With the largest cast ever for a superhero movie and a gargantuan budget to match, X-Men: Days of Future Past will either be one of the best or worst things to happen to the genre.
With at least 23 superheroes and around twelve other supporting cast members, the seventh installment in the X-Men franchise is probably too large to be bloated and unsustainable. The huge cast is justified to an extent—Days of Future Past takes place in two different time periods, the late 1960s and the post-apocalyptic future. The film is a sequel to the highly acclaimed reboot of the X-Men franchise X-men: First Class, which took place in the early 1960s and features younger versions of flagship X-men like Magneto, Professor X, Mystique and Beast. The film was a blend of historical fiction and traditional superhero action complemented by an excellent ensemble cast. X-Men: Days of Future Past will have a tough time topping First Class, but it certainly hasn’t spared any extravagance.
Days of Future Past is based on the titular comic book storyline, which was published in 1981 and was written by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, two of the most acclaimed X-Men writers in history. Days of Future Past is one of the most iconic X-Men storylines and has had a huge impact on the Marvel Universe, introducing popular characters such as the powerful telekinetic Rachel Summers. The story drew parallels between mutants in the far future and the Jews in the Holocaust; both groups were mercilessly persecuted (the mutants are killed in droves by robotic Sentinels, which parallels the Nazi oppression the Jews suffered) and are imprisoned in concentration camps. The young X-man Shadowcat’s future self and her young self in the present swap bodies in order to prevent the nightmarish future from becoming reality.
Director Brian Singer (who directed the mediocre X-Men and the just plain bad X2: X-Men United) has taken many liberties with the story to create the plot of X-Men: Days of Future Past. To capitalize on the character’s popularity, Wolverine (not Shadowcat) is sent to the past. His job there is far more difficult than Shadowcat’s in the comics; in addition to preventing the assassination that Shadowcat thwarted in the comic books, Wolverine must also convince Magneto and Professor X (who became enemies in the climax of First Class) to join forces and defeat the villainous Trask Industries; Trask Industries, which was not involved in the comic book storyline, produces the Sentinels and is headed by the cunning Bolivar Trask, played by Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage.
Singer has already gotten some criticism for the movie’s costumes, which were released a couple months ago. While some of the costumes (like the Sentinels) were definitely intriguing, most of them were the all-black uniforms Singer used for his previous films. One of the deviations from the monochromatic model, Quicksilver’s costume, is a metallic version of what a teenager might wear in the 1980s or 1990s. The success of this film hinges on Singer’s ability to marry the grandiose plot of Days of Future Past with the character-driven historical sci-fi of First Class. Given Singer’s less than stellar track record with X-men movies, one cannot help but be pessimistic.
Fans will certainly enjoy seeing their favorite X-men on the big screen regardless of the film’s quality. Even if the film’s plot falls flat, filmgoers can enjoy what will certainly be one of the most colorful cinematic implosions in recent memory.
