Movie reviews: X-Men: Days of Future Past
Everyone knows the deal with time-travel movies: whatever you do when you go back into the past, don’t do anything that might alter the future. tears up the time-travel rule book when the last of the mutant superheroes led by Professor X (Patrick Stewart), facing extinction in their war with humanity, takes the nuclear option of travelling back in time to change the course of history. At least, Logan’s (Hugh Jackman) consciousness travels back in time, to 1973, in a bid to prevent Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) from being captured and her DNA used by Dr Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) to create the Sentinels, the species currently wiping out the mutants, who are at war with one another, as the younger Professor X (James McAvoy) tries to prevent Erik (Michael Fassbender) from becoming the megalomaniac Magneto. If that sounds a tad convoluted, well, brace yourself: a diagram of the various story arcs in Days of Future Past would not look entirely dissimilar to a plate of meatball spaghetti. That said, and providing you have even a rudimentary knowledge of the X-Men universe, director Bryan Singer and writers Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman and Simon Kinberg do a very good job of maintaining the twin narratives of past and future events, whilst also having a lot of fun with the 1970s era and tossing in plenty of in-jokes to lighten the tone. In a very crowded cast — co-stars Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, Nicholas Hoult, Ellen Page and Anna Paquin all jostle for screen-time — Michael Fassbender provides the stand-out performance as the ruthless Erik/Magneto.
