Nicholas "Nick" McConnaughay
It’s been going strong for almost a decade and a half.
… Without further introduction …. Here are my thoughts on the seventh installment in the X-Men franchise, X-Men: Days of Future Past.
Thankfully, First Class was able to shock the series back to life. The movie took things that made the first and second movie special and expanded on them, emphasized certain aspects and added more depth for Magneto and Xavier, which isn’t an easy task considering that those characters were already, in my opinion, the best part of the franchise. While it doesn’t hold the same place that X2 had in my heart, the movie had my attention, and had the attention of a lot of others, as a very good film. Then, The Wolverine came and went; an entertaining movie that didn’t really leave much of an impression on me.
Honestly, The Wolverine only held me over before this movie. This movie had my attention, from the beginning, from the trailers, and basically, just from everything, I knew I was in for something special.
X-Men: Days of Future Past is a 2014 superhero film, inspired heavily by the 1981 Uncanny X-Men storyline by Chris Claremont and John Byrne. The movie is directed by Bryan Singer, as said, it is the seventh film in the franchise, and the movie acts as a sequel to X-Men: The Last Stand, as well as X-Men: First Class.
The film blends the cast established from both, with Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbend, Jennifer Lawrence, Ellen Page, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan, and well, a lot of people.
In the film, the X-Men send Wolverine to the past in an effort to change history and keep an event from happening that leads to the doom for both humans and mutants. Wolverine has to work toward making Magneto and Xavier function as a cohesive unit while at the same time facing other obstacles like Mystique and the sentinels which certainly put a damper on things.
The movie had one of the most aggressive marketing efforts in recent memory, that, along with the ensemble cast and the spectacles driving this movie meant that it was easily the biggest X-Men movie ever, and … in my opinion, it was also the best.
It is films like Days of Future Past that truly shows what superhero movies are meant to be. It isn’t as simple as a mutant going back in time to stop a couple of robots, but something with a lot more depth than that. The X-Men movies have always had subtexts about equality, and inspiration taken from actual events in history, but it has never been stronger in this film.
The movie feels more like a superhero universe than anything done before it, with actors like Evan Peters making it seem like there are characters hidden that are still waiting to be seen. In my opinion, Hugh Jackman also makes the best performance yet in his role, but they weren’t the driving factor for why I enjoyed this movie as much as I did. James McAvoy’s performance as Charles Xavier has to be the second best performance that I have ever seen in a superhero movie.
His character, depressed and heartbroken, felt real, and like he was suffering. I loved everything about him, and I really just can’t say enough about how believable I thought he was in his performance. The special-effects, scenery, and cinematography of the movie were also well-done, they took a backseat to the story which is refreshing, but they were also spectacular in their own right.
In conclusion, I can’t think of enough good things to say about this movie. I thought there were strong performances all-around and really well put together story. X-Men is stronger than ever, and I really look forward to seeing what else they come up with.
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