X-Men: Days of Future Past

[©brad]

Still not the most heinous act committed by a director of an X-Men sequel.

[picolas]

surprisingly resonant drama about a bunch of weirdos who can do cool things and the jealous people who either want that or can't get over not having it.

james mcavoy is something else. he brings such a palpable sense of xavier's past into his performance that we barely need any exposition, even though this movie is built on the foundation of SIX other movies!! the triangle of love, hate, and regret between him, magneto and mystique is so freaking powerful because you can feel it emanating from the core of his being. fassbender is equally impressive at lending gravity to the mediocre dialogue, but he has less complicated stuff to do.

there is at least one bad decision from a writing, directing or acting perspective in nearly every scene. eg. wolverine wakes up in the past, which is clearly established by dozens of obvious 70s visuals, then he literally tells us he's woken up in the past. just in case we're idiots. all these easily avoidable choices are minor, but they culminate in a general sense of dumbness that can be hard to shake.

in spite of that, the story/motivations/themes are all well constructed. i was almost never bored. there's a good variety of action/soap/winky comedy/x-metaphors. it's a good time.

*vague spoilers*

i really wish a KEY decision near the end had been better justified by the story. it comes off as strictly emotional and doesn't really make any sense when you think about the character/situation for more than a few seconds. nothing actually causes them to make that choice. they just do. because piano music.

the fast guy should have been in the whole movie. it makes absolutely no sense that he's only there for a bit. i want a whole movie of him changing stuff in slow motion. he deserves a spinoff more than wolverine.

[Drenk]

This movie begins well, then rush everything as if its parents had yelled at him to go home. Pleasant but underwhelming. I appreciate their will to try something intimate, linked to the character, their choices. But everything feels artificial. The ending does. It's wheeled to work; not thrilling a second.

Quicksliver has a GREAT scene, though.

[ElPandaRoyal]

I actually think the "past" scenes are what make the movie work for me. The first few minutes with all that 3D-CGI crap fest I was feeling completely desperate thinking I had gone to watch a giant video game. Fortunately it turned better after that, even though I really didn't care for anything that took place in the "future" which felt artificial and ugly and poorly edited and acted. I don't really care for the X-Men anyway even though I only haven't seen The Wolverine, so for a completely neutral viewer, this was entertaining enough, but don't think I'll ever watch it again.

[AntiDumbFrogQuestion]

I enjoyed the opening action scenes with Blink.
Then came super-exposition, and very dry, plot-driven words spoken from characters that just seemed like re-tread ground meant to see them as "people who feel". Okay.
Near the beginning, I felt they kept on cutting at certain points to remind us that "this is supposed to be exciting!" They even committed this terrible crime of cutting away from Peter Dinklage in the middle of his dialogue! WTF mate!?
It also felt like certain characters never interacted, or were underused. Did Wolverine or Magneto ever really connect, or just appear onscreen together?

This movie was better than the last 4 x-men, though, even though Matthew Vaughn came close. If anything, Singer has a good grasp on style. Those moments where Mystique was shot using "stock film" were kinda cool. McAvoy and Hoult had an unspoken chemistry onscreen that I found entertaining. And, well....the slo-mo part. Just plain fun.


****SPPOOOOILLLER TERRIITTTORRRYYYY****

Hell, I'll even say that I hate the winks-and-nods to previous chapters that most prequel/sequels throw in, and think that filmmakers have used them as a crutch ever since Episode I. Dumb. But I felt there was a certain validity to including cameos with the original cast towards the end there. 

Luckily the movie learned how to relax and just tell a story, and although I still find aspects of it were clunky and uninspired, it didn't dash my hopes like Ratner or Gavin Hood managed to.

[pete]

I didn't get a lot of it because I've missed out on a few movies I think. the slow mo scene was fun, but I liked Spiderman 2's version of it better. I liked what the movie wanted to do, but I don't feel like it got pulled off. all of the fight scenes were hoaky and clunky, and all of the displays of the power seemed underwhelming. it seemed like a trailer for Quicksurfer and not much else. I liked that the movie wanted to solve problems via dialogue, which was last attempted (and succeeded) in The Dark Knight (vs joker) but I don't know, something felt missing.

[Lottery]

Generally enjoyable. First one was better. Was rather messy though and they had some annoying exposition parts. Past scenes were obviously better, but future scenes were cool in an brutal way. Thankfully, the presence of Wolverine didn't completely unbalance the film, McAvoy was (mostly) at the centre of it- and he did a fantastic job. Lawrence's performance was...bad. Fassbender was his good self though his role seemed lessened. I liked Beast's prominence as well.

Future Sentinels were very cool and really did come across as insurmountable foes.


SPOILERS

Ending was really, really happy. I did appreciate it but I wonder how they're going to unravel it for the apocalyptic final film in the trilogy (if the timeline is consistent)- post credits scene was effective.

Now that they've had their nice little reunion with the old cast, they can stick with just McAvoy and Fassbender again (the way it should be). Seriously no idea why they got rid of Pietro halfway through the film, felt so sudden and forced, he was very entertaining.