X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

X-Men: Days of Future Past is a 2014 American superhero film based on the fictional X-Men characters that appear in Marvel Comics. Directed by Bryan Singer, it is the seventh installment of the X-Men film series and acts as a sequel to both 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand and 2011's X-Men: First Class. The story, inspired by the 1981 Uncanny X-Men storyline "Days of Future Past" by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, focuses on two time periods, with Wolverine traveling back in time to 1973 to save the future of mankind. The film features an ensemble cast, including Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Halle Berry, Anna Paquin, Ellen Page, Peter Dinklage, Ian McKellen, and Patrick Stewart. Simon Kinberg wrote the screenplay from a story conceived by himself, Matthew Vaughn, and Jane Goldman.

The film had a budget of US$200 million. Principal photography began in Montreal, Quebec in April 2013 and concluded in August the same year, with additional filming and pick-ups taking place in November 2013 and February 2014. The film premiered in New York City on May 10, 2014, and was theatrically released on May 23.

X-Men: Days of Future Past became the best-reviewed film in the X-Men film series. It was praised for its story, visual effects and action scenes, acting, and thematic elements. It is also the highest-grossing film in the series, having earned over $747 million worldwide, making it the 6th highest grossing film of 2014. The film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects, making it the first X-Men film to be nominated for an Academy Award.

A sequel, X-Men: Apocalypse, is scheduled for release on May 27, 2016, with Singer returning to direct and McAvoy, Fassbender, Lawrence and Hoult reprising their roles.

Storyline

Sentinels, robots that were created for the purpose of hunting down mutants were released in 1973. 50 years later the Sentinels would also hunt humans who aid mutants. Charles Xavier and his X-Men try their best to deal with the Sentinels but they are able to adapt and deal with all mutant abilities. Charles decides to go back in time and change things. He asks Kitty Pryde who can send a person's consciousness into the person's past to send him but she can only send someone back a few weeks because if she sends someone back further it could harm them. So Logan decides to go back himself because he might be able to withstand it. So Charles tells him that it's Mystique who's responsible because when she learned about the Sentinels she sought out Bolivar Trask the man who created them and killed him. She would be caught and studied and her ability to change was somehow added to the Sentinels which is why they can adapt. Logan must go to the younger Charles and ask him to help; problem is ..

Plot

In the future, robots known as Sentinels are exterminating mutants and their human allies. A band of mutants, including Kitty Pryde, Colossus, Iceman, Bishop, Warpath, Blink and Sunspot, evade the Sentinels due to Pryde's ability to send a person's consciousness to the past. Pryde's group convenes with Logan, Storm, Professor Charles Xavier, and Erik Lehnsherr at a monastery in China. Pryde sends Logan's consciousness 50 years back in time to 1973 to prevent Mystique from assassinating Dr. Bolivar Trask, creator of the Sentinels. Following the assassination, Mystique was captured, and her DNA was used by Trask's company to improve the Sentinels, whose ability to adapt to any mutant power makes them almost invincible. Xavier and Lehnsherr advise Logan to find both of their younger selves for help.

At the X-Mansion in 1973, Logan encounters Xavier and Hank McCoy. Xavier's Institute for Gifted Youngsters has closed after most of the teachers and students were drafted to the Vietnam War. Xavier, a broken man, has been overusing a serum that allows him to walk, but suppresses his telepathy. Logan explains his mission and persuades Xavier to help free Lehnsherr from a prison cell beneath The Pentagon, where he is being held for allegedly assassinating President John F. Kennedy. They rescue Lehnsherr with the help of Peter Maximoff, a mutant with super speed.

