#851 – Review: X-Men: Days of Future Past

The X-Men have always been my favorite team of super heroes.

Uncanny X-Men 275 is my favorite comic book ever.

I don’t know how many quarters I dumped into the X-Men Arcade Game when I was in junior high.

I used to play fight with my friends and we all took on the power set of our favorite mutants.

So I was excited when Fox announced that it was bringing together the original X-Men cast and the X-Men: First Class cast for X-Men: Days of Future Past. I was also a little nervous. X-Men 3 was so much of a train wreck that it tempered my excitement for every X-Men movie that followed, including DOFP.

Thankfully, though, my fears over DOFP were unfounded.

X-Men: Days of a Future Past is a tremendous entry into the X-Men film franchise. Even thought its cast is bursting at the seams, the movie never feels like it has too many mutants. I loved how the original cast was brought back for scenes in a dystopian future and how Wolverine was the lynchpin connecting them to the past.

For as many mutants as there were in the future, their presence was fairly sparse in the past. The cast of mutants from X-Men: First Class was trimmed to four: Professor X, Beast, Magneto and Mystique. Wolverine and Quicksilver rounded out the 1970s mutants, the latter of which stole each of his scenes.

If you like the X-Men, then I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy DOFP. I don’t think it was as good as X-Men 2, but it definitely cleansed the palate after X-Men 3. And without giving too much away, DOFP definitely did some much needed retcon work.

Here are some other thoughts I had while watching X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Hope

One of the central themes of DOFP is hope. The future versions of the X-Men have hope that the world can be changed. The past version of Professor X needs to regain hope in his vision that humans and mutants can coexist peacefully. DOFP communicates that hope is powerful, but hope is only as strong as that in which we place our hope. If we place our hope in money or status, then our hope will always fall short. If we place our hope in our all-powerful and never-changing God, then our hopes will always be fulfilled. We shouldn’t just hope for something better. We should hope that God will bring us what he knows is best.

Choices

A lot of the movie hinges on the choices of those in the past and how they will impact the future. All of our choices will impact our future in some way or another. Some choices, like what to have for breakfast, aren’t going to have as big of an impact as others, like where to go for college. Since all of our choices now will impact our future, we need to be intentional about the choices we make. We need to make wise choices with how we spend our time and who we’re spending it with. In 50 years I don’t want to regret the choices I’m making right now. A life of wise choices, a life of asking ourselves, “Is this the wise thing to do,” will undoubtedly get us where God wants us to go. It could also avert a mutant/human war.

Tolerance

The X-Men first appeared in the 1960s, when the United States was in the midst of the civil rights movement. The X-Men have always been an allegory for tolerance and acceptance. Jesus was all about tolerance and acceptance; he approached people with love. He also approached people with truth and wanted to see them leave their sin and start a new life. We need to follow Jesus’s example in both truth and love. We need to be tolerant and accepting of everyone but also look for opportunities to speak truth into their lives. Jesus would have never approached anyone with a Sentinel and we shouldn’t either.

X-Men: Days of Future Past was great. I especially enjoyed the blending of the two casts as well as Quicksilver. It’ll be interesting to see where the producers go with X-Men: Age of Apocalypse and what new mutants will be added to the mix. After X-Men 3 I dreaded new X-Men movies. Thanks to DOFP, though, I’m excited again for Xavier and his School for Gifted Youngsters.

What did you think about X-Men: Days of Future Past.