Cinema Report #20 - X-Men - Days of Future Past
I've seen this film twice now and I still can't quite tell where this X-Men tale stands in relation to the last Wolverine film. It should be happening some time afterwards, but it could also be in a whole different universe. On the other hand, I like this new film much better than the last one with the silly gigantic samurai, so I don't care.
And anyway, we have done a kind of reset - Logan changed the past and we haven't yet learned how this new future / present (depends on the POV) looks like exactly.
Although a review already had told me that this new, time-jumping story actually makes sense when you see it, I didn't expect it to. After all, it's a superhero movie about comics that could be rather confusing with their alternate time-lines, too. But I was wrong - it all made rather a lot of sense. If you wanted to nitpick something you could say that Magneto's true mutant power was “extreme multitasking”. Honestly, especially for a man, that guy can control a lot of different things at the same time with his powers - and he even looks cool while doing so.
Some people might also not get all those references to the previous movies or the X-Men stories in general - even I don't catch half of them, probably. On the other hand, the original stories are told differently here than in the comic, much like BBC's Sherlock series does reference a lot to the original stories of Arthur Conan Doyle, but usually tells them in quite a different way. So you don't need to get those references in order to understand the film.
The special effects were very good, too, and it worked out well to have both generations of actors for the main characters present. In my opinion, the younger ones were better, however. Perhaps it's more believable when younger men play superheroes, most likely it was because their parts were the more challenging ones this time. There was, of course, only one Wolverine and Hugh Jackman did his job well, once again. I still remember how we laughed and wondered if that soft-looking guy with a musical background could ever play fierce Wolverine - and now it couldn't be somebody else, ever. In addition, I truly adore Michael Fassbender as Magneto.