Looking at the trailer for X-Men: Days of Future Past, I would understand if you had qualms. I had them too. I couldn’t tell if the movie was going to be awesome or awful. Good news…it’s awesome.
X-Men: Days of Future Past is based on a a two-part comic book storyline that ran in Uncanny X-Men #141 and 142. Growing up, this was my absolute favorite X-Men storyline. Like the movie, half the comic is set in the future and half is set in the present (or in the movie’s case, the early 70s). In this story, the X-Men have lost. They’ve been hunted down and either exterminated or imprisoned by the mutant-hunting Sentinel robots. There’s no hope in the future, other than going back in time and changing a pivotal moment that lead to this bleak state. After you watch X-Men: Days of Future Past, I highly recommend that you also read the comic book that inspired it. It’s readily available both digitally and in print.
X-Men #141 has one of the most iconic covers of all time.
The major difference between the comic and the movie versions of Days of Future Past is that in the comic, it’s Kitty Pryde’s mind that travels to the past, not Wolverine’s. This leads to one of the most memorable scenes in X-Men comics history, when future Colossus “fastball specials” future Wolverine at a Sentinel and the Sentinel blasts Wolverine with such intensity that all that’s left is his adamantium skeleton.
I really liked that the new mutants introduced in the movie, Warpath, Blink, Bishop and Sunspot were used mainly for very awesome fight scenes. Exposition wasn’t wasted on these characters’ back story. Instead, we’re thrown right into one of their battles, where their powers, especially Blink’s, are able to shine.
But the new mutant who stole the movie is Quicksilver. The scene involving Quicksilver taking out of the guards in the Pentagon was both the most visually striking scene and the best comic relief in the movie. I could have used more Quicksilver in Days of Future Past.
An interesting thing about Quicksilver: both he and his sister, the Scarlet Witch, are considered X-Men and Avengers characters. They started out as X-Men villains before reforming and joining the Avengers. Fox has the rights to them as X-Men. Marvel Studios has the rights to them as Avengers. They are not being played by the same actors in the X-Men and Avengers series of movies. Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch are the children of Magneto, something which is hinted at in this movie. I wouldn’t expect the same hints to their parentage to show up in the Avengers movies, where the X-Men don’t seem to exist. It will be interesting to see if Joss Whedon and company handle Quicksilver as well as he’s been handled here in X-Men: Days of Future Past.
My only issue of with the movie version of Days of Future Past is Kitty taking Rachel’s place as the time travel enabler. Rachel’s powers are psionic in nature, making it understandable how she’d be able to project someone into the past. Kitty has the power to walk through walls. How this evolves into being able to send someone’s mind into the past is beyond me. On the plus side, by not having Rachel in the future, there’s no paradox of having the daughter of Scott and Jean could exist in a future when Scott and Jean are already dead in the present.
Speaking of Scott and Jean, one very nice thing about X-Men: Days of Future Past is that it retcons X-Men: The Last Stand out of existence. Now we can pretend that Bryan Singer never left X-Men to make the disappointing Superman Returns. Some could argue that Days of Future Past also retcons X2: X-Men United out of existence, but I think X-Men United is too good a movie not to still exist. Yes, Jean “dies” at the end of the it, but in my mind, the X-Men recovered her at some point later on and were able to save her without Cyclops and Professor X having to die in the process.
Regarding the scene after the credits, that’s the X-Men villain Apocalypse, who the X-Men will be facing in the next movie. He’s been alive since ancient Egypt. The four people on horseback in the background are his four horsemen. In the comics, Apocalypse has corrupted heroes with the offer of more power to serve him as one of his horsemen. It will be interesting to see if he recruits some of the X-Men: First Class characters that were said to be dead in this movie.
Apocalypse’s most famous horseman is Archangel, whose feathery wings were replaced with metal bladed wings.
As far as ranking X-Men: Days of Future’s Past among the other X-Men movies, I’d put Days of Future Past just under X-2: X-Men United, making this the second best X-Men movie. Go see it!
You can X a photo of yourself just like this poster at http://fox.co/XYourself.
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