Hot on the heels of the recent casting news on X-Men: Days of Future Past, Empire caught up with director Bryan Singer, who offered some thoughts as to how he plans to tackle the time travel aspect of the forthcoming superhero sequel:
“It’s epic. We get to bring both casts together. We’ve cracked it in a way that makes sense,” states Singer in the latest issue of the magazine (via CBM). “I had a two-hour conversation with James Cameron about time travel, string theory, multiverses and all that. You have to create your rules and stick with them. That’s what makes The Terminator and Back to the Future work so well. And there are certain mechanisms in X-Men, certain powers, perceptions and characters, that make this possible. More than any of the movies I’ve made, it comes to me much more quickly than on other films. With Superman Returns I struggled a lot. I guess it’s either my history with the X-Men universe or I have some kind of knack for this particular story.”
Meanwhile, speaking to Empire Online, Singer discussed how he plans to incorporate elements of the classic 1982 comic book story arc, as well as remaining faithful to the previous X-Men movies: “It has a lot of aspects of the comic. The actual comic of Days Of Future Past had a whole ton of stuff going on, so it’s like any of these things; you have to distill it. But I think the fans will be pleased that some of the most exciting parts of Days Of Future Past are going to be connected to this movie… I’m taking into account every movie – I’m not just grabbing my first two movies and First Class and smashing them together. I’m taking into account the entire universe as it’s been laid out so far on the screen, and really respecting it and trying to work with that. People took things in various directions, so there’s some clean-up, but ultimately I’m not just ignoring them either.”
X-Men: Days of Future Past is due for release on July 18th, 2014 with a cast that so far includes X-Men: First Class’ James McAvoy (Professor X), Michael Fassbender (Magneto), Jennifer Lawrence (Mystique) and Nicholas Hoult (Beast), alongside original X-Men trilogy stars Patrick Stewart (Professor X), Ian McKellen (Magneto), Hugh Jackman (Wolverine), Anna Paquin (Rogue), Ellen Page (Kitty Pryde) and Shawn Ashmore (Iceman).
Originally published January 29, 2013. Updated December 13, 2019.
