A fascinating shift has occurred in recent years that’s seen finite stories become more commonplace on television (even if they take the extended form of five seasons of Breaking Bad), while blockbusters increasingly embrace a more open-ended style of storytelling. Whereas a film like The Dark Knight was distinctly the middle chapter of a trilogy, there’s now seemingly no end in sight for any of the superhero series dominating the box office.
If it’s destined to continue in perpetuity, at least the X-Men franchise has one of comics’ richest fictional histories to draw inspiration from. Here, director Bryan Singer tells the epic tale of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) being dispatched from a dystopian future back to 1974 in order to keep shapeshifter Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from putting cataclysmic events into motion. To accomplish this, he must convince adversaries Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) to temporarily put aside their differences.
Whereas Singer once seemed primarily drawn to the subtext affixed to these outsider heroes, the emphasis here is squarely on super-powered spectacle that, refreshingly, doesn’t give a damn about being grounded in reality. The result is a visual feast that invites dozen of mutants to take their turn at centre stage. One moment we’re watching a jailbreak inventively shot from the perspective of a Mercury-quick speedster (Evan Peters), the next we’re witnessing Magneto sail through the skies on an uprooted RFK Stadium. Ambitious in its scope and accomplished in its execution, Days of Future Past makes a convincing argument for tuning in for the next exciting episode.
