Fantastic Four (Movie Review)

Stylized titles need to go ahead and put themselves out of their own misery.

I come to bury the Fantastic Four, not to praise them.

Fantastic Four

Directed by: Josh Trank (Chronicle)

Produced by: Gregory Goodman, Simon Kinberg, Robert Kulzar, Hutch Parker, Matthew Vaughn

Screenplay by: Simon Kinberg, Jeremy Slater, Josh Trank

Based on: Fantastic Four  by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby

Genre: Superhero

Starring: Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell, Toby Kebbell, Reg E. Cathey, Tim Blake Nelson

Music by: Marco Beltrami & Philip Glass

Plot: In search of the key to unlocking the ever-elusive secrets of teleportation and interdimensional travel , Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) of the Baxter Foundation employs four young geniuses to seal the deal: Reed Richards (Miles Teller), Victor Von Doom (Yes they’re still calling him that…. Er, I mean, Toby Kebbell) and his own kids, Susan (Kate Mara) and Johnny (Michael B. Jordan). When the kids’ (Plus Reed’s childhood friend, Ben Grimm) experiment in the so-called “Planet Zero” (Because apparently, “Negative Zone” ,as it’s known in the comics, is too silly of a name for a movie where the main villain is called “Victor von Fucking Doom”) goes horribly wrong, the kids gain superhuman abilities. Reed gains the ability to stretch his body parts to abnormal lengths (Get your mind out of the gutter) Ben gets turned into a giant, supernaturally strong rock monster, Johnny gains the ability to set himself on fire and fly at will with no repercussions, Sue can turn invisible and use force fields and Victor von Bad Guy fucks off to the other dimension, goes insane, develops a power set vaguer than the Scarlet Witch, and decides to destroy the world, because whoever was rewriting this movie for the tenth time forgot to add a climax, and just picked the stock villain goal, regardless of whether it’s in the character’s nature or not.

He should’ve been named Victor Domashev. Come at me fanboys, I’m waiting.

And then, the good guys are spirited off to a secret government facility known as Area 57 (Because they couldn’t get the film rights to Area 51, apparently) where the government tries to weaponize them, because the Evil Government is Evil.

I can already feel the hatred flowing through me. God that feels good.

To say that Fantastic Four (Or if you’re lobotomized, Fant4stic) had a troubled production would be stating the obvious, at this point. At this point, those of us who tried to remain optimistic were hoping that it would be another case of persevering through adversity, Star Wars and Jaws style.

Well…. That shows what I fucking get for looking on the bright side. It’s all Nietzsche and self-hatred from here on out.

Come at me you beautiful motherfucker. I’m ready for your sweet, sweet nihilism all over me.

One controversial decision was the casting of Michael B. Jordan, a black man, as Johnny Storm, who is traditionally depicted as being a white man. I want to make myself abundantly clear about this: If you give the slightest shit about the Human Torch being black, you are likely racist, and I want you to leave. And if your retort to that is to point out the fact that I wouldn’t want Black Panther being played by a white man, then I strongly suggest euthanasia to avoid contaminating the gene pool further with your stupidity.

Michael B. Jordan isn’t the problem. None of the actors are. Every part is perfectly cast by greatly talented people, and they bring all they possibly can to this movie. In a parallel universe, we would have a FF movie that isn’t apparently being made by brain-damaged chimps with stump hands locked in a room with semi-functional typewriters. In that world, this cast is now being showered with praise instead of, well, I shudder to think of what horrible things are being said about the actors by overly emotional fanboys.

“HEY!!! These people don’t conform with societal expectations of racial dynamics in an American family! KILL THEM!!!”                                        -Idiots

All these supremely talented performers can’t save this movie from the aforementioned chimps with stump hands, though. Here’s an example of the stellar (Paraphrased) dialogue you can find in Fant4stic (Fuck, now I’m doing it):

Victor von Bad enough dude to save the president: “Do you think that maybe  the Earth really deserved to be saved? People are kind of the worst. That’s a conclusion I came to in my nonexistent character development!”

Susan: “Check out Dr. Doom over here!”

I don’t know about you, but I smell an Oscar!

