20 Things You Didn’t Know About X-Men Past/Present (for Virgin Movies)
It seems like a distant memory now, but I think it’s fair to say that Bryan Singer’s X-Men (2000) marked a point where comic book movies showed they could be relevant and engaging for adult audiences. It was the match dropped on the trail of petrol, if you will, and over the last 14 years there have been a huge number of great examples of the genre, whereas before they’d been few and far between, basically having tailed off following the nadir that was Batman and Robin.
So, with Bryan Singer returning to the franchise for Days of Future Past, it was cool of Virgin Movies to commission another ‘Things you didn’t know about’ piece, following Iron Man, Star Trek, Superman, Wolverine and Robocop which you can see collated on my portfolio here.
I suggested splitting the twenty facts into past and present so that it would play nicely against the titular future past. Then what’s interesting is you get an extra level to it, where you have James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender playing the ‘past’ versions of Professor Xavier and Magneto, but of course they’re also the younger actors who are attached to the franchise in the present.
Naturally many more characters might have been included, but it would have quickly got to a point where the relative scale of characters would have been too small compared to the text, so having two character portraits in each ‘wedge’ around the X for the facts felt like the most effective way to go.
Really looking forward to seeing the movie ASAP!
