X-Men: Days of Future Past has seen a lot of casting news, with Fox combining the casts from Bryan Singer’s X-Men series with the last movie, X-Men: First Class. Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart were the first two of Singer’s cast to return as Magneto and Professor X, while Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy also re-signed to play the same roles.

Next up was Hugh Jackman returning as Wolverine, and then the news that Shawn Ashmore, Anna Paquin and Ellen Page returned as Iceman, Rogue and Kitty Pride.

While this may seem confusing to non-comic book readers, the story the movie is based on has Kitty Pride traveling back in time to warn the X-Men that if Magneto assassinates a certain U.S. Senator, the future is dark. I mean, it’s really dark – like with giant mutant hunting robots called Sentinels sent out by the government to capture mutants, dead or alive.

This allows actors like Stewart and McKellen to play the mutants in the apocalyptic future while McAvoy and Fassbender reprise their roles in the present time of the movie.

“It’s epic. We get to bring both casts together. We’ve cracked it in a way that makes sense,” Singer told Empire Magazine. “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 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.”

The rumors also have this movie jumping from the ’60s to the ’70s, which means it is still way before Bryan Singer’s first X-Men film. This means that both movie worlds can still live together, because the X-Men have to stop the destructive future to make sure the one we saw in the original movies remains intact. It can also allow an alternate world change, ala. J.J. Abrams Star Trek.

Let’s just hope Bryan Singer can return to the franchise and keep the fresh pace that Matthew Vaughn set with X-Men: First Class.

Source: Empire Magazine