In addition to the piss-poor dialogue and the lack of any character development whatsoever, the characters are bland and nondescript, with the screenwriters reducing their personalities to the faintest possible resemblance of their counterparts from the comics. Reed’s personality? “Smart guy”. Ben’s? “Sad, strong guy.” Johnny? “Angry guy.” Sue? “Girl.”Victor Von Holy shit some names should stay in the Sixties? Well… Let’s go ahead and talk about this bleached asshole of a villain.

God, he looks like the result of a one-night stand between a crash test dummy and C-3PO.

If somebody could please tell me how this snivelling emo loser who suddenly decides to destroy the world (For… Reasons) is supposed to be the pondering, dictatorial badass from the comics, that would be much appreciated.

While you’re at it, can somebody please tell me how this look is supposed to be equal to the comics in terms of awesomeness?

He looks like a blow-up doll made out of ballistics gel.

Dr. Doom isn’t the only thing that looks like shit. The visual effects are worse than any blockbuster movie of this day and age have any right to be. There’s one scene where Reed and Ben teleport a toy plane, and the ensuing flash looks like something made via Windows XP effect.

This game of solitary is more technologically advanced than the effects in Fantastic Four.

There were some complaints about the look of Ben Grimm after his new look was revealed as well, but I actually rather liked it. No one depiction of the thing is going to please everybody, but at least this time, he’s not just a guy in a rubber suit. There are definitely worse character designs out there.

He looks like the deformed son Ultron never told anybody about.

Even if those issues weren’t monumental, which they are, the movie would still be tanked by the fact that it’s a poorly edited, uneven backloaded mess. They should make this movie required viewing at film schools as an example of what to avoid at all costs when editing film. 20th Century Fox’s last-ditch efforts to salvage the mess Trank made and/or micromanage Trank to the point where he allegedly just gave up doesn’t pay off because the movie ambles along at a painfully slow pace, devoting it’s time to clunky character development and the occasional shitty joke. Then, in the last ten minutes or so, the filmmakers realize that “Oh shit! We totally forgot about the climax!” so they bring in Dr. Doom with next to no explanation, and we’re treated to a fight so overblown and lethargic that the audience just does not care anymore. And neither do the actors, for that matter. Reshoots probably don’t do much for your enthusiasm for working on a project.

Also, why do they not need they not need a special suit to survive in the Negative Zone (I’m not calling it fucking Planet Zero) during the climax, but earlier in the movie, they clearly need those suits to survive? And why do I expect logical thinking from the same people who think that Miles Teller and Jamie Bell look like high schoolers.

Overall: Even if it is the worst superhero movie since Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, at least Fant4stic has inspired me to write my own FF screenplay, if only because I’m one hundred percent certain that it wouldn’t end up as badly as this one.

Rating: 2/10

He looks like the Vision wearing a giant, skintight condom.

Kingsman: The Secret Service (Movie Review)

You know, part of me knew that the biggest threat to the world would make a habit of wearing a stylised Yankees cap.

How bizarre is it that on Valentine’s Day weekend, when moviegoing couples are looking for a movie that they can snuggle to/furiously make out to, that the supposed “romantic” movie is glorified Twilight fanfiction that is getting absolutely demolished by the critics, and the superior film is, in fact,  a movie from the director of Kick-Ass that includes forced amputations, profuse swearing, and spontaneous cranial combustion. Funny how that works.

Kingsman: The Secret Service

Directed by: Matthew Vaughn

Produced by: Adam Bohling, David Reed, Matthew Vaughn

Written by: Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn

Genres: Spy, Action, Comedy

Based on: The Secret Service by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons

Starring: Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, Samuel L. Jackson, Mark Strong, Michael Caine, Sophie Cookson, Sofia Boutella, Mark Hamill

Music by: Henry Jackman and Matthew Margeson

Plot: Look up a picture definition of  the word “directionless” in the dictionary, and it’s very likely that you’ll find a photo of Gary “Eggsy” Unwin (No word yet on why the bloody hell he’s nicknamed “Eggsy”).  Eggsy, who was raised by his sad sack of a mother after his father was cut down in his prime. Now living in a shitty part of London with his mom, baby sister and thuggish jerkwad of a stepfather, he has flunked out of the Marines, and has done absolutely nothing in the ways of capitalizing on his talent as a gymnast and high intelligence. One day, after his penchant for juvenile delinquency gets him into serious trouble, Eggs meets a mysterious man in an impeccable suit named Harry Hart (Colin Firth) who takes the troubled land under his wing and trains him to be a Kingsman. That is, a member of a British spy organisation who engages ultra-dangerous threats to world security, while also dressed in the most badass way possible: tip to toe in the finest suits known to mankind.

