X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST
Hope and compassion overcome fear and hatred — for discerning adults.
Should You Watch It?
This is an excellent time-travel story and an engrossing superhero movie. Its strongest ideas are genuinely hopeful: compassion, peace, faith, and doing what is right can overcome fear, hatred, violence, and distrust. The movie also gives Hugh Jackman an especially strong performance as Wolverine.
But the positive moral center comes with serious costs. The movie includes significant foul language, including one nonsexual “f” word and two GD profanities, brief lewd moments, intense action, scary robots, and an LSD reference. Its worldview also includes humanist ideas, a vague analogy between mutants and homosexuals, and questionable philosophical, theological, and political material.
So, if you are a discerning adult, this can be worth your time. For children, young teens, preteens, and other vulnerable viewers, choose something else.
The Story
NO SPOILERS — WE KEEP THE SURPRISESAn army of giant flying robots called Sentinels has nearly destroyed both mutantkind and humanity. The remaining X-Men send Wolverine’s consciousness back to 1973, when the robots were first created.
To change the future, Wolverine must unite a young Professor Xavier with his nemesis, Magneto. They also must stop Mystique, Xavier’s former friend, from assassinating the scientist whose death prompted the government to create the mutant-hunting machines.
Is It Any Good?
Four stars means this is excellent entertainment, and the source review calls it an excellent time-travel story. The plot is simple enough to follow, never confusing, and packed with twists, action, and high drama. The story builds toward a large, dramatic sequence involving both the past and the future.
Hugh Jackman is particularly good as Wolverine. James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, and Evan Peters are also excellent, while the rest of the cast is good. The future sequences have too many characters to maintain interest, and the best action sequence comes in the first half, which may make the rest seem less exciting. A couple of actors could have been given more character arc, especially Peter Dinklage.
The Worldview
The film presents a mixed worldview. Its positive moral center emphasizes hope, compassion, faith, doing the right thing, and peaceful means rather than violence, fear, and hatred. Professor Xavier urges Mystique and Magneto to choose rightly, and he expresses faith in Mystique’s ability to make the right choice.
The movie also contains humanist elements. It presents mutant genes as the next step in human evolution and refers to the idea that modern humans wiped out Neanderthals. It makes a vague analogy between mutants and homosexuals. A politically correct tone and revisionist history appear in the film’s treatment of the 1973 Paris peace talks during the Vietnam War. These elements are relatively minor in screen time but may mislead impressionable viewers.
The film’s central moral claim is that hope, compassion, peace, and faith can cast out fear, hatred, violence, and distrust. Scripture likewise says, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).
The Content Guide
The specifics — spoilers included by nature — so you can judge for your own family.
Content Summary
Light mixed pagan worldview includes some humanist elements, including two or three early references to evolution regarding mutant genes creating a race of mutant humans that could wipe out non-mutant people (the movie uses the alleged extinction of Neanderthal homo sapiens by homo sapiens sapiens or “modern man,” a scenario that the scientific evidence seems to disprove at the time of this review), combined with strong moral elements and some light redemptive ones in the movie’s premise stressing hope, faith, doing the right thing, and using peaceful means and compassion rather than violence, fear, and hatred to stop bigotry (one bad mutant also seems a bit racist and even Nazi-like in his approach toward non-mutants), vague analogy between mutants and homosexuals, plus a possible politically correct tone that includes a revisionist history element when the movie claims that the U.S. and Vietnam went to the peace talks in Paris in 1973 because the Communists won the Vietnam War when, in reality, the Vietnamese Communists went to the peace talks and actually agreed to let South Vietnam have some freedom because America was winning and improved relations between the U.S., Russia, and China might isolate them; 19 obscenities (mostly “h” words but one nonsexual “f” word, several “s” words, two “ah” words,” two or three “d” words, one a++ word, and one “pi++ off”), two GD profanities, two “God!” profanities, and one borderline “God knows” profanity; strong action and science fiction violence with very little blood and no gore such as girl shot in leg, man slashes and impales villains with claws, intense fighting, huge chunk of baseball stadium falls in front of police car, gunfire (especially by robots), fire/volcano and ice mutant humans attack giant murderous robots with molten fire and ice, killer robots pierce several people, two flying robot vehicles crash into one another, man accidentally stabs compatriot, two characters threaten president and his entourage with guns, two men almost drown, flying objects, man almost crushed and has blood on forehead but is alive, etc.; no actual sex scenes but man wakes up in bed next to women, and there’s a line about this not being the only time they’ve slept together; one shot of female nudity where one mutant character has scales on her nude body in her scenes, image of full rear male nudity after man climbs out of bed and stands in front of mirror, and brief upper male nudity; no alcohol use; man smokes cigar in one or two shots, reference to LSD trip and man implicitly uses medicine injection to silence mutant powers; and, hatred but rebuked, fear but rebuked, a joke is made about President Kennedy’s assassination and the alleged but phony “magic bullet” theory, psychic exercises and experiences, and revengeful woman decides to assassinate evil scientist but one hero often tries to talk her out of it.
Talk About It
Questions for the drive home, the dinner table, or the youth group.
Professor Xavier urges people to choose peace instead of fear and hatred. When have you been tempted to answer fear with anger, and what would overcoming evil with good look like?
Romans 12:21 · James 1:19–20The film presents compassion toward people who are different as a moral good. How can your family show compassion without confusing compassion with approval of every action?
Luke 6:27–36 · Ephesians 4:15Professor Xavier has faith that Mystique can make the right choice. What is the difference between encouraging someone toward what is right and excusing what is wrong?
Galatians 6:1–2 · Ephesians 5:11The movie raises questions about whether the future can be changed. How should Christians respond to fear about the future?
Matthew 6:34 · Romans 8:38–39The Final Word
This is excellent, engrossing superhero entertainment with a strong moral center. Its foul language, lewd moments, intense action, and mixed worldview make it unsuitable for children and young teens. For discerning adults, the answer is WORTH THE TRIP — ADULTS ONLY. For other family movie options, see.
