect seventies aesthetic (it's almost as good as First Class' take on the sixties apart from these).  Of bigger concern though are the sheer number of story problems, that could have come from either the script from Simon Kinberg, or the editing.  I had concerns about the fact that Kitty Pride (Ellen Page) was no longer the one who went back, it was instead Wolverine.  They did assuage this point by having Kitty be the one to send him back; fine, but one slight question; when the heck did she get the ability to do that?  The script basically just throws up it's hands and goes "Yeah, she can just do that now, roll with it".  It also has some really awkward exposition scenes towards the start, spelling out the entire backstory in an infodump; it's one delivered in Patrick Stewart's tones, and he can make reading a recipe for stew a grand acting moment, but still.  Also, you know Quicksilver?  His actual involvement in the story is kind of awkward, only there for breaking out Magneto, and then he's vanished from the story.  What makes this worse is the fact that their mission is to stop an assassination; you know who'd be useful for that?  Someone who can outrun bullets!  This isn't all the plotholes and such, but you begin to get the idea.

Another point I was concerned about was the matter of the huge cast of characters.  As I said, it's great seeing so many faces back, but not all of them get that much to do.  Ian McKellan gets' far too little time on screen for starters, and on a similar note Michael Fassbender, while still great as Magneto, get's far less interesting stuff to do, and most of the decisions his character makes are actually kind of stupid.  Also, Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique,  although getting a lot of the focus on the film, never gets to do anything more than act moody and determined over the off-screen massacre of the non-returning characters from First Class (oh yeah, hope you didn't get too attached from Azaezel or Emma Frost from last time...).  Peter Dinklage is great as Trask, no surprise there, rockin' his seventies minature Ron Burgandy look, but there really needed to be much more of him; you get Tyrion Lannister in your movie, you get the most out of him!  And as for Halle Berry.... OK, the fact she gets virtually no screentime to act in, and barely any lines is a perfectly good thing there, no complaints.

It could have been worse...

Now it's not all bad in this regard.  I like the fact that Wolverine doesn't steal the film again; the focus is very much on the First Class cast, with him basically guiding them and the story into place.  This means things stay focused where they should, and it does mean Hugh Jackman can give a very different sort of performance as him than before (oh, and at in one scene have shout out's to both The Terminator and Fist of the North Star!).  Also, James McAvoy is still the focus, rightfully so, getting the best character arc in the film.  The scene with him and Patrick Stewart sharing the screen is fantastic, you buy them as two very different generations of the same character.  That being said, the screenplay was a little too blunt in a few metaphors in his story (if they're this obvious, do they even count as metaphors?), and his performance works on more than one occasion in spite of, not because of what he's saying.

The best thing about this film though is what it does to the franchise in terms of tone.  I was concerned about some of the focus on the SRZ BZNZ tone the early trailers and future stuff was giving off, but watching the film I was really taken back by how much fun and comic-booky the seventies scenes were.  Then I realised that it's exactly the point the film is making.  The X-Men movies originally came off the post-Matrix age of blockbusters, and that dark time in comics known as... the nineties (hell, look at the way everyone dresses in the first film and you can see that).  Since then though, everything's been changing, with a more colourful, revelling in the silver and bronze ages of comics tone of movie on the rise thanks to a little studio called Marvel.  That's what this film was all about, taking the franchise out of the darkness (very literally!), and into what a superhero movie should be more like.  It's a film that's learned one of the most important lessons from The Avengers (of course, given what else I've been saying, it didn't learn everything...).

That's why the end, that pretty much states that the events of The Last Stand were erased by the journey back, and also implies that X-Men Origins probably went with it, feels pretty appropriate in that regard.  On that note, let the date be set; we have reached a point in comic book movies for the first time one of these franchises hasn't rebooted, but done a Crisis Crossover retcon on itself!  It's amusing, although there is a touch of throwing the baby out with the bathwater in this regard, in that it looks like The Wolverine might have gone with the sequels that actually deserved it, and I liked that film!  It does seem to be that Bryan Singer basically went out of his way to say that his X-Men were "The Right Ones"; I agree with the middle finger to Brett Ratner, but let's not go too far!  Still, now that the slate's been wiped clean, it means that the franchise has a whole lot of new options of where to go from here.  Although, can we now do a story over than the usually prejudice against mutants stuff in the next few films?  If we can get some of the really weird X-Men stuff in later installments, like the Savage Land or the Shi'ar, that'd be really something.

So while some of my fears about this film were well founded, the final result is more than good enough to stand up in the current age of blockbusters.  Whatever the story issues here, at least it actually has a story unlike a certain other Marvel adaptation that was out this year.  This film get's my thumbs up, I recommend it, and not just because I want to see that very neat post-credits Easter Egg followed up.  Seriously, I'm only a casual comics fan, and I'm already geeking out about that!