“Well, now that my wardrobe’s settled, time to go murder some terrorists!!!”

 While he doesn’t get as much acclaim or publicity as some of his contemporaries, I believe that Matthew Vaughn is one of the finer writer/directors working today. After his directorial debut in 2004’s Layer Cake, he has gone on to make more solid contributions to movies, including directing of my favourite movies of all time, Kick-Ass, the CPR to a dying franchise (X-Men: First Class) and contributing the storyline to one of my favourite movies of last year, X-Men: Days of Future Past. His appealing blend of snappy dialogue, a often uneven mix of action and comedy, and stylistic, brutal ultraviolence (Toned down for X-Men, obviously) has appealed to many, many people, including yours truly. That’s why I was so hyped for this movie after the early reviews came in.

What was my reaction to the first few minutes of the movie? I don’t know if  I’ve ever been so underwhelmed.

The movie opens with a scene that is so poorly CGI’d that it took me right out of the movie. All of the action takes place off-screen and, all in all, it just feels like a giant cop-out. After that initial scene, the movie does improve, but the whole first act is plagued by pacing problems that were pretty annoying for me. The first act of the movie It wasn’t that bad, but it was certainly pretty off-putting.

Which is too bad, because if it wasn’t for the overly slow first act, this would possibly surpass Kick-Ass as my favourite Matthew Vaughn movie.

Your title is safe, Nicolas Cage/Adam West hybrid.

As unspectacular as the first act is, the middle and end are downright fantastic. At no point did I feel that the movie dragged, and I was genuinely interested and focused on what the characters were doing. Sure, one would have preferred that I feel this way throughout the whole movie, but things being the way they are, I’d say that the ball-busting action and quick pace of the rest of the movie more than makes up for the shortcomings of the first act.

Vaughn has always been a terrific action director, and Kingsman is definitely no exception. While he does use some shaky-cam, a technique that I despise more than anybody, he uses it very well, when it makes sense in the movie, and not purely for some bullshit stylistic purpose. Every action scene in this movie is so well done by the actors and director. It’s not so often that I catch myself replaying action scenes in my head because of their sheer badassery, but this film had me trying to re-enact the damn things at home. I was pretending to be Colin Firth, of all people. Who the hell would’ve thought that???

Probably the same people who thought the coolest character in Kick-Ass would be a ten-year old.

Speaking of Kick-Ass, Henry Jackman does the score for this movie along with Matthew Margeson, and they do just a terrific job. I think the score for Kick-Ass is one of the more unfairly ignored ones, and this movie’s music is even better. Not bad for a guy who made his debut as a film score composer in a straight-to-DVD Kung Fu Panda short film.

The dialogue in this movie, among other things, makes playful fun of the old British spy movies of the 60’s and 70’s, and isn’t afraid to reference them and other movies, frequently making reference to movies as far ranging from 007 to My Fair Lady. Being the Tarantino lover that I am, I can appreciate pop culture references, as long as they seem natural and well-placed. Not hard to do, but it’s done very well here.

Kingsman features a cast of veterans (Firth, Jackson, Strong,Caine, Hamill) that all do very well, although the standout is Firth who, as I mentioned before, is not necessarily one actor that we’d imagine to secretly be a badass action star, but hey, I guess that just goes to show how stupid we all are.

Setting aside, of course, the famous scene in Bridget Jones’s Diary where he brutally decapitates Hugh Grant.

