The sixth X-Men movie follows on from 2011’s successful reboot of the franchise, X-Men: First Class, in which we learned how former pals Professor Xavier (Stewart) turned out to be a good guy while Magneto (McKellen) went bad (quick catch up: blame the Nazis). Now, we zap forwards to 2023, where robots known as Sentinels are killing mutants and humans, having been engineered to absorb mutant powers using Mystique’s stolen DNA by scientist Trask (Peter Dinklage).
Xavier and Magneto team up to come up with a plan to stop the killing machines – their idea is to send back Wolverine’s (Jackman) consciousness through time and into his body in 1973, so he can prevent Mystique being captured. Of course, this means he has to find the young Xavier (McAvoy) and Magneto (Fassbender) to ask for their help, but that’s not that easy when he finds Xavier is a broken man living in a dusty mansion without his mutant powers and Magneto is being held in a specially built prison beneath the Pentagon (imprisoned for the murder of JFK, of course).
It’s all a clever device to pack as many beloved X-Men into one movie as possible – as well as the young/old versions of Xavier, Magneto and Wolverine, the characters popping up include Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), Storm (Halle Berry), Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), Quicksilver (Evan Peters) and Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page), and there are some impressive set pieces for them to play around in, from Kitty’s projection of Wolverine’s mind to Quicksilver’s funny and very slick help with the Pentagon escape plan.
Cleverly uniting the casts of First Class and the previous X-Men movies (not easy when you remember they cover two different timelines) using time travel, jaw-dropping action sequences and tongue-in-cheek humour, and rewriting history along the way, this is one of the best X-Men movies so far and a blockbuster treat for fans.
Is X-Men: Days Of Future Past suitable for kids? Here are our parents’ notes...
This is aimed at older viewers and is a 12A certificate. There are numerous fights between characters, and one notable use of the f-word.
If you like this, why not try: X-Men, X-Men: First Class, The Wolverine, X2: X-Men 2, X-Men Origins: Wolverine,