Should a comic book movie, especially when it's a series as revered as the X-Men, aim to please its existing fans or try and appeal to as broad a movie-watching audience as possible? The latest installment in what is one of the messier movie franchises in recent times, X-Men: Days Of Future Past, tries to do both.
Marking a return for director Bryan Singer, who helmed both X-Men (2000) and X2: X-Men United (2003), this is a one-size-fits-all summer blockbuster that casts its net far and wide. This $250 million trawler is likely to return home with great catches.
This movie has everything going for it. It has a director who understands the cinematic version of this fictional universe. As its stylistic and tonal predecessor, it has the Matthew-Vaughn-directed X-Men: First Class, an installment that injected a much-needed sense of playfulness into the series. It boasts a cast so densely packed with Oscar winners and nominees that a once best actress is reduced here to a two-line speaking part (hint: she's probably unlikely to kick up a 'storm' about it). It also has a plot that involves time-travel which, all paradoxes aside, is a fictional theme that rarely fails to resonate with audiences.
And yet, it has the same problem that afflicts every comic book hero blockbuster that comes out nowadays: a problem of bursting-at-the-seams, a problem of plenty. This may sound like a first world problem, but what else can the mind register after having obediently consumed CGI-laden action extravaganzas, one after another, over more than a decade?
Is it possible to understand this film's central conceit - sending Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back in time from an unspecified point in a dystopian future to 1973 in order to prevent a war that has nearly wiped out all mutants - and not think of John Connor vs Skynet in Terminator 2: Judgment Day? Granted that the movie is based on a storyline from href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Days_of_Future_Past"> The Uncanny X-Men issues 141-142(published 1981, a decade before James Cameron's actioner), but that doesn't stop audiences - most of whom have probably not read the books, like me - from experiencing a sense of dj vu. It's like paying for the same meal at the same restaurant over and over again, with perhaps a choice in condiments and salad dressings every now and then.
But this is not to say that Days Of Future Past is a bad time at the movies, of course. The first hour zips by like a maglev train, with Simon Kinberg's screenplay wisely letting Wolverine have all the quips. Jackman, looking impossibly buff for a man who is now 45, nails his part as one would expect from a man who's been playing the same role for 14 years. Helping him - not him, sorry, his mind - travel back in time are the powers of Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page; in the comics, Pryde is the one who goes back in time but Page clearly doesn't have the requisite star power) and the good wishes of a now-reunited Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Sir Ian McKellan).
The ingredients are tantalising: a wisecracking mutant who never ages goes and meets the younger, incorrigible versions of his now-mentors. 11 years after the events of First Class, younger Professor X (James McAvoy) looks like a long-haired Vietnam vet battling post-traumatic stress disorder. Alone in his mansion with Hank McCoy aka Beast, he is hooked to alcohol as well as a special serum that allows him the use of his legs but inhibits his mutant, mind-reading powers. Young Magneto (Michael Fassbender) is imprisoned in a secure facility deep underneath the Pentagon for one of the most famous real-life crimes of the 20th century (hint: the one that ruined convertible sales everywhere).
The mission involves travelling to Paris and stopping Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), who has now gone rogue (couldn't resist), from assassinating Dr Bolivar Trask.... (Peter Dinklage), who is on the verge of developing mutant-murdering machines called Sentinels that will lead to the forthcoming war.
What Singer does exceptionally well in this part of the movie is the way he has fun with the script, the structure and inventing alternative history. The bell-bottoms, the flared collars and '70s radio hits all contribute to the charm of this piece, which is regularly punctuated with crowd-pleasing retorts and one-liners. In what is the most delightful sequence I've seen in a while -- set hilariously to Jim Croce's Time In A Bottle- Quicksilver (Evan Peters), a mutant with the ability to run at supersonic speeds, rearranges a fight while bullets and objects fly around him in slow motion. A pure cinematic moment, this.
However, as the movie progresses, its logical missteps become harder and harder to forgive. Why was Magneto required at all for this plan, really? Why do they enlist Quicksilver for one mission and leave him for the other? Why aren't Parisians as freaked out by the appearance of mutants as they should be? The minute the film starts taking itself seriously is the minute it downshifts to the gear marked Yet Another Dark And Brooding Superhero Epic. It's all very well done, of course - the CGI is top-notch and the action sequences are frequently awe-inspiring - but not nearly enough to stop a viewer from asking such questions.
Overall, it must be said that, despite these what-could-have-been niggles, X-Men: Days Of Future Past is a perfectly competent comic book movie that delivers the goods and admirably so. From its uniformly excellent cast (McAvoy is especially good) to John Ottman's brass-laden score, this is your favourite restaurant serving up your favourite meal on an attractive platter. Don't expect the world from the condiments and sauces and you'll do just fine.
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