Samuel L. Jackson is gleefully over-the-top as a megalomaniacal Bill Gates/Spike Lee/Jules Winnfield/Whatever his character in Unbroken was, and is honestly really damn entertaining, which, at this point, is par for the course for him. The comparisons to Kick-Ass just keep coming as Mark Strong has a supporting role in this movie, although he’s actually a hero in Kingsman. Shocking, I know, but he’s actually really funny in this role. Michael Caine is always great, and there’s no point to me talking about that, while Mark Hamill has a smaller supporting role. I was kinda anxiously worried for his performance, knowing that his return as Luke Skywalker is fast approaching, but he does a great job as well, although he reminded me more of the Joker than a Jedi. Eh, I’ll take it.

Another great performance comes from Taron Egerton, in his first ever role, as Eggsy. I hope we get to see a lot more of this guy in the future. He just has this aura of charisma about him that seems like it could work to his benefit. Sofia Boutella is another newcomer playing the part of Samuel Jackson’s right-hand woman, and really seems to be channeling Jaws or Oddjob because, well, fucking look at her!!!

Lt. Dan can go fuck himself.

Newcomer Sophie Cookson is also in this movie, and, while her character isn’t as interesting as, say, the girl with cutlery for feet, she’s a perfectly good character. On that somewhat lukewarm note, what didn’t I like about this movie?

Well, as I mentioned before, the first act of the movie is not all that impressive. Also, some of the action, spectacular as it is, hinges on the unrealistic side, but then again, I’d be a damn hypocrite to rag on that after cheering on Hit-Girl massacre a room full of armed adults who can’t aim for shit despite being experienced mobsters. It’s still distracting as hell though. Also, this is more of a pet peeve of mine, but they do that thing where the protagonist cloaks his torso in some form of bulletproof shield while the idiot bad guys don’t think to shoot at his legs. That’s stupid. What are they, cops?

If you need me, I’ll be cowering somewhere.

Also, I find it weird that for all the violence in this movie, there’s little to no blood. There’s actually a scene where somebody gets sliced in half right down the middle, and just about no blood was actually spilled. It’s not a major complaint, but I would’ve liked some more over-the-top, fake looking CGI blood. At least it makes sense in this movie.

Others? Not so much.

Overall: If it wasn’t for a super disappointing first act, this would stand as one of the better spy movies, and a solid contender for one of the better movies of 2015. As it stands though, being a merely great movie ain’t bad. Bring on a sequel, please!

Rating: 8/10

Now, if only Matthew Vaughn could stick around for sequels more often…

Kick-Ass 2 (Movie Review)

Oh yeah, he’s hating every minute of this.

Holy crap, could it be I’m actually posting multiple articles in the same week?! Man, proactivity is such an alien feeling to me! Or, y’know, it would be if I hadn’t written this in April and just now realized I had forgotten to post it. Actually, wouldn’t that still be proactivity? Because I was planning ahead for the future or-ah, screw it.

(Spoiler Alert: Spoilers for Kick-Ass are included in this review, so if you haven’t watched that movie yet, and you plan to (Which you should) do it now. Like right now. I’ll wait. Otherwise, go right on ahead.) 

  Kick-Ass 2

Directed by: Jeff Wadlow

Produced by: Adam Bohling, Tarquin Peck, Matthew Vaughn, Brad Pitt, David Reid

Screenplay by: Jeff Wadlow

Based on: Kick-Ass 2 and Hit-Girl by Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr.

Sequel to: Kick-Ass (2010)

Genres: Superhero, Dark comedy, Action

Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Chloë Grace Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jim Carrey,   Morris Chestnut, John Leguizamo, Donald Faison, Lindy Booth, Clark Duke

Music by: Henry Jackman, Matthew Margeson

 

Plot: Now that New York City is patrolled by real-life superheroes, inspired by the world’s first real-life superhero, Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), the Wet-suit Crusader himself decides to retire from crime-fighting, trying to return to his regular life as high-school senior Dave Lizewski. However, he didn’t count on high school life being boring as shit in comparison to taking down mob bosses. Un-retiring, he recruits the help of Mindy Macready  (Chloë Grace Moretz) to help him get properly trained (As, let’s face it, he’s a really crappy fighter). Mindy is doing some adjustments of her own after the death of her father, the costumed vigilante, Big Daddy, and her subsequent adoption by his dad’s old cop buddy, Marcus (Morris Chestnut). When Marcus discovers that Mindy has continued to fight crime as Hit-Girl, he makes her promise to give it up, leaving Kick-Ass tutor-less. Desperate for some fellow superhero company, Dave hooks up with a superhero team called “Justice Forever”, led by an ex-Mafia, born-again Christian bad-ass named Sal Bertolinni, who goes by the uber patriotic moniker of Colonel Stars & Stripes.

