Ya gotta give it to the franchise that just won't die. After Origins, we were all worked about the future of the franchise. After The Wolverine, even, I was worried about the direction being taken. But this series based off First Class is constantly impressing.
I really enjoyed First Class, but it had its problems. Days of Future Past completely fixes every single one of those problems. The X-Men I love are back, while introducing new ones for me to get to know. The new members aren't the X-Men I didn't really care about, they're all given great personalities and a fun demonstration of powers. Everyone in it is a lot of fun to get to know, and the film perfectly balances its humor with its darkness. The darkness in particular. This is a far darker film than past X-Men films, at least as far as I can remember. But the darkness is poignant, appropriate, sensible and brutal. It makes sense. And moments that made my jaw drop were effective, without ever really being so brutal as to be jarring.
Acting obviously is all great in this. But particularly I have to give props to James McAvoy. who at first unimpressed me as Charles Xavier. Now, he fully encompasses the younger version of the man played by Patrick Stewart, a hard headed and broken man who has a lot of growing up to do, but we know that the growing will come. He was phenomenal, and managed to really impress me. Michael Fassbender as always is magnificent, blending his anger and hostility perfectly with likability and charisma. We can see why people are following him, why they want to be on his side. Jennifer Lawrence is amazing as always, too, playing the emotionally ravaged Mystique, topping her performance from the last X-Men film she was in. Heck, I even have to give props to Ellen Page for her 10 minutes of screen time. I thought she was really great!
The action and effects of this film are top notch, never ceasing to impress and captivate the audience. I have to especially mention the disjunct future/past relationship, one that is immediately jarring but also strangely relatable. It seems to be using some thematic material left over from ideas in the Captain America sequel. That's not a bad thing in the slightest - the commentary works very well to this films advantage, showing no clear cut positive outcome from one side or the other - only the option to undo what was already done. It works super well.
X-men has never been my favorite franchise. I thought X2 was great and First Class was really good, but aside from those I always felt rather unmoved by the films. Now, with these new X-Men films getting better and better, I might soon be finding myself to be an enormous fan. I have high hopes for X-Men: Apocalypse.
Rank: 4.5/5
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