#m:x-men

To say that the newest outing of the X-men movie franchise redeems the sins of past movies is a statement that falls far right of the mark. But it is a statement that I've seen tossed around a little too much, lately. This film is more than just an elastoplast for the ills of previous attempts (*cough*X3*cough*) at big blockbuster mutant events; it is a fun, witty, and engaging film in its own right.

If I had never seen another X-men film before, could I have enjoyed this one? Probably not. But despite that homework requirement that you have watched at least X1 and First Class, this remains a smart and challenging film which utilises the wonderful metaphors of the Mutant X gene to their full potential.While of course we all know that the idea sprang from a need for origin stories outside of nuclear fallout and radioactive spiders, it has come to represent much more than that, and time and time again allowed writers and artists to explore the constant western fear of the "other." This time around, that fear has lead to the development of advanced robots, the Sentinels, which identify and destroy mutants in order to contain the threat they pose. 

Anyone familiar with the X-Men Adventures cartoon from childhood will remember those hulking machines in their red-and-violet colour scheme. Well, now they've had a serious makeover, but they're doing a bit of a better job. The Sentinels have driven mutant kind and any human sympathisers underground and into death-camp-like prisons. Enter Professor X and his ever-changing unit of fantastical X-men.

I'm not going to deal with any of the science of this movie, because well, I'm not all too sure the writers tried that either - but who cares, it's a comic-book movie. We're not meant to be able to understand it. Interestingly, when we meet them, both Hank and Charles Xavier are using their allotment of crazy science to suppress their powers. Hank simply hides his, while the professor's story is a much more painful look at the denial of disability in the mind of the patient, often overlooked in modern media. But of course, take from it what you will.

Beside a wonderful treatment of character development, Days of Future Past tied up many of the loose threads left in First Class and X3 - in the latter case mostly by erasure - but the clean slate of the ending provides us with a happy springboard for other films. We no longer have to wonder about JFK, either, so that's pretty helpful, right? Oh, and you might want to enjoy the scenes with X-men's wonderfully funny, quirky, Quicksilver while we've got them. I have a feeling that if Disney get hold of the rights for these movies, we won't see all too much more of him. This is an excellent film, and a brave in ways its predecessors could only hope of. Go see it.