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James MacAvoy

Previews

X Men: Days of Future Past Teaser

Xavier and Magneto, Past and Future.

Xavier and Magneto, Past and Future.

The best, most creative photo teaser for a film I’ve seen in a long time. Or maybe I’m just very much invested. It also sucks that I got word of the leaked trailer too late. Look for it now, click and expect a “video has been removed by user” message to pop up.

For those who would make do with a transcript instead though, MTV.com was nice enough to lay it out for us.

The footage starts on a close up of Professor X’s eye, with the voice over asking, “What’s the last thing you remember?” The footage then shows its first of many cutaways to various X-Men; first up is Storm, who we see from behind, looking over her shoulder in mid-air. The weather is ominious. “I remember a glimpse into the past,” says Xavier in voice over. Then we get a shot of a bearded Iceman, Kitty Pryde looking up off screen, and Rogue—in profile—looking down. All three look pretty much how you would remember them looking, just with an additional Iceman beard (but sadly not an ice beard). Professor Xavier then asks who he’s talking to “do for me what I once did for you,” which leads me to believe that he’s talking to Wolverine, asking Logan to help piece his mind back together.

Then there’s a shot of the Xavier school from above, mixed in with shots of the mansion’s basements and possibly the Cerebro room, with Xavier entering and approaching the signature round, ‘X’ doors. There’s a shot of the mansion’s hallway, with silhouettes of people in them, followed by Magneto in a dark corridor, Iceman backing him up.

“You’ll need me as well,” says Magneto. Then Omar Sy as Bishop walks into the light, in front of an industrial looking background, holding a giant gun. Bishop has dreadlocks and a giant dark red scarf, similar to what he wore in his late ’90s solo comic book series. Then what looks like Adan Canto appears as Sunspot, in front of a similar background. He’s in costume, which is black, with yellow stripes across chest, midsection and abs, with a “V” of yellow piping up top. The costume is sleeveless and doesn’t have a domino mask. Then, finally, we see Booboo Stewart as Warpath. He has long hair, with a black sleveless top with a yellow, angled stripe in the middle. He even has upper arm/shoulder pad looking gear on, and face paint over his eyes that gives a nod to his signature domino mask.

Both Warpath and Sunspot look a little too Silk Spectre from Watchmen for my taste, in the “this looks like a store bought costume from Ricky’s” kinda way. But then again, that could definitely be the bad film quality and the nature of the footage; they aren’t moving and they aren’t in action. Bishop looks great, especially with him holding a giant gun. That’s pretty Bishop-y! Overall, the tone seems dramatic and dire—which is what you want from this particular storyline—and it’s really just great to see all these actors again.

Comic Book Therapy has screengrabs of the characters too, just in case the footage gets taken down—which, come on, it will eventually.

 

Make do with this, until the official teasers FINALLY come out. Or better yet, until the X Men: Days of Future Past movie hits theaters, finally revealing how Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy will share Charles Xavier‘s wheelchair, and the differences between Ian McKellen and Michael Fassbender‘s magnetic personalities.

Stay tuned.

 

Movie Review

Review: X-Men First Class

There are multitude of reasons why I love James McAvoy (despite his height, and height is always an issue for me), and they were all brilliantly depicted here. He was sleek, smart, eloquent and vibrantly charismatic, and at the same time strong and vigorous in ways Professor X as we X-Men geeks know him is not. The Charles-Raven platonic love was an interesting thing to watch, and despite my biases, after my second watch I have to admit that it was mostly Charles’ arrogance and (dare I say it) insensitivity that spun the creation of Mystique. Although Raven’s inherent insecurities account for a lot, of course. Charles was trying to save the world, and she was being a classic brat. Thus I still blame her.

And then there was Erik. Michael Fassbender‘s take on the metal-force mutant was intense and exhilarating, and one important color to watch is his multi-layered chemistry with Charles. There is a distinct pull on me of depictions of boy friendships, mostly because they rarely run deep and rarely leave a sensible mark. But this comic book bromance does, and sets the theme for its constant reappearance in the franchise.

There is a lot more to rave and rant about with X-Men: First Class–the Brit-pop edge/soundtrack, the psychedelic cool effects, the awesome evil of the antagonists, the themes of war that knock too close to the world today–,but I am a biased judge, and thus not a reliable movie critic. So all I can say is: do watch it. It was the best summer movie of my hard working summer.