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Some bad points about the film:
- Firstly, as I mentioned, there’s very little screen time for Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen and, even more annoyingly, the gorgeous Ellen Page, since they’re all stuck in the “present day” (which I put in quotes as they’re still about 10 years ahead of our time), as the majority of the film is set in the past.
- The battles aren’t brilliant. We know things are going to kick-off big-time between the mutants and Trask’s Sentinel crew, but they’re not unveiled until late into the third act and the level of overall destruction is limited to either bizarre other worlds in the future where we have no point of reference, or a 1973 American Football stadium which the trailer shows is lifted up by Erik and dumped somewhere else.
- The battles in the “present day” are just made confusing by the fact that one of the X-Men is equipped with something akin to a Portal gun, so you can effectively travel to another part of your current landscape, but where that works in the Portal game – as you set the first portal and then the second one, here they appear simultaneously so it comes off as a poorly-executed idea.
- There’s also precious little screen time for Halle Berry as Storm, but since I don’t think she could act her way out of a paper bag, this isn’t a problem to me.
- There’s also a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance by Anna Paquin as Rogue, even though she’s quite high up in the overall cast list, which is a bizarre situation. However, this post from ComicBook.com shows that her scenes ended up on the cutting room floor. Bad luck, Rogue. At the time of the cinema release, I said “Better luck when the Blu-ray comes out”… but she’s lucked out here, too.
- Finally, as I’ve said many a time, I’m one of those people who likes to stay for the end credits in the cinema. Generally, I’m the only person there at this time. This time, however, 8 people stayed, including me. And we got, as I suspected, a short clip at the very end. Exactly what it leads to, I don’t want to spoil at this point, but no doubt we will have to wait until 2016 to find out because X-Men: Apocalypse is scheduled for a UK release on May 19th 2016.
And we finally find out the truth reason the JFK “magic bullet” theory…
The film is presented in the original 2.35:1 widescreen ratio and in 1080p high definition and it looks absolutely stunning, perfectly showing off the dark world of the ‘present’ as well as the bright scenes in the past, all doing full credit to the movie, especially on my Panasonic 50″ Plasma TV.
The sound is in DTS HD 7.1 and great use is made of the aural soundscape, with a lot of split-surround action as good and bad get zapped and impaled all over the place.
The extras are as follows and are all in HD:
- Deleted Scenes (5:36): Just five of them here, each with optional director’s commentary, but nothing that needs to be put back into the film.
- Kitchen Sequence (6:28): Bryan Singer talks about a scene featuring Raven, but not the circular 3D kitchen I was thinking of, which is rather a shame. This featurette contains an outtake and the final deleted scene.
- Gag Reel (5:40): Does exactly what it says on the tin, and includes a neat Star Wars line from Hugh Jackman.
- Double take: Xavier and Magneto (11:51): Two characters. Two actors apiece. Scenes aplenty with chat from key cast and crew characters, including the breakdown between James McAvoy and Patrick Stewart going almost nose to nose, and how that was McAvoy’s suggestion.
- X-Men: Reunited (9:47): Another brief featurete, this time looking at combining original and new X-Men characters, all in the same style as before.
- Classification: M (11:54): This time looking at working out which new characters to bring in, while producer Lauren Shuler Donner says it’s all due to “ethnic diversity”. WTF??!
However, late on in this piece it does include a brief look at Quicksilver’s kitchen scene.
- Sentinels: For A Secure Future (9:19): A detailed look at the big robots.
- Galleries: Trask Industries: 30 stills covering mutant experiments (13), blueprints (10) and Sentinel construction (7).
- Theatrical trailers (7:09): Three of them, all in 2.35:1.
- Second screen app (5:34): Using your smartphone (Android, Apple or Kindle), this app ads extra concept art, storyboards, costume designs etc, as well as linking in all the X-Men social media platforms. I guess this was brought in as no-one uses the BD-Live function which was available on some players, so it does something similar on a phone, which everyone has.
- Sneak Peek of Exodus: Gods and Kings: A behind-the-scenes clip (1:26) of Ridley Scott’s Boxing Day cinema film if you hadn’t already been bombarded enough with the enforced trailer (1:31) which appears before the main menu on both discs, yet really shouldn’t… and is on here, too.
- Audio descriptive track: Does what it says on the tin.
There’s a lot of good stuff in these extras, but they do tend to get very repetitive and/or predictable after a while.
There are subtitles and languages in a fair few apiece, all listed at the bottom of the review. Oddly, the box erroneously states English-only. This will put some people off if they don’t know, 20th Century Fox.
Chapters are a fantastic number, here, with 40 across the 131-minute running time. More of this, please, Fox!
The 3D Blu-ray version of X-Men: Days of Future Past, which I’ve reviewed here, is presented in a gorgeous embossed sleeve. Click on the packshot for the full-size image.
X-Men: Days of Future Past is available now on 3D Blu-ray, 2D Blu-ray and DVD.
|
FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS |
7 10 10 5 |
| OVERALL | 8 |
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 131 minutes
Studio: 20th Century Fox Home Video
Cat.no.: 5830115044
Year: 2014
Released: November 10th 2014
Chapters: 40
Picture: 1080p High Definition
Sound: DTS HD Master Audio 7.1, DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1 (all non-English languages)
Languages: English (7.1), Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, Czech, Thai, Ukranian
Subtitles: English, Spanish, French, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Bulgarian, Chinese (two of these, for some reason), Croatian, Czech, Estonian, Indonesian, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malaysian, Serbian, Slovenian, Thai, Ukranian and English text (which is blank – huh?)
Widescreen: 2.35:1 (ARRIRAW (2.8K))
Disc Format: 2*BD50
Director: Bryan Singer
Producers: Simon Kinberg, Hutch Parker, Lauren Shuler Donner and Bryan Singer
Screenplay: Simon Kinberg (based on a story by Jane Goldman, Simon Kinberg and Matthew Vaughn)
Music: John Ottman
Cast :
Logan / Wolverine: Hugh Jackman
Charles Xavier: James McAvoy
Erik Lehnsherr: Michael Fassbender
Raven / Mystique: Jennifer Lawrence
Storm: Halle Berry
Hank / Beast: Nicholas Hoult
Rogue: Anna Paquin
Kitty Pryde: Ellen Page
Dr. Bolivar Trask: Peter Dinklage
Bobby / Iceman: Shawn Ashmore
Bishop: Omar Sy
Peter / Quicksilver: Evan Peters
Maj. Bill Stryker: Josh Helman
Colossus: Daniel Cudmore
Blink: Bingbing Fan
Sunspot: Adan Canto
Warpath: Booboo Stewart
Professor X: Patrick Stewart
Magneto: Ian McKellen
Havok: Lucas Till
Toad: Evan Jonigkeit
President Nixon: Mark Camacho
Beast (older): Kelsey Grammer (uncredited)
Jean Grey: Famke Janssen (uncredited)
Scott Summers: James Marsden (uncredited)
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.