X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

Know what's always bugged me about the premise of X-Men?  Most superheroes get their powers either by virtue of some benevolent accident or by being some alien/science experiment/technological nightmare.  The X-Men are supposedly mutants -humans given powers by the random mutation of normal human DNA.

I guess I can accept that except for one thing -why are all the powers so easily weaponized?  Wolverine can't be killed, Magneto controls metal with his mind, Cyclops shoots lasers from his eyes, and so on.  But given the nature of mutation, shouldn't the grand majority of mutants have either completely useless or even harmful abilities?  For every Professor X who can read other people's thoughts shouldn't there be a Really Bad Gambler Guy who can't help broadcasting his thoughts to others?  I would think the ability to drink used motor oil and convert it to ammonia would be a more common ability than the power to levitate objects by thought.

While I'm on a roll, here are some other great "X-Men backup squad" abilities:

• The Toaster: can instantly convert Italian bread into toast points ready to dip in sunny side up eggs.
• The Termite: able to reduce and soften wooden objects by causing instant rot at a touch.
• Matter Eater Lad: Can eat anything (believe it or not, this is a real dude.  Check out Adventure Comics #303, December 1963)
• Color Kate: She is able to make anything a different color!  Pink Trees!  Yellow Strawberries!  Take THAT evil!
• The Leper: Can cause limbs and other pieces of his own body to fall off at will. Too bad he can't reattach them...

Why am I talking about all this?  Because this line of thought is actually much more interesting and better formulated than the movie X-Men: Days of Future Past.  

Let's be fair: the movie was mostly entertaining and non-boring.  It did have some fun action, and some will say it is the best X-Men movie yet made (though I still prefer First Class).

But on the whole I just could not get over the 101 little things that kept coming along to bug me.  Shall we list a few?

1. Let's start in the horribly ravaged future, an earth burnt to the ground by continual war.  Why so bleak?  Evidently it has to be the WORST EVER or we the audience won't care.
2. We're supposed to believe that Mystique's abilities were the key to making the Sentinels unstoppable.  I can understand that her power would "inspire," but telling me that her DNA would upgrade machines is simply asking me to get dumber.
3. Clearly, Mystique is a major character because Jennifer Lawrence is now a big actor.
4. I don't think time travel would work that way.
5. I'm also not buying a "mutant detector" that works at dozens or even hundreds of feet.  Especially not with 1960's or 70's technology.
6. Magneto and the death of JFK.  Really?  Great, now another generation is going to grow up thinking ridiculous conspiracy theories about magic bullets.
7. A jail cell for Magneto in the Pentagon?  Really?  And I suppose they keep Dr. Doom locked up in Mount Rushmore.
8. We had to see Wolverine from behind, sans vetements.  Can't say I appreciated that one.
9. Professor X didn't have his power in the past.  Why?  Because if he had it everything would have been much easier, and the writers were too lazy to figure out other ways of ramping up the drama.
10. They sent Quicksilver home after breaking out Magneto.  Why?  Because if he stuck around the good guys would have too easy a time saving the world, and the writers were too lazy to figure out other ways of building the drama.  I mean, why keep the team together if it would be harder to save the world apart, am I right?
11. Come to think of it, so much of the plot seems overly convenient or contrived, as though things happened simply because the plot dictated that they must.
12. Magneto is powerful and all, but am I really supposed to buy that he can easily separate steel train rails into tiny wire, and then feed all that wire into the Sentinels in ways that can't be detected?
13. The Secret Service took the president into the Oval Office (that's in the West Wing), and then straight down into a bunker.  When the bunker was ripped out of the ground it came up right through the Residence.  Looked cool, but it came out of the ground in the wrong place.
14. So Professor X can read Wolverine's mind and speak to himself in the future?  That makes not even the least bit of sense.

So there were a few things I really liked as well, so let's be fair:

1. It was great how this movie not only treated The Last Stand as a horrible event, it actually removed it from existence!  That's what I call a win!
2. Magneto is certainly shown to be as powerful as he should be.  The movie felt like the Magneto Show in parts (and yet this becomes a negative also, but whatever).
3. Wolverine got to say "bub" a lot, and even got to smoke huge cigars -in spite of the fact that smoking is a worse sin in Hollywood these days than violent murder.
4. Quicksilver.  Though he seems a tad overpowered, his scenes are far and away the best parts of the film.  Particularly his bit in the Pentagon.

So there it is.  There's stuff to like, and stuff not to like.  I for one had a good time, but this film just never rises anywhere near the level of greatness to which it aspires.

Entertainment: 7/10

Artistic Value: 3/10

Technical Merit: 4/10

Overall: 5/10