In a year full of summer blockbusters that seem to have a new trailer every few weeks, why haven’t we seen a new trailer for X-Men: Days of Future Past since San Diego Comic Con last summer? In what is reported to be the most expensive Superhero movie to date, what can we expect from this new film and why is it already being called one of the most ambitious films ever.

The Cost:

So why is this the most expensive Superhero movie ever? Well, just think of the cast and all the abilities/transformations they have. Mystique’s shape-shifting, Storm’s weather control, Kitty’s ability to phase through solid objects, iceman’s ice bridges, pyro’s flames, Colossus becoming iron, armies of various sentinel robots, telekinesis and magnetism.

Rather than having just a few abilities to use over and over again, this film has extremely distinct uses of CGI and other special effects that must be implemented before the film can look halfway decent. Even the Sentinel robots themselves are different from model to model. The initial ones encountered in the 70s might be steel framed, but the ones encountered in the ruined future are bio-engineered with nanites making them swirling masses of special effect nightmares.

There’s not even one consistent time set for this film. Some sets can be made and shot on location for the 70s story, but what about those set in the ruined future? Those all have to be CGI and special effects. Speaking of the time differences, just where does this movie fit in timeline wise.

Continuity:

Contrary to earlier beliefs, this is not a separate universe or an alternate timeline for the X-Men series. This film is directly tied to the original X-Men trilogy. In fact, the entire First Class series is a trilogy of its own made up of X-Men: First Class, X-Men: Days of Future Past, and the final installment entitled X-Men: Apocalypse. So how does it all fit together?

Well at the end of The Wolverine, we find Magneto and an apparently alive Charles Xavier finding Logan in an airport and telling him that there is a dark force coming – while an advertisement for Trask Industries plays on the TV above. So the ‘future’ portion of this film takes place some years after the events of The Wolverine, which takes place some years after X-Men: The Last Stand. The events in the ‘past’ will be set in the 1970s.

As for how Professor Xavier is still alive will be explained in the story, but you can be sure more than just that will change. As with any time travel flick – Back to the Future, Terminator, etc – whatever changes in the past is sure to affect things in the future, which could potentially fix a lot of the continuity errors caused by X-Men Origins: Wolverine, et all.

Uniting the Divided:

In the future, we find Xavier and Magneto regretting all their wasted years fighting each other rather than the real enemy. This has led them and all of mutant – and human-kind itself – to be exterminated. The weapons Trask industries created back in the 70s have reached their perfected forms. These monstrosities can constantly alter their shape and form to develop new abilities – blade arms, cannons, etc – and they are programmed to wipe out all mutants with extreme prejudice.

Just don’t think these robots will hesitate to kill people too. They single-mindedly destroy all mutants and will wipe out anything that stands in their way – as you can see by the ruined city the few remaining mutants have taken up refuge in. The only thing greater than their strength is their numbers. With hordes littering the sky like a swarm of locust, there is only one way to destroy them; and that is to defeat them before they get started.

By using Wolverine as a vessel, Charles Xavier somehow sends Wolverine back in time through his memories so that he can find Magneto and Xavier and unite them during a time the two were never further apart. Between the vastly different approaches to mutant acceptance as well as their bickering over Mystique, it’s going to be hard to unite these two for the coming storm.

X-Men: Days of Future Past will arrive in theaters May 23^rd. There’s still time to get another trailer or two, but in what appears to be a summer full of blockbusters with preview after preview, it’s nice to have a film that is being quite secretive on what exactly is coming. Though will that work to the films advantage, or make it lost in the shuffle. As always, time – this time more than ever – will tell.