Movie Review: X-Men: Days of Future Past

The X-Men aside from Wolverine all suck. They’re a ragtag group of heroes that aren’t good enough for their own individual movies and can’t even make a decent film together. Reports have said that Hugh Jackman wants Wolverine to be included in the Avengers. I can’t blame him. The rest of these want-to-be’s are holding him down. Given that, my expectations weren’t very high. I went to see it for you guys.

We’ve convinced ourselves for years that it couldn’t get worse than X-Men: Last Stand only to be smacked in the face with a declaration from Bryan Singer: “I’m better than Brett Ratner. He can’t do anything better than me. I bet I can make a worse movie.” Singer does just that, putting award-winning talent on the screen and giving them a script that was written by someone with no brain matter. Fan-favorite Hugh Jackman does nothing fun as Wolverine for the movie’s entire two-hour and ten minute running time. He’s the one we care about people! We don’t care about any of the other guys. They’re all bottom feeders compared to Wolverine and you just took your main character and all of the fun, enjoyment and action that he provides out of the lineup. That’s like the Minnesota Vikings benching Adrian Peterson! You just don’t do that!

We’ve got time traveling and all of the common complications that come with it but it’s okay because Singer decided to just throw those under the rug. Why would you do that? I mean, I think it’s already pretty lame that this is trying to be a remake of X-Men: First Class. Magneto wants to kill the humans, Professor Xavier wants to protect them, Mystique still hasn’t made up her mind after forever. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, disappointing action scene with miraculous character changes, roll credits.

The only entertainment I got out of this was from two of the newcomers, Evan Peters as Quicksilver and Fan Bingbing as Blink. The action through the teleportation portals was really impressive as were the special effects used with Quicksilver but neither of them were in the movie that long because we had to make room for more bickering between all of our one-dimensional characters in the past that no one wants to see for the sixth time.

The acting isn’t lousy but there’s no one I really care about here. I’m sick of Magneto acting like he’s the ruler of the world. I’m tired of Mystique never making up her mind and being stupid. I’m tired of Professor Xavier being a useless pacifist and I’m tired of Storm in general in these movies. I’m tired of these people and the more I watch them the more I hate everyone that’s not named Wolverine or Beast. These don’t even feel like sequels, they just feel like remakes of the same film and no character has made any progress as a person since the last time we saw them. There’s no character development, no likability, no consistency, nothing.

That’s a real problem when your dialogue-to-action ratio is 80-20. If you’re going to make the majority of your film dialogue, don’t make misleading trailers that clearly promote something else. The only thing happening here is the advancement of the plot and it was already a loosely knit plot to begin with before you add the shaky dialogue. Given all of this, I don’t feel like I’m being unfair about this movie or any of the X-Men films for that matter. They’re not vivid or potent products. They’re just…meh.

This one they wanted to get out of the “meh” and I can appreciate that but this was just not the pitch to use if you were trying to get out of the doghouse. This was more of a pitch to use if you were trying to get into the outhouse.

Once again, if you’re new to my blog,  I’ve always ranked movies on a scale of 0-100 (I don’t know why, I just always have). Here’s the grading scale.

 90-100  It’s a great movie and definitely one worth buying. (Godzilla, Secretariat, Prisoners, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Captain America: The Winter Soldier)

80-89   It was a pretty good movie and definitely one worth seeing, but it doesn’t quite scratch my top ten percentile. (The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Young Guns, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, Spider-Man 3, Divergent)

70-79   It’s okay but I’ve seen better. It has its moments, but it has its flaws, too. (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, 300, Flyboys, Dawn of the Dead, Captain America: The First Avenger)

60-69   It’s got plenty wrong with it but I still got enjoyment out of this one. (Speed, Godzilla(1998), The Incredible Hulk, Disaster Movie, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story)

50-59   This movie isn’t intolerable but it’s not blowing my mind either. I’m trying really hard to get some sort of enjoyment out of this. (The Starving Games, You’re Next, Thor, Full Metal Jacket, Alien Resurrection)

40-49   This movie is just mediocre. It’s not doing anything other than the bare minimal, so morbidly boring that sometimes I’m actually angry I watched this. (A Haunted House, 300: Rise of an Empire, Cowboys and Aliens, Serendipity, Alien)

30-39   Definitely worse than mediocre, the 30′s ironically define the 1930′s, full of depression, lack of accomplishments, poverty and just so dumb. (Stonados, Redemption, Pride and Prejudice, The Contract)

20-29   What did I just watch? Cliches, stupidity, nothingness, did I mention stupidity? Just…wow. (Thor: The Dark World, The Sum of All Fears)

0-19      Watching this movie resulted in one or more of the following: seizure, loss of brain cells, falling asleep/unconsciousness, feel you wasted your time/day, accomplished nothing for you, left the movie knowing less about it then you did going into it, constantly asking yourself why you came to see this movie, or near-death experience. In short, staring at a wall was just as entertaining as watching this movie. This movie deserved a sticker or a label that said, “WARNING: EXTREME AMOUNT OF SUCKAGE.” (Open Grave, Alien 3, Dark Fury, Midnight Cowboy)

My score for X-Men: Days of Future Past: 27.

Similar to The Amazing Spider-Man 2, X-Men: Days of Future Past promised fans an action feature and instead gave fans something entirely different. While The Amazing Spider-Man 2 gave us an enthralling romance, X-Men: Days of Future Past gave us boring dialogue, an overly complicated plot and lightweight characters to make audiences care far less for an X-Men film than previously thought humanly possible.