X-Men: Days of Future Past trailer: an overdose of superheroes?
Before we examine the debut trailer for X-Men: Days of Future Past,
which hit the web this week, a confession: I have never had any real
fondness for any of these movies. While some consider the first two, Bryan Singer-directed,
X-Men films to have ushered in the current era of high-quality
superhero flicks, I would argue that they represent everything that's
wrong with the worst of comic book adaptations: too many
spandex-sporting titans with too little screen time and not enough
dialogue to make them stand out from the crowd.
In order to pull off
that particular trick, the film will travel into decidedly risky
territory by going the decidedly iffy time travel route. Singer's
screenplay is reportedly based on the titular 1981 Marvel comic,
which saw the present day X-Men trapped in a horrifying future in which
giant mutant-killing robots named Sentinels patrol the Earth. The movie
sees Game of Thrones' Peter Dinklage
as military scientist Bolivar Trask, the villainous type who creates
these gargantuan monstrosities in a bid to rid the world of X-types for
good.The trailer hints that Hugh Jackman's Wolverine (who else) will be the vessel through which the elder X-Men ask their younger counterparts for aid. It flashes through action-oriented shots of McAvoy and Fassbender, Patrick Stewart's elder Charles Xavier, Ian McKellen's elder Magneto, Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique, Nicholas Hoult's Beast, Halle Berry's Storm, Ellen Page's Kitty Pride, Anna Paquin's Rogue and …
Getting bored yet? This is exactly my point. While it's thrilling to see such a cavalcade of characters in one movie, especially with this kind of sumptuous cast involved, Singer only seems to have compounded the series' Achilles heel. And he clearly doesn't get it: in a Twitter Q&A session earlier this week, the film-maker tweeted that the new movie will also feature Marvel favourites Blink, Bishop, Sunspot, Warpath, Ink and Quicksilver. Argh!
Overloading the movie with superheroes might please fans of the comic books, but the rest of us will be chewing on our own spleens when the umpteenth brightly-coloured dude turns up to spout one line of dialogue, then drop off the map. We should not forget that it was Singer who pitched the initial treatment for First Class, and therefore he who presumably came up with the idea for the irritatingly superfluous Gap model mini-mutants who pretty much ruined all the excellent work carried out by McAvoy and Fassbender last time out.
The only plus-point here is that, as the series' signature director, Singer might just have the clout to keep the suits at Fox off his back and let the movie breathe. Matthew Vaughn's First Class always had a whiff of studio interference about it when compared to the British film-maker's work on Kick-Ass.
I do feel almost apologetic damning Days of Future Past on the basis of a single trailer, but would be keen to hear how readers think the film can possibly function on a character-driven level with so many superheroes to get through. With at least half the film likely to be taken up by action sequences, will there be any additional dialogue left for the full movie?
Superhero fare has (pardon the pun) come in leaps and bounds over the past decade, but the X-Men series remains an issue on the big screen. I'm thinking maybe those nasty sentinel things aren't so bad after all. When it comes to this most convoluted and over-populous of sagas, we're most definitely in need of some sort of cull.
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