Blockbuster Blast

X-Men: Days of Future Past blends brains and brawn into superheroic movie

It’s now been 14 years since X-Men started the current superhero movie craze that shows no sign of slowing down. That film and most of its sequels, prequels and spin-offs have always felt a bit different than other comic-book movies, as they’re as much about the stories as they are about big action sequences.

X-Men: Days of Future Past forges a similar path, with a nice time-travel gambit (not to be confused with Gambit) thrown in. The film begins with future versions of X-Men like Professor X (Patrick Stewart), Magneto (Ian McKellen), Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and others seemingly facing extinction at the hands of unstoppable uber-robots called Sentinels.

Bryan Singer is back at the helm of the series for the first time since 2003’s X-Men 2, and it’s like he’s never been away.

Their last hope is for Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) to transport Wolverine’s consciousness from his 2023 body to his 1973 one. Once there, he needs to recruit the younger Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) to help him stop Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from killing the inventor of the Sentinels, Dr. Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), an event that actually bolstered the program instead of stopping it.

Bryan Singer is back at the helm of the series for the first time since 2003’s X-Men 2, and it’s like he’s never been away.

Singer just has a knack for making an ultra-complicated storyline like this seem deceptively simple. That’s not to say that everything makes complete sense — in a time-travel movie, nothing ever does — but he comes as close to connecting all the dots as any filmmaker could.

Of course, the timeline of who knew whom when gets hopelessly muddled in the process, but being chronologically consistent has never been the series’ strong point. Seven movies in, you either accept X-Men’s time discrepancies or you don’t.

Anyone who needs comic-book movies to be all action, all the time may come away disappointed from Days of Future Past. Although there are some bravura sequences, including face-offs between the mutants and the Sentinels and a final act showstopper in Washington, D.C., the film is once again more about characters communicating with actual words than fists.

The one action scene that everyone will be talking about is when Wolverine, Professor X and Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult), a.k.a. Beast, bring in Peter/Quicksilver (Evan Peters) to help spring Magneto from a maximum-security prison. Slowing down the film so we can fully appreciate Quicksilver’s lightning-fast movements, Singer provides a scene that’s hilarious and action-packed — and one that actually helps move the plot forward.

You can’t ask for more in the acting department than what X-Men provides. It’s always a pleasure to see old pros like Stewart and McKellen at work, but it’s equally interesting to see McAvoy and Fassbender’s take on their characters. Jackman could play Wolverine in his sleep now, but he still gives an all-out effort. And Hoult and Lawrence fit in seamlessly, with Lawrence, even underneath all that blue make-up, once again showing why she’s the hottest young movie star in Hollywood.

X-Men: Days of Future Past is everything that a comic-book movie can and should be. This is one film where those who want a little brains with their brawn can have their cake and eat it too.

Hugh Jackman is as brooding as ever as Wolverine in X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Hugh Jackman in X-Men: Days of Future Past

Photo by Alan Markfield

Hugh Jackman is as brooding as ever as Wolverine in X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Movie Review

Much-anticipated film sequel Gladiator II tells a very familiar story

Paul Mescal in Gladiator II

Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Paul Mescal in Gladiator II.

There are some films for which making a sequel is natural, and others where a follow-up is wholly unnecessary. Gladiator, which made both tons of money and was named Best Picture at the Oscars, told an impactful stand-alone story that ended with the protagonist dead and no real loose ends. And yet because there’s always more money to be made, here we are 24 years later with Gladiator II.

The lead character this time around is Lucius (Paul Mescal), a general in a North African army who becomes a prisoner of war when the Roman army led by Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal) bests him and his troops in battle. Taken back to Rome, he is put in the pool of captured men forced to fight at the Colosseum for the amusement of twin emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracella (Fred Hechinger).

Lucius is controlled by Macrinus (Denzel Washington), an ambitious schemer who bets liberally on his prized fighter and always has an eye to move up in the world. Meanwhile, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), the sister of Emperor Commodus from the first film, is now married to Marcus Acacius and has a unique connection with Lucius that is fairly obvious from the get-go.

Directed once again by Ridley Scott and written by David Scarpa, the film commits a number of sins throughout its 150-minute running time, the most blatant of which is that, aside from a few embellishments, it essentially tells the same story as the first film. Lucius, like Maximus, is a deposed military leader who’s out for revenge on the person who killed his family. Instead of one obnoxious emperor, there are now two. And the only way for Lucius to earn his freedom is to fight his way out.

Stories told in the same world can echo each other and, if done well, overcome those similarities. But Gladiator II is shockingly boring for a purported sword-and-sandals epic. Scott and his team try to introduce new elements to the fights, like a gladiator riding a rhinoceros or a ship battle inside the Colosseum (with sharks!), but most of the sequences are inert with no propulsion to them.

The action fails because none of the relationships in the film amount to much. There are stand-out characters like Macrinus and the twin emperors, but instead of creating antipathy or strong feelings of triumph or defeat, the story just kind of happens without any sense of excitement or importance. Much of that issue lies at the feet of Lucius, who simply doesn’t inspire in the same way that Russell Crowe’s Maximus did.

Mescal is a fine actor who’s done good work in more intimate roles, but he’s not up to the task of being an action star, at least not in this film. Any bombast he shows with the character feels forced, and the story doesn’t give him enough opportunities to counteract that lack. Washington, however, fills up the screen with his charisma, and it’s during his scenes that the film comes closest to being rousing. Quinn and Hechinger are a lot of fun as the twin emperors, but in the end they feel like retreads of Joaquin Phoenix from the original.

Any sequel should have a purpose that sets it apart from what came before, but Scott, Scarpa, and the rest of their team fail in that respect in Gladiator II. It’s a mostly lifeless film that delivers scenes that would be exciting if they had any kind of good story to back them up.

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Gladiator II opens in theaters on November 22.

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