As opposed to the growing universe of The Avengers, the X-Men saga seems less a dollar-driven mega-brand these days than an interweaving, incestuous franchise bent on its own redemption. James Mangold’s The Wolverine rather effectively removed the bitter taste of Gavin Hood’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class opted to wind the clock all the way back to the 1960s, as if to distract us from the overreaching piecemeal mess that was Brett Ratner’s X-Men: The Last Stand. Now comes X-Men: Days of Future Past, whose very plot involves amending the ills of days gone by, and using this valiant approach to suppress chaos and make for a better future. Allowing life to imitate art, Marvel even reached into its own past to bring this picture to the screen, tapping X-Men and X2 director Bryan Singer to once again take the reins. Few would argue that Singer’s X films, particularly X2, were the strongest of the series, and then there’s the tangentially related tidbit that his Superman Returns soared above Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. It’s with that directorial promise that viewers can watch Future Past’s debut trailer with confidence, taking in the Marty McFly parallels to a comic-book storyline first penned by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, and watching Halle Berry channel Helen Slater from The Legend of Billie Jean. X-Men: Days of Future Past may not be able to wipe clean the sins of the series, but thanks to its helmer and the sheer audacity of its apparent convolution, it may just be the rare new superhero film that’s actually remarkable. Watch the trailer after the jump.
This article was originally published on The House Next Door.
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