Next summer’s big budget superhero romp “X-Men: Days of Future Past” certain sounds, er, ambitious. Combining time travel, alternate realities, and two different casts of X-Men (those from Bryan Singer‘s original movies and the “swinging sixties” variants featured in “X-Men: First Class“), it sounds like it could be a fun mess… or just plain messy. We’ll get the first taste from the movie in the form of a teaser trailer released next week, but until then, Empire has unleashed a whole slew of new photos from the film, featuring mutants both old and new. Excelsior!
We had to make the shot of Hugh Jackman’s regenerative mutant Wolverine the top image. He’s shirtless, riddled with bullets and nursing some unhealthy adult beverage while rocking maybe the best version of the stylized “Wolverine hair” in the entire franchise (Snikt!). Somehow, the movie involves sending Wolverine back in time to stop the creation of the mutant-hunting Sentinel robots (it’s based on a handful of “X-Men” comics from the early ’80s by Chris Claremont and John Byrne).
Other photos show a very ’70s-looking Professor Xavier (James McAvoy) playing chess with Magneto (Michael Fassbender), which suggests that the two might get into some philosophical banter (a part of Singer’s first “X-Men” that was sorely missing in the more action-oriented “X-Men: First Class”), Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) involved in a somewhat romantic embrace with Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), shots of Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence in blue Mystique form and in a more human variation, and Singer, returning to the franchise after sitting out the third proper ‘X-Men’ movie and ‘First Class,’ directing Patrick Stewart. It’s hard not to look at these photos and not get at least a little bit excited about the prospect of such wacky, unhinged fun. Then again, it could be a complete disaster.
We’ll have a better idea of how “X-Men: Days of Future Past” will turn out when the trailer is unleashed next week. It will be released theatrically on May 23rd, 2014. [Empire/EW]
