With a title that sounds like a Marcel Proust novel, X-Men: Days of Future Past promises to be a character-driven superhero apocalyptic drama – which is something we haven’t had recently, right? The film is as star-studded as they come, bringing together two ages of X-Men who must unite to “change the past – to save our future.” If you’re still not clear on what that will entail, then I’m sorry to say that the latest trailer for the film will do little to clarify.
X-Men: Days of Future Past features Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), who has his consciousness sent back to 1973 to help the younger X-Men incarnations from X-Men: First Class to stop Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), the nefarious creator of giant robots called the Sentinels that are programmed to destroy all mutants. The time jump also appears to mean that we’ll have more than a few instances of elderly Magneto and Professor X (Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart) in conversation with their younger selves (Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy). This has the potential to get very confusing, very quickly.
The latest trailer showcases the apocalyptic mentality we’ve come to expect from today’s superhero films. Gone are the days when superheroes saved children from burning buildings, or tangled with cackling villains on candy-colored sets. Everything is very dark and every hero very tortured by his or her heroism. While we might expect a few smirks from McKellen and Stewart, who seem to have the most fun in the X-Men films, everyone else appears to be taking their parts as mutants very seriously.
We shall see if Bryan Singer pulls off the marriage between the original X-Men trilogy, the Wolverine films, and X-Men: First Class when Days of Future Past comes out in May. It’s a tall order, but at least the cast is stellar and more than up for the job of giving weight to a story of genetically mutated humans with claws, wings, and shape-shifting abilities.
X-Men: Days of Future Past will hit theatres in 2D and 3D on May 23. You can check out the latest trailer and poster below.
