X-MEN: Days Of Future Past (Casting, Rumors, Pics till release)

[Admiral_Young]

I could see Elizabeth Banks as Emma Frost...and age probably wouldn't matter for the role since Singer was planning on casting Signourney Weaver as Emma Frost in his "X-Men 3". I think it would be more of a scheduling problem for Banks if anything that would keep her from the film. I think she's attached to two or three projects over the next year or so.

[JD]

Is her character in the last Hunger Games movie? Actually, it doesn't matter, they're already working around the HG movies for Jennifer Lawrence.

[Admiral_Young]

I wasn't even thinking about Mockingjay...Banks has like two or three other films beyond that that are in pre-production...and Mystique is critical to "Days of Future Past".

[Captaindemotion]

Hartzilla2007 wrote:

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But didn't X-Men the last stand end with things kind of hunky dorry between regular humans and mutants?

How the hell do you go from appointing Hank McCoy as the U.S. representative to the United Nations to unleashing giant robots to commit genocide again mutants.

How do you go from the USA arming Mujahadeen fighters in Afghanistan in the 1980s to Al-Queda attacking American soil in 2011? Or the US and USSR being WWII allies, then Cold War foes, then post-Glasnost allies and now cold warriors again?

Not quite as dramatic as giant genocidal robots, admittedly but the status quo rarely remains so for long.

[DigificWriter]

The more I think about this movie and the more info we get casting-wise, the more I think this needs to be done Yesterday's Enterprise-style, with something in the past creating a ripple effect that leads to the dystopian future, with the crux of the story being going back in time to prevent that ripple effect event from happening. Based on what First Class did, I think the most organic ripple effect event to use would be the assassination of JFK, with the idea being that the truth was classified back in the 60s and then exposed at some point following the events of The Last Stand, thus creating a backlash against mutants that results in the DoFP dystopian future, and sending one or more members of the future X team back to the past to prevent the assassination.

I know Vaughn had mentioned wanting to have Magneto be responsible for killing JFK, but given Ian McKellen' s return for DoFP, I think you might need to have a different mutant culprit.

[Gaith]

^^ The core problem was McCoy being in the government in the first place after Mags almost killed everybody in X2.

Not bringing Grammar back is a great way to ignore TLS as much as reasonably possible without denying it entirely.

[DigificWriter]

It doesn't look like they're going to be ignoring TLS, though, with or without Grammar's Beast.

[the G-man]

From what I've read, and I'm probably not the first to make this guess, but I think the producers are going to use the time travel/ripple effect concept to "reboot" the franchise and "fix" some of the continuity, not to mention undo at least some of what happened in X3.

[DigificWriter]

If FOX wanted to reboot the franchise, they had the opportunity to do so with First Class and opted not to,so why would they turn around and reboot the franchise with the sequel to the movie that they decided not to use as reboot?

[the G-man]

For the same reason JJ Abrams used a time travel conceit to create Nu Trek, and not just a clean reboot?

[DigificWriter]

^ If FOX wanted to reboot the X franchise, they would've taken the opportunity to do so with First Class and wouldn't have set The Wolverine after the events of The Last Stand.

[RoJoHen]

But DOFP gives them an opportunity to "reboot" the series without actually rebooting it from scratch. Time travel is fun that way. All of the other movies can still be a part of the franchise, but DOFP will allow them to make changes if they want to while still going forward.

[DigificWriter]

In terms of the way that the term reboot is defined in terms of serialized fiction, you would be discarding the entirety of the existing franchise, and, again, FOX had the chance to do so with First Class and opted not to.

What Abrams and Co. did was a personal choice; there was no creative imperative for them to reboot the franchise in the manner they chose to.

[RoJoHen]

DigificWriter wrote:

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In terms of the way that the term reboot is defined in terms of serialized fiction, you would be discarding the entirety of the existing franchise, and, again, FOX had the chance to do so with First Class and opted not to.

And again, that's not what I'm talking about.

"Reboot" has many definitions these days. Frankly, the word gets thrown around so much that I feel it has lost all meaning. I'm saying get rid of the entire continuity. I'm saying they could use the time travel aspect of DOFP to change or undo certain things that they don't like so that they can ignore them with future movies. What better way to ignore The Last Stand than by using the story to undo it?

[DigificWriter]

^ Not in serialized fiction; the term reboot, when used in that context and medium, means to discard and start over.

Singer also just went on record stating that he is not ignoring any of the existing stories with DoFP, although both First Class and The Wolverine appear to have already ignored Origins: Wolverine, so we'll have to see what happens with DoFP for sure.