In the last few years, Bryan Singer has made it quite obvious that he is not a fan of Brett Ratner's edition to the X-Men franchise, The Last Stand. So it comes as no surprise that the film that brought him back to the mutants is one that completely goes against any plot that X-Men 3 put into place and sees him literally rewriting the story that had unfolded in the third instalment.
Ratner's The Last Stand was dark, (really dark in terms of Marvel), and Singer has voiced frequently that not only would he have 'done things a little differently' but he certainly wouldn't have had so many characters written off.
Now, fans would have been pretty outraged if he just did a remake of X3 with a completely different plot (even though they weren't too pleased with it to begin with) but Singer saw a way around this obstacle. Using the comic 'Days Of Future Past' as a basis for his script, he had the characters themselves do his dirty work, and had them go back in time to change their future, technically rendering The Last Stand as, well, non-existent in the X-Men universe. Well played, Singer, well played.
Set predominantly in modern day, Professor Xavier and all the other mutants are under great threat from the Sentinels, large robots manufactured with the sole intention to eradicate the species. As the war seems more and more impossible to win, and the Sentinels even start turning on humans that side with mutants, our favourites only see one way out: to hop back in time and alter the actions that caused such an uprising against their kind.
Something that really is impressive about Days Of Future Past is the cast. Combining the talents of the classic cast of X-Men with the younger actors that played the more youthful versions of the mutants in First Class, audiences truly get the best of both worlds with this movie.
Hugh Jackman is great as always, as the lead in this particular instalment. Delivering Wolverine's mockingly sarcastic one liners but simultaneously being insanely likeable is something that is unsure whether any other actor could do as well. Michael Fassbender truly rivals McKellen's talents in his interpretation of young Magneto, Erik Lensherr adding (like in First Class) a turmoiled edge to the character whilst also portraying him as effortlessly charming and collected. And it's hard to believe that James McAvoy actually ISN'T Patrick Stewart when he was younger. But it was a newcomer to Marvel that really shone in Days Of Future Past.
Evan Peters, known best for spooky series, American Horror Story, pretty much steals the whole movie with his singular scene as Quicksilver. After seeing his perfect performance as Peter Maximoff, it's almost sad that the role will be played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson in the upcoming sequel to Avengers Assemble.
Whilst The Last Stand really did go heavy on focussing on the darker side to all of the mutant's powers, Days Of Future Past makes them all seem cool again. Where the more recent films have left us wanting them to showcase the character's special talents, this one will have you leaving the cinema wishing you had powers yourself! The movie begins with a slickly-choreographed fight scene between Shadowcat, Iceman, Blink, other mutants and the Sentinels that sets the audience up knowing that this is going to be more of an action film than perhaps the previous films, really demonstrating what the mutants can really do.
So, for a film that completely contradicts it's predecessors and could have had people in uprising, it does exceedingly well. The introduction of newer characters we haven't really seen on the franchise before opens up the idea of many more X-Men movies to come and widens the potential story-lines even further, (it would be nice to have a film that's not so similar to the basis of ALL the movies that had been before) and it successfully remedies any bad tastes that were left in our mouths by The Last Stand.
The premise works well to bring out not only excitement for more modern superhero action but also nostalgia towards the old X-Men movies that we watched when we were children. The nods towards the older stories and well-known past characters are fondly created and almost makes it feel like this film could be the last in the series with such a sentimentality. However, the after credits scene and rumours of a title of X-Men: Apocalypse in the air, begs to differ!
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