A Spectacular and Human Comic Book Blockbuster – Contender for the Best High-Budget Film of the Year
In 1970s America, inventor Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) creates robots to identify and eliminate mutants. Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) kills him for this, but the “Sentinel” program does not end with the death of its initiator. Over the years, Trask’s robots become so powerful that even the most mighty mutants cannot withstand them. When only a handful of X-Men remain, hiding in a Chinese monastery, Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) uses her superpower to send Wolverine’s (Hugh Jackman) consciousness back to the 1970s, into his former body. Now, the hero must find the young Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender), and together with them, rewrite history.
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“The most ambitious film in the history of the X-Men cycle, featuring stars from both the first trilogy and ‘First Class’.” When you read such a description of “Days of Future Past,” you simultaneously anticipate and fear. The former – because the combined starlight of the new film can eclipse the sun, and it’s hard to imagine a better gift for a fan of fantasy and science fiction than Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Peter Dinklage, Jennifer Lawrence, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, and many others in the credits of one film. The latter – because a movie with so many bright stars often turns into a tug-of-war and stepping on each other’s toes. We all remember what came of the character-overloaded film “X-Men: The Last Stand.” Moreover, we have repeatedly seen in recent years how epic effects paid for from a colossal budget bury the heroes and turn a blockbuster into an impressive but lifeless spectacle.
Balancing Star Power and Spectacle
Storm’s role in the script was significantly larger than in the film, but Halle Berry’s sudden pregnancy forced her participation in the filming to be reduced.
Fortunately, “Days of Future Past” does not suffer from these problems. Rather, on the contrary, the film can be reproached for focusing so much on the main characters (Wolverine, young Professor X and Magneto, Beast, Mystique, Trask, Major Stryker – the future general from “X-Men 2”) that it minimizes the screen time of all other characters and that it has few epic battles and other grandiose special effects scenes (of course, only compared to the “coolest” comic book blockbusters – by the standards of any other movie, there are more than enough effects in the film, and some of them are overwhelmingly sweeping, like the scene in which Magneto tears an entire stadium out of the ground). This will probably disappoint those who expected the film to pay equal attention to the past and the future and that the heroes from both eras would spend the entire film in supernatural battles. Also, viewers who came for a full-fledged acquaintance with the new mutants for the film cycle, and not for brief introductions – in fact, cameos – of such heroes as Bishop, Blink, Sunspot, Warpath, and Ink, will not be happy.
Although the film takes place in the USA, France, Vietnam, and China, the film was entirely shot in Quebec, Canada.
Focusing on the Core Narrative
However, analyzing the picture, it is easy to understand that it would be much worse if it lost the thread of the main narrative, digging into the heads and hearts of minor characters. The new mutants briefly but effectively demonstrate their abilities – one could only expect more from a television series. At least, these demonstrations are really impressive, and the young mutants don’t just throw their “magic” at the Sentinels, but use inventive combos that are just begging to be in a video game based on “X-Men.”
As for the main characters, they talk more than they fight, and this is also a completely correct decision. Verbal clashes, exchanges of jokes, and heart-to-heart talks performed by talented actors do not let viewers forget for a second that they are watching a movie about people, not superhero caricatures, and that the basis of the picture is not a flat struggle between good and evil and not an abstract confrontation of life philosophies, but a dramatic clash of old friends who have something to love each other for and something to hate each other for. The film also traces the spiritual evolution of the young Professor X, who first appears on the screen as a drug addict recluse and gradually, with great difficulty, turns back into the idealistic leader of the mutants that he was in the first trilogy of the cycle and in “First Class.”
A Character-Driven Drama
Once again, “Days” is not a cold special effects show, but a fascinating and tense psychological drama that sometimes seems intimate and soulful, even when the heroes are tearing up Washington. And if in “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” it was difficult to single out any of the actors except the performer of the main role, then for “Days” I want to praise Jackman, McAvoy, Fassbender, Dinklage, Lawrence… And the newcomer to the cycle, Evan Peters from the series “American Horror Story,” whose super-fast character Quicksilver is the only one of all the debutant mutants who got enough screen time. And this time was used 120%. The self-confident young bully, running faster than bullets, turned out to be so charming and funny, and his demonstration of superpowers - so beautiful and witty, that one can only regret that the hero with the Russian surname Maximoff was not made the main character of the film. However, if he had participated in the finale, he would have solved all the problems alone and deprived the culmination of intrigue. So here, too, screenwriter Simon Kinberg made the right choice. Excellent work – Kinberg has fully rehabilitated himself for “The Last Stand”!