In Washington D.C., Trask unsuccessfully tries to sway Congress to gain support for his Sentinel program. Meanwhile, in Saigon, Mystique prevents William Stryker from appropriating a group of mutant G.I.s for Trask's research. Mystique investigates Trask's office and discovers he has been capturing mutants to use for his experiments. Xavier, Lehnsherr, McCoy, and Logan fly to Paris to intercept Mystique, who is impersonating a North Vietnamese general to infiltrate the Paris Peace Accords. There, Trask attempts to sell his Sentinel technology to Communist nations. Xavier's group arrives as Mystique is about to kill Trask. Lehnsherr tries to kill Mystique to ensure her DNA cannot be used for the Sentinels, but she jumps from a window. The fight spills onto the street in view of the public, allowing Lehnsherr and Mystique to escape.

Trask is saved, but the world is horrified by the existence of mutants. President Richard Nixon approves Trask's Sentinel program and arranges an unveiling ceremony. Trask's scientists recover Mystique's blood from the street. Meanwhile, Lehnsherr—who has recovered his telepathy-blocking helmet—intercepts the prototype Sentinels in transit and laces their polymer-based frames with steel, allowing him to control them. At the mansion, Xavier stops taking his serum and slowly regains his telepathic powers, while losing the ability to walk. Through Logan, Xavier speaks to his future self and is inspired to work for peace between humans and mutants once again. He uses Cerebro to track Mystique, who is heading to Washington D.C.

As Xavier, Logan, and McCoy search for Mystique, Nixon unveils the Sentinel prototypes at the White House. Lehnsherr commandeers the Sentinels and attacks the crowd, then sets the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium around the White House as a barricade. Nixon and Trask, accompanied by the Cabinet, Secret Service officers, and Mystique (disguised as a Secret Service member), are taken to a safe room. Logan and McCoy try to stop Lehnsherr, but he pits a Sentinel against them and then throws Logan into the Potomac River. In the future, the X-Men make their final stand as a large army of Sentinels attack the monastery. In 1973, Lehnsherr pulls the safe room from the White House and prepares to kill Nixon and his Cabinet. Mystique, who is disguised as Nixon, incapacitates Lehnsherr with a plastic gun. Xavier persuades Mystique to spare Trask and allows her and Lehnsherr to flee. Mystique's actions are seen as a mutant saving the President, leading to the cancellation of the Sentinel program. Trask is arrested for trying to sell American military secrets.

Logan wakes up in the future to find Iceman, Rogue, Colossus, Pryde, McCoy, Storm, Jean Grey, Scott Summers, and Xavier are all alive. In 1973, Mystique, impersonating Stryker, takes custody of Logan.

In a post-credits scene, a crowd chants to En Sabah Nur, who is using telekinesis to build pyramids as four horsemen watch from nearby.