Meanwhile, on Long Island, Chris D’Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) has kind of lost his damn mind after the death of his father at Kick-Ass’s hands. After the accidental death of his mother, Chris decides to adopt another costumed persona in order to take revenge on Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl. Forfeiting his superhero identity of Red Mist, Chris dresses up in his deceased mother’s bondage gear and renames himself “The Motherfucker.”

Seriously.

I sincerely believe that the first Kick-Ass is one of the top 10 superhero movies of all time, and I’m not exactly one who skips out on watching superhero movies. It might not have been as mind-blowingly original as some people claim it to be, but it’s still one of my five favourite movies of all time. It kind of hit the perfect balance between lighthearted, foul-mouthed humour and gleeful bloodletting. It almost got to the point where there were some minor tonal issues, but hey, it managed to pull off the contrast without looking like a total mess.

Unfortunately, that’s this movie’s biggest failing: Tone. The first movie had its serious moments, sure, but for the most part, it took so much joy in what it was doing, at once satirizing and paying respects to the superhero genre. This movie seems a little lost. It keeps more or less the same type of goofy, vulgar humour, and that’s okay, because who gives a shit about swear words? No, it’s when the movie tries to be dark and gritty that it falls its face. I mean, the first movie wasn’t exactly a Disney movie…

Okay, maybe that was a crappy comparison, but still…

… But it never took violence seriously, it was all very cartoonish and again that’s okay. It worked in the context of the film. This movie takes it to a whole new level of carnage though. The blood flows freely, like before, but in addition to that, people’s necks are getting broken on-screen, people are getting hung, and there’s an attempted rape at one point (Easily the worst scene in the movie). It can feel really jarring and takes me right out of the movie. It’s just another example of people watching The Dark Knight or The Empire Strikes Back and mindlessly assuming that “darker” necessarily means better. This is how you get movies like Revenge of the Sith or, indeed, Kick-Ass 2, although the latter movie is still infinitely superior to the hunk of shit that was Revenge of the Sith.

My only other serious problem with the movie is that, aside from Hit-Girl, there really is an unsettling lack of good female characters. Maybe I’m looking too much into, but it seems to me that, again, aside from Mindy Macready, all the women are either being sexually objectified (Cough, Night Bitch, cough) or are total bitches (Katie, Chris’s mom, Mindy’s classmates). And while we’re on the topic of female character, what exactly was the point of the character of Night Bitch? She is a completely pointless character and her replacing Katie (Who incidentally, was a much better character in the first movie) as the primary love interest boggles my mind.

To the movie’s credit, it does a lot of things right. Replacing Matthew Vaughn as director is screenwriter Jeff Wadlow, and he does a serviceable (Albeit inferior to Vaughn) job of moving the action along, even if he makes all-too frequent use of goddamn shaky-cam. The dialogue, while not as clever, funny or well-written in general as the first Matthew Vaughn/Jane Goldman script, still does the job and contributes laugh (And frequent profanity).

Christopher Mintz-Plasse bored me, quite frankly, as the Motherfucker. It just seemed too over-the-top for somebody whose edgiest role before this movie was McLovin’. He wasn’t bad, I suppose, but I just didn’t buy it as much as I bought his more meek, cowardly character in the previous movie. As for Jim Carrey, he doesn’t have anything to be ashamed of in this movie, despite his cutting all ties with it due to excessive violence. He was clearly having tons of fun as Colonel Stars & Stripes and got to deliver some of the more bad-ass lines in the entire movie. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, while not quite as charming as he was in the first film, is still the only possible person who could play Kick-Ass, and is suitably dorky as Dave Lizewski.

