I am one of those people who try to take movies at their face value and avoid the hype that goes into summer blockbusters. Admittedly, I failed at that with the release of Godzilla, but that was more personal than anything else. When I went to see X-Men: Days of Future Past, my mind was wide open for anything and I was prepared to avoid the hype to give an unbiased review.

Let me start off by saying that I truly enjoy the X-Men movies. They are known for their fast action, quick wit, and interesting story lines. When it comes to living up to anything that previous X-Men movies have done, Days of Future Past can take its place among the rest of the franchise as a stellar accomplishment.

The action in this movie is well-paced and not overdone. We only get mass destruction when it is necessary and we do not get the out-of-focus images of people and objects whizzing across the screen that seems to dominate so many movies these days.

I enjoyed the acting immensely in this movie, especially Michael Fassbender’s portrayal of Magneto. Fassbender and James McAvoy as Charles Xavier make a great duo. Both actors completely understand their complicated characters and, more importantly, they really understand the complicated relationship between the two characters. If you are a fan of the X-Men comic books, then you know how difficult it can be to understand the relationship between Magneto and Xavier. Fassbender and McAvoy present that relationship as clearly and adeptly as Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen did in previous installments.

When it comes to the synergy between characters in this movie, it seems that this movie presents all of the relationships between the various characters better than any of the previous installments. We finally get to see the tortured side of Mystique and the movie dives deeper into the relationship she has with Xavier. It is important storyline information that, until this movie was released, had not yet been developed.

Of course, you cannot have an X-Men movie without plenty of hunky Hugh Jackman as the testosterone-charged Wolverine. If there has been one element of past X-Men movies that has kind of annoyed me, it has been the way that Jackman plays Wolverine. But in this movie, we finally get to see an insightful and responsible Logan that we have never seen before. The fate of the world has sat on Wolverine’s shoulders many times, but this time he thought his way out instead of punching, and it worked very well.

The only problem I had with this movie, and it is a big problem, is time travel. I do not understand why movies continue to try and tackle the concept of time travel. I do understand that the point of this movie was to utilize the Days of Future Past storyline from the comic books, but there are hundreds of other storylines that could have been used to make this movie that would have been so much more entertaining.

The problem with time travel in a movie is that the repercussions are always presented as being tied up with a nice little bow at the end of the movie. Sometimes the consequences are bad, and sometimes they are good. But we are always given the notion that altering the past had well-defined and almost expected consequences on events that shaped the future. It just never lines up and these kinds of movies never play off very well.

Don’t get me wrong, X-Men: Days of Future Past is a good movie. It deserves to be a summer blockbuster and it has definitely earned the gate it has brought in to this point. But as a plotline, the movie has holes you could fly the X-Men’s jet through.

I think the biggest problem I had was that, after two hours of complicated rescue missions and Wolverine risking his life (yet again) for humanity, the really important stuff just seemed to happen way too easy. I am not a spoiler kind of guy, so I won’t elaborate too much because this movie is really worth seeing. But it just seems to me like all of the pieces that needed to fall in place, fell in place way too easy and the events that needed to happen did happen, almost without a hitch.

There was great drama and suspense in this movie, but at all the wrong points in the film. If it were not for the crisp dialogue and chemistry between the entire cast, this movie could have gotten lost in itself very easily. It takes too many things for granted and makes the essential elements of Xavier’s plan too simple to achieve. In the end, I kind of felt cheated. It is hard to describe, so you will have to see the movie to know what I mean.

The next X-Men movie is set to be released in 2016 and is going to be called Apocalypse, which is a plotline I am not familiar with. In the meantime, Days of Future Past is a very good X-Men film that should keep fans happy until Apocalypse arrives. The key to enjoying this film is to not expect too much from it as far as a consistent plot, because it really will not deliver.

Rating: 2 ½ out of 5

George N Root III is a Lockport resident and serious movie buff. He spends his weekends at the Sunset Drive-In and loves every minute. He can be reached at georgeroot@verizon.net.

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