“X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST” (3D) IN THE MIDST AND AFTERMATH OF WAR

Ellen Page, Bryan Singer, and Hugh Jackman.

Bryan Singer returns to the franchise he helped launched in “X-Men: Days of Future Past.” Singer brings the X-Men crew for an audacious, time travelling adventure in ‘Days of Future Past’ where the future is dark for the heroes of the X-Men saga. A years-long world conflict between humans and mutants has taken its toll on their numbers, and now a scant few remain, including Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), Erik “Magneto” Lehnsherr (Ian McKellen), Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page), and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman). Driven to near extinction by the technological terrors unleashed by Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), the team forms a desperate plan: time travel.

Using Kitty Pryde’s powers, Wolverine’s consciousness will be sent back into his younger self in the 1970s, where he’ll have to track down and help the First Class versions of the characters in order to stop Trask. But that will be even harder than it sounds, as in this era, the X-Men team is just as disparate, with Professor Xavier (James McAvoy) and the rest either at odds or in a low ebb. Can the younger versions of the mutants save their future?

Based on Chris Claremont, John Byrne and Terry Austin’s “Days Of Future Past” storyline from the “Uncanny X-Men” comic title, scribe Simon Kinberg adapted it into the movie which allows him and Singer to draw on their shared love of time travel films. Once Kinberg and Singer seized on the Future Past plot as a jumping-off point, the possibilities were endless. “Bryan and I spent months revising the script together,” Kinberg recalls.

Jennifer Lawrence.

Additionally, Singer relates on how he was drawn to the movie, “It happened over dinner, where Simon (Kinberg, writer/producer)said there was a desire on the part of him and Matthew Vaughn, who was going to direct, to explore a way to incorporate the two casts. And I said, "The only thing I can think of is time travel, and there's a precedent for it in the comic book." I started to talk about different ways we could do that with Simon. He took those ideas back to Matthew and they began the early development of the script. When Matthew left the project, I then began trying to figure out how to crack the time travel and what would be our conceit for it. It was once I figured that out that I felt, ‘Okay, I'm ready to tell this story.’Time travel stories are their own genre; they're very specific. You have to create a set of rules, like how the past affects the future,and then you have to stick to them. Once I figured out the mechanism by which to do it, I warmed up to the notion very quickly. Plus, I very much wanted a chance to work with this new cast as a director becausethey only knew me as a producer and writer before. It also gave me a chance to work with my friends who were in the earlier pictures. It was a wonderful experience and everybody had a really great time, which was nice.”

Patrick Stewart, Bryan Singer.

The Sentinels, being a big part of the story have been quite a challenge to create. The director further shares that, “There are movies like Transformers, Iron Man and Pacific Rim that have already explored robots of all different sizes and shapes and scope and calibre. I knew that I didn’t want to make just another film where a robot attacks people, yet they are an element in the picture. They serve the story in an interesting way, and not necessarily in an obvious rock-em-sock-em battle robots way – although there is some of that too!” And on dealing with the Sentinels, Singer has also taken into consideration the diversity of using mutant powers in the film. “In the movie, Wolverine goes on the physical journey, but it's Xavier who goes on the emotional one. He's reached a particular low; he's lost a great deal and it's basically a journey of redemption for himself and for his relationship with Raven. So we had to have a diversity of powers. I didn't have a Nightcrawler this time, so I decided Blink would be this movie's version of that. I like Warpath as a character, there's a lot of heart in him, and Sunspot is really cool and stunning visually. And Bishop is a strong character, and Bishop has something for the fans here that we haven't seen before.”

“X-Men: Days of Future Past” (3D) opens May 21 in theaters nationwide from 20th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros.

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