In any film fans cinematic history they will no doubt have seen at least one great science fiction movie. Some of these movies will have released in their lifetime, while others needed to be sought out. But no matter what era they are made in, or how they became a part of our film lexicon, the best ones still have that sense of awe and magical wonder about them that makes them something quite special.
As a fan of the genre myself, I am always looking out for videos that give me that aforementioned buzz. So when I came across this unique mash-up video, the Sci-Fi nerd in me was doing cartwheels of joy (figuratively not literally, I am much too heavy for that). World Wide Interweb, the creators of the video in question are no strangers to the mash-up and compilation video it seems. Their Daily Motion page has over a hundred of these videos, all covering various aspects of entertainment.
Try to calm down if you can. I almost started to type this article in caps lock. Our beloved Wolverine has officially chosen a potential replacement, and its none other than Bane! Thanks to an interview with MTV, Hugh Jackman was prompted with the question of who would he choose to replace him and he gives a perfect answer of Tom Hardy.
Now we all know Marvel’s mutants get a rough deal. Dying, getting brought back to life, having their powers stripped away and almost causing the destruction of the Earth all seem to happen on a weekly basis for these guys. So it’s nice to see that Pete Holmes can inject some humor into the X-Men world with a series of shorts from his late night talk show, called Ex-Men.
The basic premise behind this is that Professor X is cleaning house and ridding the X-Men of the more useless or flawed members. The shorts amount to Xavier, played by Holmes, calling the various mutants into his office to sack them all. So sit back and enjoy Charles Xavier in a more twisted vein than we are used to seeing, shit-canning some of our favorite heroes with absolute joy:
Gambit:
Iceman:
Wolverine:
The full playlist is available on Pete Holmes’s Youtube page and includes Storm, Nightcrawler, and Jubilee.
My personal favorites are the Wolverine one that plays Logan as a dumb jock and the Angel sketch where Xavier cannot stop wetting himself over how awful Warren Worthington really is.
If you liked these then maybe check out Pete’s fantastic Batman parodies, which started out as a collaboration between College Humor and Holmes’s sketch comedy group Front Page Films and more recently have been incorporated into The Pete Holmes Show. Here’s a taste:
The day has finally arrived in which we get our first real look at Bryan Singer’s newest incarnation of the X-Men franchise. That’s right, the X-Men: Days of Future Past trailer is here!
I’ll admit that X-Men: First Class is easily my favorite of all the films to date so I was quite excited to see James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender back as Magneto and Professor X. Of course they aren’t quite themselves, especially Professor X, as shown by the copious amounts of dust being blown off Cerebro. Well, that and Patrick Stewart saying “I was a very different man.”
The trailer seemed like it gave everyone a little bit of screen time, both returning mutants and those new to the game. If X-Men: Days of Future Past does nothing else, it will hopefully be remembered as the movie that featured actors named Bingbing and Booboo. Incidentally, they both look quite amazing as Blink and Warpath.
There was very little to quibble over with this trailer. It had direction, gave a good look at the plot of the film (for those of us who are not very familiar with the X-Men books), and was pretty in doing so. However, outside of Nixon looking nothing like Nixon, my biggest issue was the use of “Adagio in D” from Sunshine. I understand that it is a beautiful piece of music and it does fit quite well with the action of this trailer, but it is getting dangerously close to being overused. I’d much rather have heard something from John Ottman’s score.
So, are you excited for X-Men: Days of Future Past? Does this first trailer make you more excited? This is the first of many, many, many trailer and posters and photos and pretty much the deluge of material that comes along with modern film promotion, but it is nice to enjoy this moment when everything is new and fresh.
X-Men: Days of Future Past is scheduled to arrive in theaters on May 23rd, 2014.
The Setup: X-Force, a team of mutants led by the mysterious time traveler known as Cable, takes on missions that threaten the future of mutantkind. Their latest mission is to find a missing group of New Mutants who will potentially be important to the X-Men in the future. X-Force discovers that the kids have been kidnapped by Mr. Sinister, a mad mutant geneticist, who is served by the deadly mutant killers known as the Marauders. Awesome action ensues, the X-Force team grows as New Mutants join up, and a future trilogy is hinted at, with Cable’s long time foe Apocalypse as the overall villain.
That Bryan Singer is one sneaky little bleeder. Over the past few months Singer has done a superb job at raising the excitement levels of X-Men: Days of Future Past by dropping sneaky little Tweets and Instagram shots of new characters, costumes, set design and those beautiful character posters during Comic Con.
Now the promo job seems to have set itself into viral mode with the launch of www.Trask-Industries.com. The website itself was launched a little while ago during San Diego Comic Con, but at that time there was very little up on the site. Today there seems to have been a major update that gives us our first shot of everyone’s favorite Lannister, Peter Dinklage, in full 70’s Bolivar Trask get up.
We are also treated to a great little propaganda style Trask Industries infomercial explaining how, if the X-Gene is allowed to continue propagating without limit, that homo sapiens could cease to exist by the year 2030.
The website also gives us a nifty little bit of X-history with a timeline of the Sentinel program as well as the big reveal of the Sentinels themselves.
Now, this all sets up the premise and tone of the film very nicely and obviously starts to point us towards the dystopian future that Wolverine, Kitty Pride and the rest of the X-team inhabit. I imagine that most of the material used here, or at least the premise it sets up, will be covered briefly within the opening scenes or credits of the film once it is released. In the meantime it gives us good insight into were they are going with the film. One of X-Men: First Class’ main accomplishments I feel was the tone. By the looks of things so far, Bryan Singer has really picked up on that and is stylistically aiming to conjoin the two cinematic threads.
I particularly like the ‘Mutants are the Enemy’ posters that were popping up around SDCC and on the web. which you can see more of at the link above.
There are a few things that worry me about X-Men: DOFP, though. I loved X-Men: First Class. In my opinion it was the strongest of all the X-films (I wonder how many more X-idioms I can use). It’s my opinion that the film that X-Men: DOFP bridges First Class with (X-Men: The Last Stand) is probably the worst. Singer revealed to UK magazine Empire that the future set parts take place 10 years after The Last Stand. This leaves a lot of questions to be answered, such as how Professor X is now inhabiting the body of Patrick Stewart again, and not that bloke in the bed who he ‘mind-swapped’? Also, there does seem to be a rather bloated cast. Will there be enough time to give them all the screen time they deserve and not turn it into the cameo fest that was The Last Stand.
Ultimately, this could all be explained very easily and done satisfyingly. I for one am more excited to see this and hopefully Singer and co. will pull out all the stops to avoid X-fanboy ire.
X-Men: Days of Future Past hits theaters on May 23, 2014.
Grizzly Bomb 