X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST; A Professional Scotsman Review #1

#MINOR SPOILERS# Watch Trailer Here

I liked the one before this; X-Men: First Class. It got a bit messy at the end - Fassbender's Irish brogue coming to the fore in clear re-shoots was notably funny. I can do a pretty decent impression of it... can't really type it phonetically though so just imagine me doing a good impression of an Irish accent that suddenly comes from nowhere. Hilarious, right? But overall it was a decent flick - a SOLID 7 out of 10. Great music too. And Fassbender's Magneto hunting down Nazis for revenge with Kevin Bacon being the ultimate Nazi (who knew?) was inspired. So I was quite up for this new film, particularly as Bryan Singer was coming back to save the franchise after the X - Men Origins: Wolverine solo pictures almost sunk it. Turns out you CAN get too much of Wolverine.

So the film starts in the future. When? No idea. It could be now actually. I'm confused. And Magneto and Professor X are back. I honestly thought Prof X died a while ago? (Probably need to start watching more after credit sequences... though I assume he's done an Obi Wan and come back? - answers on a post card please... or email me). So I've got a few nagging questions to start with. Nae hassle, I'm sure the crisp story telling will sweep me along and I'll forget about this. But wait! They're going back in time to save the present from being overrun by killer robots called 'Sentinels'? (Why not have them be called 'Terminators' and be done with it? X-Men Vs Terminator, you heard it here first) But in the past time will move parallel to time in the future... uh... so basically, Wolverine's mind is launched back by Juno into his younger body in 1973. And from what I can gather Juno then sits in the future for a week, maintaining a mind link with Wolverine, so that he can stop the Sentinels over a period of a week in the past. She just sits there. For a week. No toilet breaks. Or is that her mutation - she doesn't need toilet breaks? That's actually pretty cool. But assuming for a second that isn't the case then this whole premise is absurd. And it isn't the case because we all know that Juno's X-Men power is that she'll always be Juno.

But we're back in 1973! WHAM! SNIKT!!! PUNCH! Wolverine is kicking major ass! Killing people in fact. But they're just some random goons so it has no real emotional heft. Next he finds young Professor X and he's a sort of junkie who's lost his powers - interesting. Then suddenly we have the most incredible SFX scene I’ve seen since the rolling gravity fights in Inception when a mutant called Quicksilver runs faster than speeding bullets to pull young Magneto out of jail. It's utterly astonishing and actually made me laugh with giddiness - all sins are instantly forgiven and I'm dusting down the keys '1' and '0' so I can give the movie a BEDAZZLING 10.

Magneto is all fired up and the movie is really gaining traction (I like Magneto - both old and young he's a RUGGED 10) but then the Sentinels show up in the past and we've got a problem. So, these killer robots are made in a 'real world' 1973. But they look like Transformers which we can't build now 42 years after the film is set? I... I don’t get it. It doesn't make a lick of sense - and Magneto is controlling their AI brains with... uh... magnetism? So, now I'm not happy. I can't handle it. Call me a nit-picker but my non magnetically controlled brain is shorting out on me. And the movie has lost me. Not only that but I'm also angry it's lost me after winning me back which is pushing the score even further down. And not helping it is the convoluted timeline stuff. I'm not going to go into details about why it doesn't work but it doesn't (compounding paradoxes ho!). And suddenly Jennifer Lawrence's (J-Law) character now assumes the importance of a God and Peter DInklage doesn't have much to do except be evil and the guy playing Nixon is wearing a big rubber nose. Not as big a rubber nose as he does in The Watchmen but it's big enough that it's eking the score down lower still. Oh, man! Oh, X-Man! Then it ends and everyone is back. Even the chick from X-Men: The Last Stand... uh, hang on it's been a while I need to Google her name... JEAN GREY! That's it. Sorry about that. Yeah, she's back and everyone who ever died is back and every single X-Men film that has gone before it is rendered utterly pointless in a flash. The Flash? Do you remember that film? It was the first time when I was a kid that I realised special effects could be bad.

FINAL ANALYSIS: It really reminded me of Terminator Genysis (6) in that in order to give the people what they want they have to practically demolish everything that has gone before. And it's aaaaaaaaaaaaaaall over the place story/continuity wise. I guess it's a total fan service movie in that you see stuff you wanna see, but it's not adding to the good stuff in the long run. And it's actually detracting heavily if you think about it. Did I enjoy it? Yes. Quite a bit actually. But it's like fast food - tasty but makes your tummy grumble. Unless your mutation is that you never have to goto the bathroom then that's a problem, right? Over to you Juno.

SCORE: I'm slinging it a WONKY 7 practically for the jaw dropping slo-mo scene alone.

ALTERNATE TITLE: X-Men: Days Of Future Slightly Past Its Best