The multiverse resplendent

Ah! The joys of the multiverse in the DC and Marvel comics, permitting variance in narrative to derive from an alternate timeline that is now a separate universe in a different reality.  In the case of long-running superhero franchises equipped at one stage or another by writers and producers of varying cognisance, this is a significant 'Get Out of Jail Free' card to avoid awkward questions at ComicCons.
The big-screen X-Men outings are a case in point.  Though the first three in the early part of the millennium were vaguely coherent as a trilogy and even two Wolverine prequels did not detract from that, once X-Men: First Class was released, certain gaps, nay chasms, became apparent not just to aficionados but those with merely a good memory.  In X-Men (the first one), Professor X/Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) tells Wolverine/Logan (Hugh Jackman) that Cerebro, the computer that allows Professor X to use his telepathy to locate super-powered mutants across the world, was built by he himself, Xavier, along with his hitherto best friend Erik Lehnsherr (AKA Magneto).  In First Class, this is hogwash.  Though Xavier could have been lying (for no apparent reason), in First Class Cerebro is built largely by Hank 'The Beast' McCoy.  More glaringly, in X-Men:The Final Stand, bald Patrick Stewart is granted a small walking part at the start as a novelty value to his usual wheelchair-bound state.  This is contradicted when a stray bullet paralyses James McAvoy as a young Charles Xavier with a full head of hair at the end of First Class.  This latter film, with the young X-Men involved in the run-up to and during the Cuban Missile Crisis, was referenced as a stylish counterfactual by one reviewer, thinking of history but it was also true of comic tradition too.
X-Men: Days of Future Past plays a very clever trick that involves not just the multiverse but an alternate timeline too.  In a dystopian future, merciless, implacable robots called Sentinels (bar emitting flames from their heads, they are unlike their pastel-coloured direct Marvel incarnation, being more like the separate creations of Phalanx and the Awesome Android in both appearance and abilities) have hunted down not not just all super-powered mutants but those who have the X-gene that means their children or grandchildren would become mutants, though they themselves are not.  Ordinary humans rebelling against this slaughter are either destroyed or enslaved, leaving the worst of humanity in charge. New York and Moscow are semi-derelict ruins, though the Great Wall of China is in good nick.  Wolverine's consciousness is sent back in time to avert the creation of the Sentinels and, in trying to convince a depressed Xavier of the past that the threat is real, he lets the professor search through his mind, revealing snippets of all the previous movies, albeit excerpts that do not clash the current narrative.  It's a nice touch.  Later on, Xavier (in his youngish, McAvoy self) expresses, "I believe one day we will all be together."  Ostensibly, he is excusing the departure of former friends, now semi-foes, Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence).  I'm more of the opinion that it's a plea for bringing together a Marvel Universe divided by copyright (X-Men and all 'mutants' are owned by Marvel Studios; the film rights to the Avengers, Hulk, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor and the Fantastic Four were sold to 20th Century Fox; the intellectual silver screen rights to Spiderman are held by Sony), though it could equally apply to the unification of the X-Men franchise to date here.
One critic called Days of Future Past, 'the Goldfinger of X-Men movies'not only in being a brilliant exposition of concept but in cementing the formula for all future outings in the franchise.  For me, Goldfinger is the apogee of James Bond, whereas here, I don't know, I've still got a soft spot for First Class.  The Proustian title (borrowed from a Marvel Comics storyline) lends the 2014 offering a certain aura, further burnished by adopting a conceit of The Godfather Part II in having a partial backdrop of a crucial historical event on the margins of mainstream consciousness to serve as a canvas.  With the mafiosi masterpiece, it was the onset of the Cuban Revolution and the subsequent fallout.  In Days of Future Past, it is the winding down of US involvement in Vietnam and the Paris Peace Talks.  Wolverine's mind is sent back into his 1970s body to stop Mystique assassinating the scientist who created the first Sentinels, Dr Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), thereby, ironically, justifying the deployment of the machines.
An exceptional cast has been assembled which in light of acting and other commitments is no small achievement.  In the dystopian future, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen (older Magneto), Halle Berry (Storm), Shawn Ashmore (Bobby/Iceman), Daniel Cudmore (Colossus) and Ellen Page (Kitty Pryde, who can phase through objects and send consciousness back in time) all return from the first trilogy, while in the alternate future Famke Janssen (Jean Grey), James Marsden (Scott Summers/Cyclops), Anna Paquin (Rogue) and uncredited cameo from Kelsey Grammar (as older Beast) are other old-stagers appearing (relationships are also realigned with the union of Kitty Pryde and Iceman transmuted into her going out with Colossus and he with Rogue, as in the comics).  In the 1970s, in addition to James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence and the fantastic Michael Fassbender (can he ever turn in a bad performance?), Nicholas Hoult (Hank McCoy/ younger Beast) and Lucas Till (Havok) return from First Class, plus photographs of Jason Flemyng and Zoë
 Kravitz as the deceased Azazel and Angel Salvadore respectively.  I was a little disappointed that January Jones didn't reappear as Emma Frost (except in passing mention), being given little to do in First Class apart from be the impassive consort of Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), misinterpreting the White Queen as the ice queen.  Straddling all three scenarios is Wolverine/Logan played with the usual charisma by Hugh Jackman.
