BY Camille Borodey
Orientation Editor
In the future, the mutant and human race is being exterminated by sentinels, a monster race created to destroy mutants. Once frenemies, Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellan) are forced to team up with the remaining X-Men to find a way to save themselves before their entire race is wiped out.
With help from the powers of Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page), the X-Men send Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back to 1973 to convinced Charles Xavier to stop the shape-shifting Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from being captured by Dr. Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), for he uses her DNA to create the sentinels, which lead to the demise of the human and mutant race.
After being sent back to 1973, Wolverine finds Dr. X (James McAvoy) in a depressed state, and he is taking a anecdote created by Hank McCoy/Beast (Nicholas Hoult) that allows Dr. X to walk and blocks his brain from reading people’s thoughts.. Wolverine has to convince Dr. X to get his shit together and team up with his old friend, Erik Lehnsherr aka Magneto (Michael Fassbender), who is being kept in prison on the grounds that he assassinated JFK.
Although Professor X and Magneto (Ian McKellen) are friends in the future, past Magneto is still out for vengeance. Fassbender’s Magneto is a villain of few words, and he usually has a very stony facial expression, but all of his hatred and anger rest in his eyes, which makes him realistically menacing.
With such a big cast, some of the actors do feel underused. Lawrence and Jackman are two of the biggest stars right now, so it is understandable why they would get so much screen time. I actually have seen a lot of complaints online regarding Lawrence being miscast as Mystique because she is not seductive enough. Lawrence plays a younger, more layered Mystique, who is not only a stealthy mutant, but she is also a heartbroken person.
Like the other “X-Men” movies, this film often feels like the Wolverine show. We get it, Jackman is awesome and is a gruff man’s man, and has abs that you can bake cookies on, but the other X-Men are awesome too.
For example, Kitty Pryde spends the entire films bent over Wolverine making exhausted faces. Storm (Halle Berry) is only used for her powers and Rogue (Anna Paquin) is only seen for a moment, and she does not even get any lines. Even Stewart and McKellan do not offer more than words of wisdom and guidance. Can we have a buddy comedy featuring these two in the future?
The actions scenes are fun to watch, but the sentinels are not really all that scary. The best visual part in the movie is the slow motion scene where Quicksilver, who has super speed, (Evan Peters) messes with the guards in order to help bust Magneto out of jail. Not only does Peter’s have a blast in his smart role, but the scene reminds viewers that director Bryan Singer does not take the “X-Men” movies too seriously.
“X-Men” is not without any plot holes. How did Charles Xavier come back to life? Wasn’t he dead at the end of X3? Also, in X3, Kitty Pryde has the ability to walk through walls, but since when does she know how to time travel too? X3 was the one of five “X-Men” films that Singer did not direct, so maybe he just chose to ignore those plot points.
The overall final battle felt slightly anti-climatic, but Singer is obviously saving some action for a third installment, so I was left wanting more. Plot holes aside, “X-Men: Days of Future Past” is a visual treat, and the best “X-Men” yet.