Let’s be real though. The real star of the show isn’t Taylor-Johnson or Carrey, but child actress Chloë Grace Moretz as the savage Hit-Girl. Even if there were some choices taken with her character that I felt weakened her character (Cough, love interest, cough), Moretz is just the biggest bad-ass as Hit-Girl. I never thought I would ever declare a child actor to be irreplaceable in a role, but hey, there’s a first time for everything. This girl is gonna be huge.

Plus, “ability to wield bladed weapons” is really high up there on my list of turn-ons.

Oh give me a break, she’s only two months younger than me.

Overall: It’s not for everybody, and I’ll be damned if I’d let my hypothetical children watch it, but if you don’t mind bloody, violent comedies, and are prepared to maybe watch something that doesn’t quite know when to tone it down, than Kick-Ass 2 should prove enjoyable enough. Maybe hold off on eating while watching, though.

Rating: 6.5/10

The comic is total shit though. Just so you know.

 

X-Men: Days of Future Past (Movie Review)

Personally, I just really wanna see more of this guy. What a boss.

Let’s face it folks: We live in an age of film where the only two superhero franchises that are really causing widespread debate are Marvel Studio’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, for all the right reasons, and Warner Bros. ‘ DC Cinematic Universe for, let’s say, less commendable reasons.

“Dawn of Justice”? Holy God.

Often lost in the discussion, however, is the X-Men film series from 20th Century Fox, especially after it faded from the public’s collective memory after the massive turd that was The Last Stand and the final nail in the coffin that was X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The series has been reestablishing itself, though, with a great origin story in X-Men: First Class and the likeable action movie that was The Wolverine. In 2013, a massive publicity campaign was launched for the next movie in the series, the $225 million dollar budgeted X-Men: Days of Future Past, which incorporates the original actors from the original trilogy and the newbies from First Class. How did it work out? Well, at the very least, it ensured that Shawn Ashmore and Halle Berry remained employed for a bit.

 X-Men: Days of Future Past

Directed by: Bryan Singer

Produced by: Lauren Shuler Donner, Bryan Singer, Simon Kinberg, Hutch Parker

Screenplay by: Simon Kinberg

Story by: Simon Kinberg, Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman

Based on: Days of Future Past by Chris Claremont and Josh Byrne

Sequel to: X-Men: First Class, X-Men: The Last Stand, The Wolverine

Series: X-Men (Seventh installment)

Genre: Superhero

Starring: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas  Hoult, Peter Dinklage, Evan Peters, Ellen Page, Halle Berry, Shawn Ashmore, Omar Sy,  Daniel Cudmore, Fan Bingbing, Booboo Stewart, Adam Canto, Josh Helman, Mark Camacho,                                                                                  Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen

Plot: The year: 2023. In this dystopian future, the mutants have been all but wiped out by murderous robots known as Sentinels, who were created in 1973 by a military scientist named Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), whose Sentinel program was largely criticized by the American government until his assassination by rogue mutant insurgent Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), which convinced the people of the world to adopt it. After Mystique’s capture, her DNA was replicated for use by the Sentinels, who gained Mystique’s shape-shifting powers, making them into essentially the perfect mutant-hunting killers. After years of resistance , the only mutants left include Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), Magneto (Ian McKellen), Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page), who has the power to send another person’s consciousness back in time to deliver warnings.

Realizing that it’s not long before the Sentinels find their hideout in China and extinguish the mutants once and for all, he decides to send Wolverine back to 1973 in order to stop the assassination of Bolivar Trask from ever happening. In order to do so, Wolverine must team up with the younger version of the deceased Beast (Nicholas Hoult), the younger version of Magneto (Michael Fassbender) who has been incarcerated in the Pentagon as the suspected murder of President Kennedy, and the younger version of Charles Xavier, who, now jaded and cynical,  has shut down his X-Men and regained the use of his legs through the use of a serum, at the expense of his telekinetic powers.