The casting of Peter Dinklage, fresh from Game of Thrones, as the villainous Trask is inspired.  In the comics, he was a standard-sized man but Dinklage's diminutive stature crystallises Trask's persona so he is not lost amid the welter of characters, as well as carrying a number of connotations about his motivations (such as the alleged Small Man Syndrome, positing that a desire to conquer is ingrained by a perceived inferiority and fear of vulnerability deriving froom size, as was the case with Napoleon Hitler and Mussolini).  Although truly Trask is a monster (far more than in the comics), a mixture of Mengele (for the experiments) and Eichmann (for the rollout of extermination), Dinklage invests him with enough empathy to show that his passion is a misguided attempt to save humanity.  Told by his aide, Major William Stryker (Josh Helman, later in the franchise timeline to be Wolverine's nemesis as Colonel Stryker through Danny Huston and Brian Cox), "You must really hate mutants," Trask replies that he strangely admires them but this is a war against extinction (for homo sapiens).  His earlier testimony to a closed Senate committee hearing deployed the then-fashionable but not discredited theory that just as homo sapiens wiped out neanderthals so mutants would do the same with homo sapiens.  Amusingly for those in the know, he asks Stryker about the latter's son, thinking him ordinary but we are aware that Stryker's mutant antipathy is made rabid by his son turning out to be a mutant and manifesting his powers destructively.
Schematically, Days of Future Past follows First Class in which the main villain is thwarted but Magneto parlays this into his own machinations and so also needs to be stopped.  The merits of forgiveness over the veracity of revenge are also well-aired and directed.  As with many superhero flicks, there is also the desire to throw more names from the comics into the mix as a sop to originality.  In the dystopia, we are introduced to Bishop (Omar Sy), Blink (Bingbing Fan), Sunspot (Adan Canto) and Warpath (Booboo Stewart, son of Patrick), the latter three along with Colossus and Iceman suffering violent deaths not once but twice over (one of the Sentinels uses the sharpened fingers/prongs ability that are a hallmark of Lady Deathstrike from X2).  In the 1970s, Toad (Evan Jonigkeit), Ink (Gregg Lowe) and others are present.  Portrayed by Evan Peters, there is also Peter (Pietro) Maximoff (otherwise known as Quicksilver but never referred so as such) who unwittingly alludes to Magneto as his father though this kind of obviates the comics contention that he and his sister (a blink-and-miss-it appearance by Wanda Maximoff, here labelled 'Peter's little sister' (Miya Shelton-Contreras) but actually the future Scarlet Witch) were raised by gypsy foster parents.  Peter's assistance in the jailbreak on the Pentagon is one of the sublime moments of the movie, Peters' cheekiness and cocksure behaviour a joy.  It's rather s shame the character effectively bows out a third of the way through.
There are excellent moments too such as unexpectedly seeing McAvoy's Xavier walking again (I shut my eyes and hummed during the trailers for this to keep an element of surprise) and enjoying driving - "Don't get used to it," as Logan says.  Elsewhere, we have Stewart resuming is opening voiceover like Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation and as Xavier in the first X-Men films; Fassbender's Magneto systematically dismantling an early Sentinel advancing on him; the drug addiction of Xavier's McAvoy is handled tenderly; the surprise alliance of the elderly Professor X and Magneto; the Nixon tapes being switched off (as a harbinger of Watergate); the presidential bunker crashing through the White House colonnades; and a myriad of excellent action sequences.  The future Sentinels are suitably fearsome.  The 1970s grime and slack fashion is well-conceived in contrast to the stylish tailoring of First Class (though when Xavier, Logan and McCoy all wear brown leather jackets it's a little cloying).  One of the best bits, however, is the subversion of product placement for companies like Mountain Dew, the hoardings collapsing and disintegrating in a discreet thumbing of the nose.
Of course, Days of Future Past has its weaknesses. McAvoy will have to start losing his hair soon if he is to be a recognisably conventional Professor X.  Indeed, none of the returning characters seem to have aged particularly, despite the passage of eleven years, even though slow ageing is only the preserve of Wolverine (who has a few grey tones finally as his 2023 self) and Raven/Mystique.  After being sprung from Hannibal Lector-like seclusion, Magneto is curiously well-informed about the deaths of mutants from First Class, no matter he was in solitary confinement for a decade.  President Kennedy revealed as a mutant is a little twee.  It's anachronistic for the North Vietnamese to be celebrating 'victory' and the Americans bewailing 'defeat' in 1973.  The US Airforce had just bombed Hanoi to the negotiating table.  Impressions of defeat emerged with hindsight following the fall of Saigon two years later.  Also, Soviet and North Vietnamese top brass would never have sat round the same table as their Beijing counterparts - they were all communists, yes, but the USSR and the People's Republic of China were fighting a de facto border war and the PRC had cut off all aid to Hanoi following the rapprochement with the USA.  Going on, it feels a little incredible that Xavier lets Magneto escape given the latter's propensity for death and destruction.  The newspaper front page that ties up most of the loose ends is a cliché at its most contrived, not least as some of its stories would not all happen at the same time (surely Trask's treason would not be disclosed straightaway).
Still, these are minor quibbles in a fine accomplishment.  With the events occurring in Days of Future Past, the world we see is a very different Earth to our own, cleverly encapsulating the multiverse.  Next up is X-Men: [Age of] Apocalypse, set in the 1980s (the ancient En Sabah Nur appears in a post-credits sequence), where we will meet young versions of Cyclops and Jean Grey.  I hope the high standards will be maintained.  Thunderball following on from Goldfinger was good but without quite the brilliance of its predecessor.  Four out of five.