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By Sandra Olmsted

Since director Bryan Singer left helming the X-Men franchise, the story line has fallen into what could be called disrepair, and the characters trapped in a battle they cannot win, even in superhero logic, against the Sentinels, giant transforming, mutant DNA sniffing robots. The newest installment reboots the series by using time travel and changing history to give the franchise a fresh start and new storylines to explore in the characters’ new future. Based on the 1981 Uncanny X-Men comic “Days of Future Past” and the story by Jane Goldman, Simon Kinberg, and Matthew Vaughn, the Simon Kinberg script solves the problem of total X-Men annihilation in the dystopian future, but the new, utopian, total acceptance future might equally be the death nell for the franchise.

In X-Men: Days of Future Past, in a destroyed Moscow, a small band of X-Men hide, then airships appear overhead and drop missiles which burrow into the bunker. The missiles transform into Sentinels, who transform to match the the power of the X-Men they are fighting. A huge battle ensues, but thanks to Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) and her consciousness transference, the X-Men save themselves and regroup in an ancient Chinese monastery on a remote mountain. The gathering of X-Men includes Professor X (Patrick Stewart), and Magneto (Ian McKellen), Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), who hatch a plan to use Kitty Pride’s power to send Wolverine to 1973. His objective is to prevent the shape-shifting renegade Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from killing Sentinel inventor Dr. Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), creating fear of the mutants, and spurring the government to quickly fund the Sentinel program. More importantly, Wolverine must prevent Mystique’s capture because Trask’s successors experiment on her and use her DNA to make the Sentinels able to transform.

The attempt to totally annihilate the mutants, everyone with the potential to produce an offspring with mutant genes, and any human who supports the mutant references the Holocaust both thematically and visually. Additional historical reference to Cuban missile crisis, as in First Class, the Nixon presidency, the surprising reason for JFK’s assassination, the Paris Peace talks, the Vietnam War, and bystanders’ Zapruder-like home movies add much needed cultural touchstones, which evoke everything from horror and shock to chuckles. Thoughtful and enjoyable, the unobtrusive 3D doesn’t resort to cheap clichés like objects being hurled out of the screen, and fans of 3D should pay the extra money for the 3D version; however, the film, which is a solid action thriller, will be enjoyable without the 3D. The visual effects and CGI are also well done. John Ottman’s musical score includes early 1970s music, such as Roberta Flack songs, and homages to blaxploitation tempos, and his use of “Time in a Bottle” reveals a mischievous sense of humor in the music selections which certainly add to the fun. Serving double duty as the editor, Ottman generally keeps the pace going except in a few stretches that are a little slow because of the exposition needed to set a story with so many of the X-Men appearing.

Some of the X-Men who appear include Storm (Halle Berry), Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), Hank McCoy/Beast (Nicholas Hoult), portal-punching Blink (Fan Bingbing), Peter/Quicksilver (Evan Peters), and a glimpse of Anna Paquin’s Rogue. The strong performance also help make the film credible, and the main characters are developed well in the script. Respectively, James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender portray the younger Professor X and Erik/Magneto, and they team up to save the present and future mutants, although how they came to this temporary truce isn’t explained adequately. Also, sending the most volatile of the X-Men, Wolverine, as an ambassador to convince Professor X and Magneto to save the mutants is one of several plot holes but does provides opportunity for humor. The presence of Quicksilver indicates the most amazing feat: The long dispute between Fox and Disney over the rights to the Quicksilver character has been settled, allowing Quicksilver to appear in both Marvel’s X-Men franchise and Disney’s Avengers franchise.

X-Men: Days of Future Past, a Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation release, in rated PG- 13 for sequences of intense sci-fi violence and action, some suggestive material, nudity and language; it opens in theaters May 23.

More of Olmsted’s reviews are available at <www.thecinematicskinny.com>.

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