X-Men: Days of Future Past is the 6th movie in the franchise and arguably the best yet. 2011’s First Class course corrected things after the mess of a movie that was X3: Last Stand. It settled things down, told a coherent story and brought in some new and fantastic actors to the universe. Future Past runs with the ball that First Class passed off in great form.

The story starts in the future where Trask Industries Sentinel program has obliterated most of humanity. Originally designed as a weapon to hunt down and destroy mutants, further revisions to these giant robots allowed them to scan people and read their genetic code. If this scan revealed the possibility that they could create mutant children or even mutant grandchildren, they were exterminated as well. Any sort or resistance was crushed as the Sentinel program was given more and more power and control. As a last resort, Professor X and Magneto send Wolverine back in time 50 years using Kitty Pryde’s abilities. His goal is to bring young Professor X and Magneto together to stop Mystique (who both share a past with her) from assassinating Dr. Bolivar Trask, the creator of the Sentinels. It’s that event that triggers a full blown fear response from the government, green lighting Trask’s proposed Sentinel program. Mystique’s efforts to try and stop a future slaughter actually makes things far, far worse.

I think most of the success from this movie comes from its tone. It doesn’t feel much like a comic book movie. It’s more like a great science fiction tale with believable and compelling people that happen to be able to do extraordinary things. While there are many moments that require your suspense of disbelief it’s all grounded in reality. I liked the tie ins to real life historical events, it’s a clever little hook. An understanding of who the characters are goes a really long way, but I think it would still stick together well if you have no idea who the characters are (seeing First Class is very important though as most of the movie takes place just a few years later and the attitudes of everyone comes from there). This is very much a character driven movie, mostly by the fantastic James McAvoy as Professor X, Michael Fassbender as Magneto and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine who pulls everything together. They are very true to their comic roots, Prof X as a broken idealist here and Magneto as his polar opposite. They both have the same ideals, but with different executions in mind. Really impressed by the careful writing and great acting by the main cast (there’s a pretty big side cast that are mostly there for action purposes). I really liked how they showed the relationship and interactions of young Prof X and Magneto. They are brought together again for a cause and can work together to great affect, but Magneto can’t be held down for long.

Bryan Singer returns to directing after helming the first 2 movies (the original being one of the first comic book movies to kick of the craze in 2000. 1998’s Blade was a success, but I don’t think it had as big of an impact as X-Men did) and he picks up the torch well. It’s a good looking movie, there’s some really nice shots and set ups. The kitchen scene with Quicksilver might be the biggest highlight which brought me back to the insanity and fun of Nightcrawler’s White House scene in X2. I thought there would be more action, there are large stretches without any, but what is there is pretty inventive and exciting. The fights starring Mystique especially as they show how dangerously beautiful she is. Fantastic choreography with great prosthetic and CG FX integration. The team ups to fight off the Sentinels in the future are very well realized and Quicksilver’s speed is shown really well. Whenever they do that with vampires in other movies it looks terrible, but I think they nailed it here. He’s so fast you can can only see him when he starts and stops. The way they show him actually moving around is when you are taken “with” him, seeing how he experiences his extreme power. He’s also funny, he’s got some great dialog. That said, there are more than a few times when the CG takes over and the obvious green screen look becomes hard to ignore. It’s unfortunate, but nothing that breaks the movie.

Days of Future Past keeps the X-Men on a great path, and as a a bonus to fans it rewrites the events of X3. I hope they can keep the trajectory going with the next one.