Cast

• Hugh Jackman as Logan / Wolverine
• A mutant with accelerated healing, enhanced animal-like senses, adamantium-laced skeleton and retractable bone and adamantium claws.
• James McAvoy and Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier / Professor X
• The world's most powerful telepath. Singer described the younger Xavier as "a very different beast from First Class‍ '​s feckless playboy. He's a wounded animal, bearded, long-haired, filled with rage at the way the world has treated him." Kinberg said the film was intended to be the story of the younger Xavier beginning to "become the Professor Xavier we know" as Wolverine mentored him.
• Michael Fassbender and Ian McKellen as Erik Lehnsherr / Magneto
• A powerful mutant who can manipulate magnetic fields.
• Jennifer Lawrence as Raven Darkhölme / Mystique
• A mutant who can shape-shift. Singer said Mystique "is less innocent, evolved, getting closer to where Mystique was in X-Men 2". Lawrence had suffered skin irritations from the full body make-up used in First Class, and the process was changed so from the neck down it would be a bodysuit. As a result, the make-up process was reduced from eight hours to three. The make-up team at Legacy Effects sculpted Mystique's scales digitally, making them shorter in size and placed in a way that they would accentuate Lawrence's face.
• Halle Berry as Ororo Munroe / Storm
• A mutant who can control the weather and one of the most battle-tested and powerful X-Men. Asked if her pregnancy affected her role, Berry replied, "I wasn't in as much as I was meant to be. My ever-growing belly was posing a constant challenge! What I could do was getting more limited so the role that I play is so different from what it could have been, due to my surprise pregnancy." According to Kinberg, Berry had another scene in the film that was cut because of Berry's limited schedule.
• Nicholas Hoult and Kelsey Grammer as Hank McCoy / Beast
• A mutant with super-strength, agility, reflexes and enhanced speed. Hoult plays the character in scenes set in 1973 while Grammer makes a cameo appearance as Beast in the future setting. The cameo was added because the writers felt Hoult's Beast was "such a sweet, young character" that audiences would want to learn he survived. Once Grammer learned of this opportunity to return as Beast, a character he had enjoyed playing in The Last Stand, he called Singer asking to get involved, and was flown from New York in secret to avoid drawing attention.
• Anna Paquin as Marie / Rogue
• A mutant who can absorb the life force and mutant abilities of anyone she touches. Kinberg wrote a shorter part for Paquin than initially planned because she did not have much time to be on-set. During post-production, Paquin's role was reduced to a cameo after most of her scenes were cut. According to Kinberg, Rogue was to be rescued by the future Magneto and Xavier to provide the elder characters a mission, "something like Unforgiven". Eventually the producers felt it was a subplot that did "not service the main story", and reshot scenes to replace them. However, she was still featured in the film's various promotional materials. Paquin later stated that she still had fun making the film and did not mind that the majority of her scenes had been cut from it.
• Ellen Page as Kitty Pryde / Shadowcat
• A mutant who can pass through solid objects. As the youngest of the X-Men, she plays an important role in their fight for survival. Singer described Pryde as the prime facilitator and that Pryde's phasing ability enables time-travel to happen. Kinberg, when asked why Pryde is not the time-traveler in the film adaptation of the comic-book story, said, "[If] we tried to follow the original and use Kitty, we had a problem because Ellen is 25 years old and she'd be -20 in the First Class era."
• Peter Dinklage as Bolivar Trask
• A military scientist and the head of Trask Industries who creates a range of robots called Sentinels, designed to find and destroy mutants. Dinklage said Trask "sees what he's doing as a good thing—[his ambition is] definitely blind and he's quite arrogant. He has striven all his life for a certain respect and attention." He also said Trask is opposed by Richard Nixon. Singer said he is a fan of Dinklage and of the television program Game of Thrones, which inspired him to cast Dinklage.
• Shawn Ashmore as Bobby Drake / Iceman
• A mutant who can create and manipulate ice. Ashmore said about his role, "In the first X-Men I had to make a rose for Rogue but that was the extent of the character, so it's cool to see over these four movies going from that to X2—where you sort of see him do an ice wall—and in X3 he finally gets to battle, and in Days of Future Past we're soldiers."
• Omar Sy as Bishop
• A mutant who can absorb energy and redirect it in kinetic blasts. Singer said Bishop, along with Warpath, Sunspot and Blink, are not fresh recruits. He said, "they're more refugees that are living day to day in this hideously ruined world. They don't have much hope in the future. They're on the run and they join forces with the remaining X-Men to try to do this one last attempt at fixing the world."
• Evan Peters as Peter Maximoff / Quicksilver
• A mutant who can move, speak and think at supersonic speeds. Peters described Quicksilver as "very fast, he talks quick, he moves quick. Everything else is very slow compared to him, it's like he's always at the ATM waiting for the bastard in front of him to finish."
• Josh Helman as Major William Stryker
• A military officer who hates mutants. Helman was originally chosen to play a younger version of Juggernaut before that character was removed from the script. Brian Cox, who portrayed Stryker in X2, appears in archive footage.
• Daniel Cudmore as Peter Rasputin / Colossus
• A mutant who can transform his body into organic steel, which grants him superhuman strength, stamina, and durability. Cudmore was asked whether he trained for his role, he replied, "I didn't have a ton of time to get film ready for this. A trainer friend of mine from Vancouver put together a quick little workout program for me. Since the role was for Colossus, I was aiming to bulk up a bit and get stronger. I ended up eating a lot more. Because of how much I was eating, I had to eat every 2-3 hours to keep my calories up."
• Fan Bingbing as Blink
• A mutant who can create portals to teleport. Fan said the film was the first of a five X-Men movie contract she signed with 20th Century Fox.
• Adan Canto as Sunspot
• A mutant with an ability to project solar energy, create flames and solar-powered flight. To prepare for the role, Canto researched Sunspot because when he was cast, he did not know the level of involvement his character has in the film.
• Booboo Stewart as Warpath
• A mutant and expert tracker with super agility, reflexes, acute senses and enhanced strength. In preparation for the role, Stewart gained 50 pounds and grew his hair much longer than its usual length.

