Time
travel, yay! I love a great time travel movie. Heck, I love a bad time travel movie.
Good news: X-Men: Days of Future Past is a great travel movie.
The movie,
which has a title so long it exhausts me to say it, is about mutants in our future
who send one of their own back to our past to prevent a war that destroys our
present. Can I just say X-Men? Assume
I’m not talking about one of the previous ones.
More
specifically, a small group of characters from the comics have been surviving ongoing
attacks from Sentinels by detecting when the mutant hunting robots are
approaching, then psychically going back a few days in time to warn themselves
to flee. In other words, they’ve been time traveling constantly, which can take
quite a toll on a person.
The
solution, naturally, is to go back in time half a century or so and stop the
murder that eventually leads to the government funding the Sentinel Program,
and doesn’t the government always end up behind these things? Unfortunately,
the person who committed that murder is one of their own: Mystique (Jennifer
Lawrence), and why has no one noticed that she runs around totally naked for
half this movie? Oh, sure, she has weird blue skin that looks like rubber
gloves, but still …
Anyway, the
only person who can survive a trip that far back is Wolverine (Hugh Jackman),
whose mind heals as quickly as his unaging body does. Kitty Pryde (my favorite
mutant from the comic books) is given specific instructions: Send Wolverine
back to a moment where he’s in bed with a lover, so he’ll get up and treat the
audience to full (if not frontal) nudity.
I didn’t
care all that much myself, but my eardrums popped from the simultaneous intake
of air among all the females in the movie theater.
And then
we’re in the 70’s, where Wolverine realizes all the mutant powers in the world
can’t protect him from polyester.
I’m so glad
we aren’t in the 70’s anymore.
This is one
of the best of the X-Men movies, and one of the best of the superhero movies,
too. It’s true that you should be a fan of the comic books to get all the
little winks, and this is one time when seeing the other movies is a
prerequisite. On the other hand, the moviemakers have done a fantastic job of
jumping back and forth in time without confusing the audience, and that’s an
amazing accomplishment.
The story’s
great, the acting strong, the special effects (of course) mind blowing, and
X-Men fans get at least a cameo from almost all of their favorites. Also, as
with Star Trek, this story has the
advantage of erasing almost all the canon that canon’d before this, giving them
a clean slate for the next movie.
I’m left
with just one question: If Halle Berry once received a half-million bucks to
drop her top in a movie, how much did Hugh Jackman get for baring his bottom?
Entertainment Value: 4 out of 4 M&M’s. That’s two wins
out of two trips to the theater.
Oscar Potential: 4 M&M’s for something, even if it’s special effects
Good review, Mark!
ReplyDeleteThanks!
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