In the eyes of popular culture, “Guardians of the Galaxy” will likely go down as the year’s most popular film, and you could do far worse than Marvel’s slightly offbeat hit. The year’s best superhero film, however, is Bryan Singer’s “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” also from the Marvel lexicon, and arguably the best single movie to bear that name since the sterling “Spider-Man 2.” Like that modern classic, this sequel is genuinely concerned with the agency of its characters and the ramifications of their actions, and is alternately thought-provoking, philosophical, and politically conscious. It’s also seriously cool.
The seventh film in the X-Men franchise is a homecoming of sorts, unfolding in a future dystopia where mutants, and those who stand with them, have been systematically marginalized and exterminated. Now, the few surviving mutants utilize their powers to escape the death squads that hunt them, using a rudimentary time travel technology to stay a few hours ahead of doom. To do more than simply survive, however, they must go further, opting to send, Logan, aka Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), back several decades to prevent the war from ever starting.
The X-Men stories have always been among the most allegorically ripe in superhero culture, evoking the philosophies of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, among others, and “Days of Future Past” speaks volumes to our current national horrors, where fear breeds instability and belief in the inevitability of conflict is one of its chief causes. The normally accepted lines between friends and enemies are blurred here, and there’s great hope in the suggestion that every action, no matter how small, is significant. There’s grace and wit in the film’s spectacle, which includes a showstopper that surpasses even the original “Matrix” for slow-motion ingenuity. This is popcorn fare of the genuinely profound sort.
“X-Men: Days of Future Past” is available now on digital download and will be released on DVD/Blu-ray on Tuesday, Oct. 14.
Robert Humanick is a contributing writer for slantmagazine.com
Follow Rob on Twitter @rhumanick
