Film Review | X-Men: Days of Future Past

How many mutants does it take to change a light bulb? If the mutants in question are Marvel Comics’s own X-Men – be they in the original print incarnation or in their equally lucrative cinematic adaptations – you can bet anything you own and will own that the answer to that question would be: “A lot”.

Whether the answer should be “too many” is debatable – though, I would argue, not entirely unreasonable – but the fact remains that Marvel appears insistent on turning any outing featuring their superpowered, socially-embattled family of genetically advanced heroes into a massive block party.

You can see the cast of the X-Men films rapidly ballooning with each consecutive instalment of this, sometimes rocky, series. Its auspicious beginnings, with the straightforwardly titled, Bryan Singer-directed X-Men (2000) presented a comparatively trim team-up of superbeings (while also arguably creating a point-of-no-return precedent for polished superhero films).

But come Brett Ratner-directed and much-maligned threequel X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), it clearly became a case of “too many characters spoil the broth” – a formula replicated to disastrous results with the puerile X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), in which everyone’s favourite self-healing, be-clawed tough guy was – ironically (to be democratic), and stupidly (to be honest) – eclipsed by a torrent of supporting characters in his own film.

And while Bryan Singer returning to the X-fold he helped midwife into the existence on the silver screen – he’s also responsible for what remains the superlative film in the series X2: X-Men United (2003) – he faces a similar predicament with X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Culled from one of the most iconic storylines in the X-Men comics (penned by Chris Claremont and illustrated by John Byrne, ‘Days of Future Past’ ran over two issues of The Uncanny X-Men in 1981) and arriving to our silver screens thanks to a slightly confusing franchise re-jig, ‘Days’ sacrifices character and charm for a briskly-moving, but ultimately hollow, plot engine.

So in the future, mutants are hunted down (‘because prejudice’, as the kids would say) by giant robots called Sentinels and devised by scientist Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage). The real problem is that these Sentinels – or rather, the people who control them – got a bit overzealous and started to target absolutely everybody, leading to the kind of perma-cloudy dystopian lifestyle that looks like a mixture between some kind of far-future and the stone age.

Mutant ringleaders and ideological frenemies Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Erik ‘Magneto’ Lehnsherr (Ian McKellen) decide to set their differences aside in an attempt to ward off the incessant onslaught of Sentinels from their secluded outpost. While a cadre of mutants hold down the fort, Xavier and Magneto devise a plan to send Wolverine’s (Hugh Jackman) mind into his younger body – by applying the powers of teleporting mutant Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) – in an attempt to stop the cataclysmic event which led to their current state of affairs.

Mentally teleporting back to 1973 – when the Sentinel programme was first launched – Wolverine is charged with stopping fellow mutant, the shape-shifting Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from assassinating Trask, which would lead to him becoming a martyr and convince the government to implement the Sentinels to the n-th degree.

In order to do this successfully, however, Wolverine must first convince a younger, defeated and despondent Xavier (James McAvoy) – now languishing in his Mutant Academy grounds with Hank “Beast” McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) after the Vietnam War saps them of students – to do the seemingly impossible: break Magneto (Michael Fassbender) out of jail.

(The trio first appeared in retro-X-Men origin story X-Men: First Class (2011).)

The ensuing sequence is arguably the film’s only real high point, with the rest taking the shape of a disappointingly average superhero actioner that seems to always be in a rush to get to the next scene, harried as it is by its time-hopping, complicated structure and the aforementioned too-many-characters syndrome.

As the team opt to enlist the super-speedy Quicksilver (Evan Peters) as the secret weapon in their prison break plan, the film not only gains an action sequence deserving of hearty applause – and which matches the bravura pre-credits sequence to X2, in which the teleporting Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming) takes on the White House – but it also gains a welcome (albeit temporary) jolt of humour and attitude in a film that otherwise has too little of either.

For all the hype leading up to its release, ‘Days’ fares poorly especially by (inevitable) comparison to its Marvel Studios counterparts. It’s certainly a well-polished action vehicle that supplies all the necessary thrills, and screenwriter Simon Kinberg is to be commended for streamlining its many time-travelling strands into a relatively coherent and easy-to-follow narrative.

But this isn’t really enough, is it? An ‘event’ picture of this kind should be more than the sum of its parts, moving with relative efficiency to what was more or less a foregone conclusion.

Though placing Lawrence’s Mystique in the eye of the storm is a good idea – not only because the Oscar-winning actress and Hunger Games trilogy star is now a worldwide sensation, but also because she actually undergoes a journey as a character – the rest of the cast is either wasted or, at best, under-served.

Fassbender evokes quiet menace throughout – delivering his lines in a consistent raspy purr – that fools you into thinking he’s actually acting, and not lazily slumming it like the rest of his colleagues.

A post-credits sequence (really, it’s not worth waiting for) teases yet another in-comics X-Men saga is in the offing for the (inevitable) sequel to ‘Days’. Let’s hope the team take things at a more even pace this time.

And more Quicksilver, please.