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May 22, 2014 By Austin Trunick Web Exclusive

Hugh Jackman. Jennifer Lawrence. Michael Fassbender. James McAvoy. Patrick Stewart. Ian McKellen. Ellen Page. Heck, even Halle Berry and Anna Paquin showed up for a couple days of shooting. Seven films in, the X-Men franchise’s all-star ensemble might even make David O. Russell jealous. (They can still cast Bradley Cooper as Cypher, can’t they?) The new X-Men: Days of Future Past brings the current-day cast members (Jackman, Stewart, McKellen) together with their younger counterparts from the 2011 prequel First Class (McAvoy, Fassbender, Lawrence) for one big, wild mutant smorgasborg.

Days of Future Past hinges on a time travel plot that’s only slightly less complicated than that of Back to the Future II. The movie begins in a far-off future where evil robot-mutant hybrids known as Sentinels have run amok, not only wiping most mutants off the face of the planet, but much of the human race. Luckily, mankind’s extermination is just one timeline—in Community terms, this would be considered the X-Men’s darkest timeline—which can be prevented by sending Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back to the 1970s to prevent Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from murdering the Sentinels’ inventor, Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage).

That’s the basic hook of the film. While its execution is far more convoluted than that, it’s not as hard to follow as it is silly-feeling. But that doesn’t matter: the point is to get Jackman’s Wolverine back to the ‘70s, so we can watch him react to that decade’s silly clothes and hair styles and interact with the franchise’s younger counterparts (and Richard Nixon.) The film quickly links one big, flashy action sequence to the next, with the brief passages of downtime filled by several moments of tongue-in-cheek humor that don’t rely on the viewers having an encyclopedic knowledge of a 30-year-old comic book storyline to be in on the jokes.

Aside from the massive assembly of series regulars, Future Past crams in a whole lotta new mutants. Lots of b- and c-listers (including Bishop, Blink, Warpath and Toad, among many others) are introduced, mostly to be smacked around by Sentinels during the bigger action sequences. Those fearing this film might suffer from superhero overload can put their worries aside; they’re all cannon fodder, and if you don’t already know their names from the comics then you don’t need to bother learning them for this film. They only exist here to make the big fights appear even cooler; Blink’s powers look especially awesome in a live-action movie, and Quicksilver (Kick-Ass’s Evan Peters) steals the entire film with one scene.

Despite all of its flaws, X-Men: Days of Future Past is incredibly fun. Stop looking for holes in the goofy time travel mechanics and enjoy the frantic, overblown setpieces, and watching some of Hollywood’s bigger names hamming it up and having a great time. This movie doesn’t take itself too seriously, and neither should its audience. It’s more than a satisfying spectacle for the summer movie crowd, and no one who enjoyed any of the franchise’s earlier entries should pass it by.

www.x-menmovies.com

Author rating: 7/10