I’ve gone on and on about how recent superhero movies have seemed to commit the same error of making themselves much more convoluted then they really need to be. Both of the superhero movies released this year prior to Days of Future Past (Captain America: The Winter Soldier and The Amazing Spider-Man 2) , while both at least enjoyable, suffered from this problem, although one of them definitely handled this problem a bit better than the other.

Can you guess which one?

And you’d assume that a movie like this one, involving time travel, of all things, would be no different. However you would be wrong. Stop being so presumptuous.

At no point did the film ever lose me through convoluted dialogue or sloppy editing. Nor was it full of elaborate, pretentious dialogue that requires constant hand-holding (Cough-cough. House of Cards). When you’re making a movie that features Wolverine beating the shit out of a bunch of dickheads, you don’t need to mix in a bunch of convoluted crap in to make it feel like the Dark Knight. This movie holds off on that, which is greatly appreciated. All you need to know about the rules of time travel in this universe is neatly explained right from the get-go.

The movie also maintains a crisp pace throughout its’ relatively short run-time of 130 minutes (Ten minutes shorter than the new Spider-man). I never got bored, or felt my mind wander as boring dialogue took over. The movie finds a nice balance between witty dialogue, dramatic exposition and kick-ass action scenes. Sure, it had the minimal amounts of superhero cheese, but hey, you’re not watching Dark Knight. A little bit of cheese every now and then isn’t going to kill you.

Well, not right away, anyways.

Speaking of the dialogue, the movie hits the perfect balance between dark and funny, with most of the humor being provided by Hugh Jackman (Once again excellent as everyone’s favourite Canadian rage-monster), who provides surprisingly well-done quips and banter. and Evan Peters, who easily steals the show as everyone’s favourite new  X-Man, Quicksilver. Peters, otherwise known for his roles in American Horror Story  and Kick-Ass (Before he wisely jumped the ship of the latter franchise) brings his knack for comic timing to the table, which works all too well with the character of Peter Maximoff, who ends up having what could possibly be one o the best scenes in the entire movie.

My one problem with the character of Quickilver is the way that he is left behind by Wolverine and his berry band o’ mutants once they’re done using him. Couldn’t they have used somebody who can move at light-speed? I feel like that would’ve been extremely useful.

As for the rest of the giant cast, there isn’t really a weak link among the bunch. Jackman and Peters are great before, as mentioned, and Booboo Stewart, Shawn Ashmore, Halle Berry, Ellen Page, Fan Bingbing and Omar Sy and company, while they may not have all that much lines, do what is required of them, which is, look cool in action scenes, and stand around stoically.  Patrick Stewart an Ian McKellen (Old Xavier and old Magneto) are great in their limited scenes in this movie, and Peter Dinklage does good work as Bolivr Trask even if I was a bit shaken by him using his natural American accent instead of the English one he uses in Game of Thrones.

The best performances in the movie, however, clearly belong to the characters returning from First Class. James McAvoy is downright fantastic as the cynical younger version of Charles Xavier, as is Michael Fassbender as the radical mutant idealist known as Magneto. The scenes between the two can be downright heartbreaking, as the two old friends continuously butt heads over their extreme ideological differences, but remain painfully aware of the bond they share as former brothers in arms.

Nicholas Hoult (Beast) is good as well, but his real-life girlfriend, Jennifer Lawrence is pretty damn great. Nobody’s gonna scream “Oscar” this time around, but she did a fine job considering that a) I didn’t find her too be that good in First Class and b) Her character, Mystique, is disappointingly one-note this time around, and basically serves as a plot device to move the story forward.

And hey, when it comes to one-note characters, you could do a lot worse than casting the most bankable movie star on planet Earth right now.

 

Overall: Side-stepping the many dangers that come with making a large-scale superhero movie like this, Days of Future Past is an action-packed, dark, and surprisingly funny film, and is comparable to The Avengers when it comes to sheer enjoyment level. It’s not exactly Dark Knight (The best superhero movie ever), and The Avengers is still superior in my mind, but hey, when Wolverine is tearing a bunch of punk-ass motherfuckers to shreds, who needs that “Why so serious” bullshit?

Rating: 9.5/10

And, for what it’s worth,  the Sentinels now top my list of movie robots to be fucking terrified of.