After the first trailer for X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST was released yesterday, Bryan Singer revealed some excellent details on the film to Empire while doing a breakdown of the trailer. Singer starts off by saying the trailer is definitely the first look he wanted to give the public of X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST.
"It really is what we wanted from the first look at the movie. It's an emotional piece that has the characters and the pathos and the mission."
Bryan Singer then talked about almost every frame of the trailer, and provided some captions for the images featured in it. There are forty-two of them, so I won't be showing you all of Bryan Singer's comments (you can check out the rest here), but here are the ones I think are the most interesting and/or important.
On Wolverine's (Hugh Jackman) grey hair in the trailer: "The grey in the hair is something I took from X-Men Days Of Future Past, it’s a look in the comic," says Singer. "I liked it, even though he hasn’t really aged physically it’s something that shows how tough things have gotten in the future, and brought that out in him and given him a little more world-weariness."
On Storm's (Halle Berry) place in the film: "She’s one of the last surviving X-Men in this post-apocalyptic world. She’s part of that with Wolverine and Charles and Magneto; they’re some of the last folk standing from the original X-Men. They’re at the spearhead of this mission, this last chance at saving the world. This is their only hope, their mission into time. Can you actually go back and affect time? Can you go back and change things or will time correct itself? Will history fight you back and is your destiny pre-determined or can you change it?"
Singer on just how bad things have gotten for the mutants in the future timeline: "They’re on the run," says Singer. "There’s no organization. It’s all been shattered. Most of them have been hunted down. Most of them are dead."
On the new future mutants in X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST: "They’re not really fresh recruits. They’re more refugees that are living day to day in this hideously ruined world. They don’t have much hope in the future. They’re on the run and they join forces with the remaining X-Men to try to do this one last attempt at fixing the world."
Bryan Signer explaining why the incredibly powerful Magneto (Michael Fassbender) is shown using a gun in the trailer: "There’s a line in the movie, ‘He’s always had a way with guns. That’s how he crippled Xavier, and he’s such a powerful mutant but in this particular moment he’s holding a gun and I like that. He’s a product of the Second World War and he knows how to use a gun as much as he does his powers."
"He’s trying to access something deep in his mind," says Singer, cryptically. "That’s what the line’s about, 'You’re going to need to do for me what I once did for you'. In X-Men 1, Logan was a lost, lonely person and Charles helped him find himself. Now the tables are turned and Logan is coming into the world from the future to find a man who’s at the end of his rope in the past."
Colossus (Daniel Cudmore) is shown in the image above, but don't you think if things are collapsing and on fire, he would be safer in his metal skin? He probably will be in his metal form for the scene, but Singer hasn't finished the CGI for it yet: "He may be his human form in that shot, I’m not sure. By that time in the sequence he may actually be metal but I have no visual effects done!" laughs Singer. "So for that shot you just get what’s on the set – a big, live, real explosion. No CGI yet. We’re in process on very elaborate effects but there’s really none of them done except for a couple of backdrops and a couple of shots I could slide in."
Singer on how Michael Fassbender's Magneto will be more like Ian McKellen's version in X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST: "Fassbender knew that he would be, well, not sharing the frame with Ian McKellen, but sharing the movie with Ian McKellen," explains Singer, "so where on First Class he tried to be as different as possible from McKellen, because that was a very different character, he now knows as an actor he’d have to bring his performance slightly closer to Ian’s because he’s heading in that direction."
Bryan Singer confirming Wolverine will have bone claws in X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST: "He doesn’t have his metal yet in 1973."
Singer on having older and younger versions of the same characters in his film: "When I try to direct an actor, you always try to give them a sense of who they were as young men, who they were in their past lives, and in my imagination I always had that [with Charles and Erik]," says Singer. "I was able to introduce those notions in X-Men: First Class but to actually have them performing simultaneously on screen, that was a real thrill and a challenge."
I'd say that's a pretty in-depth trailer breakdown from Bryan Singer. X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST is going to be an absolutely huge movie in size and scope, but I'm optimistic it will also be a fantastic film. You can call me a "cheerleader" all you want, but I'm finding it really hard not to be excited for X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, and hopefully Bryan Singer and company will deliver.
X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST will hit theaters on May 23rd, 2014.