If you're the world's biggest fan of X-Men: Days of Future Past, you may want to look away, as this trailer is going to point out some significant flaws in your beloved film:
While Guardians of the Galaxy will probably be remembered as the best comic book film of summer 2014, X-Men: Days of Future Past was no slouch at the box office. Earning over $700 million, the film received critical acclaimed by audiences. X-Men fans especially appreciated it for "resetting" the convoluted timeline and erasing certain events from the series. However, just because it set the franchise on a new path doesn’t mean that it’s safe from the folks at Screen Junkies, who have finally given the film the Honest Trailer treatment.
Right off the bat, the guys point out that while X-MenDays of Future Past’s classification as a prequel AND sequel may be confusing, it does its primary job well: making X-Men: The Last Stand "irrelevant" and X-Men Origins: Wolverine "a bad dream." That’s right, everyone. We don’t have to think about the dark times anymore. That being said, that doesn’t prevent similarities being drawn between Days of Future Past and Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Indestructible guy travels back in time? Check. Protects a young man who’s becomes important in the future? Check. Make sure the shape-shifting antagonist doesn’t destroy the future? Check. To be fair, director Bryan Singer admitted that he asked James Cameron for advice on time travel, so the T2 influences were bound to leak through. That said, this movie is based off a comic book storyline from 1981, which was a full10 years before T2 was released - so who ripped off whom more? Okay, never mind, Days of Future Past is at a disadvantage.
Plot similarities aside, the video’s main draw is analyzing the film’s ensemble cast...which of course means Wolverine is the focus. Yes, Hugh Jackman has headlined almost every X-Men film since 2000, and while comic book fans are desperate for movies focusing on the other mutants, evidently 20th Century Fox just can’t get enough of him, To make matters worse, he keeps revealing spoilers! Not movie spoilers, mind you, but spoilers about the future. He might want to have a chat with Doctor Who’s River Song.
As for the other characters, they have their own issues. There’s "heroin addict" Charles Xavier and his enabling blue-furred friend Hank McCoy; Quicksilver, who they could have used to solve every problem; and Mystique, who decides killing people is a better course of action than listening to reason from intelligent people. There weren’t any comments about Magneto, but since most of his character development happened in X-Men: First Class, he mostly served as the guy who makes a bad situation worse in this film.
As for the future characters, their main purpose in X-Men: Days of Future Past is to die repeatedly, but it’s all good since Wolverine fixes everything. The deep voice in the video points out that the epilogue of the film undercuts the story of 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse, but this is actually a bit misguided. If X-Men: Days of Future Past taught us anything, it's that the future isn't written in stone and can be altered.
X-Men: Days of Future Past is not without it’s flaws. The story was convoluted at times, there were unaddressed issues (like Charles Xavier being alive in the future and how Wolverine’s claws got recoated with adamantium), and it once again focuses on a mutant that we’ve seen plenty of during the past 14 years. That being said, the good outweighed the bad (giant robots, time travel, cleverly shot super speed sequence, the list goes on), and the movie accomplished its job of correcting the path of the X-Men film franchise. When all said and done, Days of Future Past is one of the better mutant offerings, so go ahead and laugh with the movie rather than at it.
