‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ Casts More Stars From Movies Past

In the X-Men Universe, I always thought that Days of Future Past was one of the best storylines out there and helped define them as the go-to comic for me. While the Phoenix Saga ranks as number one to me, I remember reading the comics for Days of Future Past at a friend’s house and loved the story of alternate futures and seeing it as a possibility if things were to go wrong. Imagine my own glee when I heard that the sequel to X-Men: First Class was going to be an adaptation of the Days of Future Past storyline. I got even more excited due to the return of Bryan Singer as director, the excitement after X2: X-Men United got squandered immediately with Brett Ratner’s X-Men: The Last Stand (HOLY CRAP, it was awful). I did think that Matthew Vaughn did a terrific job in X-Men: First Class and am glad that he still helped write the script for this sequel. However, this seemed to be Singer’s baby and I am happy he returns to fold. As it turns out, he won’t be the only one…

Also slated to return according to SuperheroHype, are Rogue, Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat) and Bobby Drake (Iceman), which means you get to see Anna Paquin, Ellen Page and Shawn Ashmore back in the mutant world once more. They join the list of several coming back, with Hugh Jackman coming back as Wolverine and Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart returning as Magneto and Professor X, respectively. Obviously with the time jumps and alternate realities, we were going to get glimpses of the cast but just hearing their involvement in the series makes me giddy.

Also confirmed back are Michael Fassbender (THE reason to watch X-Men: First Class), Jennifer Lawrence, James McAvoy, and Nicholas Hoult. No word yet on anyone else joining the fun parade from the old movies as Famke Janssen is still waiting on her invite as Phoenix/Jean Grey along with James Marsden as Cyclops. Seeing as Ratner killed them off (seriously, every third Marvel movie blows, I’m so scared for Iron Man 3), it’s still open ended on who’s going to be in or out. We do know that Rose Byrne as Moira MacTaggert and January Jones as Emma Frost have yet to hear back on their odds in returning after First Class so I’m sure once we get closer to the date, we’ll get more information.

The Kitty Pryde thing seems to be the most significant casting considering her role in the comic storyline. It still remains to be seen as how big Ellen Page’s role will be once the movie hits the screen but that doesn’t damper the high hopes for the movie, or the fact that they care enough about the fans to bring back the same people in the old roles. I guess we’ll find out July 18, 2014 to see exactly how this bit of awesome news translates to the screen.

‘X-Men: First Class’ Sequel – Subtitle Alludes to Classic Storyline

I have a confession to make. Despite being a comics fan, spending nearly 50$ a week on comics, collecting comics memorabilia, spending large amounts of time in a comic shop to the point where the employees and the people who are regulars there are now close friends who I see outside of the store, and just generally being admittedly a comic book nerd, I, am not that big a fan of the X-Men.

In fact, I’ve only cursory knowledge of them at best, no better really than the average, yet slightly more dedicated than usual, “Movies Only” X-Men fan. I know which characters are what, but some of the more obscure ones are lost on me, (X3 was a guessing game for a lot of characters I was clueless about), and I generally understand what their comic characterization is, but on the whole, I couldn’t recite to you a cavalcade of GREAT X-Men stories like I could for Superman or Green Lantern. In fact, when I first read this news, I had no clue of the significance of the source material until reading about it, and it’s inspiration to the tons of media that would follow it. So hearing about the X-Men: First Class sequel, was exciting, and also a bit perplexing, because while I loved First Class, I had no idea what the sequel’s “story” was based on.

Let’s get down to the details, according to [EW], the sequel will be based on ‘Days Of Future Past’, which was a story arc I’ve never heard of, or read:

For the newcomers in the audience: Days of Future Past was a time-travel story released in the early ’80s. In a bleak dystopian future, the mutants of the world are hunted down and sent to internment camps. Most of the X-Men are dead; the ones that are still alive are on the run. In the original story, the future version of Kitty Pryde time-travels back in time into her young self’s brain and works with the present-day X-Men to prevent the atrocity that kickstarts the whole miserable future. If this sounds familiar, it’s because Days of Future Past has been frequently imitated in pop culture. (Remember “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World”?)

Now I gotta say, that sounds pretty awesome. I know I’ll be losing some nerd cred by admitting I haven’t read it, but I’m a firm believer in manning up and admitting what you don’t know, rather than bullshitting people about what you do. To that end, First Class was by far the best of the previous X-Men movies, and was a welcome change from the dull talk tests that were the Bryan Singer X-Men movies. X3 was like weird retarded offshoot, that managed to entertain me more by simply being really dumb, but whenever I think about X-Men 1 or 2, my eyes start to glaze over. I think that’s always been why I could never get into X-Men period, because you have all these amazing characters with mind blowing powers (sometimes literally), and all they ever do is talk each other to death. [Ed. Note – X2 is still one of the 10 Best Comic Movies ever] I’m probably showing my ignorance here of all the tons of badass X-Men stories out there, with huge epic battles, but in my experience, picking up any form of X-Men media, be it a comic, movie, or even that animated Fox cartoon from years back, was an exercise in Mutant-related diplomatic relations, carried out slowly to avoid some really big, really important, impending threat thats juuuust on the horizon, but oh no will-they-talk-it-out-first- it’ssoimportantohmygodohmygodwilltheyfight??!??!  BUT no, they never do.

Anyhow, my bitching aside, the movie sounds really good. I’m excited for it. I just tend to complain about things no matter what. You can watch an interview with Bryan Singer about the movie below:

Marvel Comics: Ultimate Universe Reborn…Again!

Fans of Marvel’s Ultimate line will in no way be surprised to hear that once again, a new creative team will be taking the reins of the line and completely changing the status quo. It happened before when Jeph Loeb took over and brought about the insane Ultimatum series, which had wide sweeping effects across the whole universe. Basically, every character you really liked ended up dying horribly tragic deaths.

So we were then given Ultimate Comics, a fresh take on what was left of the Ultimates Universe, but it was bogged down with poor shipping schedules and unconnected storylines. So now it has been announced that the new creators Jonathan Hickman and Nick Spencer are coming in to turn the Ultimate U. into a more cohesive involved universe, promising at least monthly shipping and another batch of wide sweeping chances to kick off after the “Death of Spider-Man” storyline currently running in Brian Michael Bendis’ Ultimate Spider-Man.

Over the last week they have revealed 4 books that will be released under the new Ultimate Comics Reborn initiative, so keep reading to see if your favorites make the cut.

Marvel Comic Reviews – Age of X: Chapters 3 & 4

The X-Men’s ‘Age of X’ continues in X-men: Legacy #246 and New Mutants #23.

X-Men: Legacy #246

The story continues with Rogue on the run to escape Fortress X. But to where? And hunted by the likes of Moonstar and Eclipse (Sunspot) what chance does she even stand of escaping?

She carries with her the puzzle of why Kitty Pryde had a camera with pictures of nothing on it, saying “he told me to take pictures” and why (Highlight to read spoiler) *Charles Xavier* has memories of everyone at the fortress when he has never met any of them. After Gambit begins to aid Rogue in her escape, Magneto calls off all his followers and takes matters into his own hands by dropping tons of rubble upon them while everyone watches, proclaiming that is what happens to traitors.

The issue ends with Wolverine (who is sympathetic to Rogue) talking to Basilisk/Cyclops about getting to the bottom of things. A menacing looking Basilisk agrees.

*Spoilers follow. BEWARE!*