X-Men: Days of Future Past

In the not-too-distant future, mutants are being hunted down and destroyed by robots called Sentinels. Created by a scientist named Bolivar Trask, these Sentinels are able to adapt to any powers/abilities the mutant species has, rendering them almost invincible if a large group of them attack. After years of war between humanity and mutants, only a handful of mutants are left to survive. These few - which include Professor X, Magneto, Wolverine, Kitty Pride, Colossus, among others - are left to constantly be on the run and use the combination of all their powers to stay alive. After running away for so long, their final hope rests in Kitty Pride's ability to send someone's consciousness back in time to stop the creation of the Sentinels. Since the trip back in time is dangerous, Wolverine is the only mutant able to survive the trip. Wolverine is tasked to find the shapeshifter Mystique before she assassinates Bolivar Trask and ignites the war between humans and mutants, and to bring the disbanded X-Men back together.

Most, if not all, of the recent reviews I've read have said that X-Men: Days of Future Past (DoFP) is the best X-Men film to date. I'm not quite sure I would go that far, yet it did manage to exceed my expectations. It's not that I was expecting the film to tank; on the contrary, I was hoping director Bryan Singer would succeed in making an engaging X-Men film that would bring the franchise back around and get back to what made the original trilogy so good. It was great to see a few of my favorite mutants from previous films back on the big screen. I also loved the scenes with Quicksilver. There's one scene involving him, Wolverine and Professor X where they are breaking Magneto out of prison for assassinating President John F. Kennedy that is visually a really neat sequence because it gave the audience a small taste of what Quicksilver can do with his powers. It's been rumored that Quicksilver will be back in X-Men: Apocalypse. I hope so, I would love to see more of him and his powers.

Despite really enjoying this latest installment in the franchise, however, I'm still inclined to believe that X2 is the best in the X-Men franchise. X2 had a great blend of action and drama, and a way for us to get to know each of the characters without making it seem like anything was rushed or characters were underdeveloped.

My biggest issues involved the story itself and how the continuity errors were "fixed". Bryan Singer promised fans that this latest installment would fix problems from the previous installments. While X-Men: DoFP did fix quite a bit, there were still some things that were either left unfixed from earlier films (or at least it seemed to be unfixed),  as well as problems created by the new timeline due to the events of DoFP. I will say though, that the ending - without giving too much away - did seem like it was trying to make a completely clean slate and create an entirely new timeline for future installments. I hope this is the case, because if there is anything that is still canon from the original trilogy or from the prequels, then there could be some problems.

Another thing I had trouble with was how some of the mutants were treated. In the future timeline, the audience met a couple new mutants, including Bishop, Sunspot, Warpath and Blink; yet there wasn't enough time to flesh out their characters so it felt like they were wasted. I'm hoping we will see them again for upcoming installments.

Overall, Days of Future Past was a lot of fun, and I'm really happy that the franchise seems to be back on track to become great again. I'm looking forward to seeing what will happen when X-Men: Apocalypse comes out May 27, 2016.