Days of Future Past\u00a0<\/em>was generally considered well handled, and is now recalled as one of the classic X-Men storylines.<\/p>\nThus we have a time-travel narrative with older and younger characters involved. Hmmm, this fits the bill nicely for the X-Men<\/em> movie franchise, which has three movies set in the twenty-first\u00a0century and one (critically well-received but less commercially successful) prequel set in the 1960s. It allows the studio\u00a0to use older actors (Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart) as well as younger ones (Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy) in the same\u00a0movie, playing the same characters at different points in their lives. Since Wolverine’s\u00a0powers include resistance to\u00a0aging, Hugh Jackman can play him in both eras. Other successful actors from the earlier movies can be brought back, such as Anna Paquin to\u00a0play Rogue.<\/p>\nThis would also allow a reboot of the franchise\u00a0if the studio so desired. Once time-travel is involved, you can play with it\u00a0in all sorts of ways, hiving off\u00a0entire\u00a0realities if you need to for the\u00a0sake of a\u00a0franchise’s ongoing settings.<\/p>\n
Surely McKellen and Stewart can’t go on making X-Men movies forever, but\u00a0their\u00a0gravitas might come in very handy for one more\u00a0round. Their splendid, dignified performances – as Magneto and Professor X respectively\u00a0 – were largely responsible for the success of the franchise, launching it at a level\u00a0far beyond expectations and leading to the last decade-and-a-bit of blockbuster superhero cinema. Fassbender and McAvoy also put in excellent performances as younger versions of these\u00a0characters in X-Men: First\u00a0Class<\/em>, but maybe it will take a bit more\u00a0to wean the public over to them.<\/p>\nIn any event,\u00a0 I’m intrigued to see how\u00a0the studio will handle the time-travel narrative, how the\u00a0older and younger X-characters will be shown interacting, and what it might all mean for the\u00a0franchise’s own future.<\/p>\n
H\/T Al Stefanelli.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Word is that the next X-Men movie will be based on the popular Days of Future Past storyline from 1981, when\u00a0Chris Claremont was scriptwriter for the series and\u00a0stretching many boundaries. The idea is that the future\u00a0assassination of an anti-mutant politician\u00a0leads (speaking tenselessly) to a ruthless\u00a0crack-down on mutants, and a dystopian society dominated by mutant-hunting Sentinel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}