Additionally, Famke Janssen and James Marsden reprise their roles as Jean Grey and Scott Summers / Cyclops respectively in cameo appearances. Lucas Till reprises his role as Alex Summers / Havok. Evan Jonigkeit portrays Toad. X-Men comic-book writers Len Wein and Chris Claremont appear as United States congressmen. Michael Lerner plays Senator Brickman. Gregg Lowe plays Ink. Mark Camacho portrays U.S. President Richard Nixon. Singer cameos as a man with a small movie camera as Magneto walks away after Mystique's escape in Paris. In a post-credits scene, Brendan Pedder portrays En Sabah Nur.

User Review

I must admit, the trailers didn't have me convinced - and after the sour taste 'Jack the Giant Slayer' left in my mouth, I was sceptic. I really dug Matthew Vaughn's approach with 'First Class' (who had a tough task rebooting the franchise after the lacklustre 'Last Stand' and the generic, dull 'X-Men Origins: Wolverine') and I wouldn't have minded him returning at all. But as it turns out, Bryan Singer (yes, I dare speak his name) still has a few tricks up his sleeve. For its sheer scale and epic storytelling alone, 'Days of Future Past' is fantastic.

It's a shame there's so much controversy surrounding this film, but I guess whoever chooses to deprive himself willingly of such a pleasure must be fully aware that he does so at his own expense. Because this is the kind of film that made me fall in love with movies in the first place.

Yet (despite my 10-star review), it's not perfect. And it's not 'The Usual Suspects' with mutants - how could it be; this is simply not that kind of film. But I have to say that pretty much my only gripe with this movie is that it has too many characters and that some of them don't get enough screen time (or actually, there's not too many characters: there's just too many great actors playing those characters – but then again, that's half of the fun). Of all the X-men films, this has the most complex plot – and also the most interesting. Different time-lines are tricky to do and can be rather hard to follow, but thanks to a (very!) clever script with a great part for Logan, we never get lost. And that's the best news: sorely missed in the last instalment (except for a hilarious cameo), the franchise has Hugh Jackman back. And of him at least we do get to see a lot, since he really leads us through this film (giving his best Wolverine performance yet along the way). If Logan can be called the heart of the X-men, then Charles Xavier must be the mind while Magneto and Mystique provide the - slightly twisted - soul, and seeing them all together again brought a broad, stupid grin to my face (which only got broader whenever Quicksilver appeared on screen - for reasons you will have to find out for yourselves).

What really sets the X-men films apart from the ever more derivative comic-book adaptations – at least as far as I'm concerned – is that I always genuinely cared for the characters, and 'Days of Future Past' is no exception. I love loud, spectacular action movies as much as the next guy, but if I don't get to care for the protagonists – what's the point? The reason I gave this 10 stars, and what is so exceptional these days, is that what we get here is a complex, smart Fantasy/Sci-Fi thrill-ride that respects its origins as much as it embraces the future, while never - ever - forgetting that its first job is to entertain the audience. For finding that perfect, rare balance between character-driven human drama and no-holds-barred popcorn action spectacle, 'Days of Future Past' deserves my 10-star rating (which is a first for me: I've never given 10-stars to a comic-book movie).