Mutated blood is thicker than water, or possible chronological anomalies.

Lucas Till as Havok

In the comics, Scott Summers, better known as the X-Men leader Cyclops is the older brother of Alex Summers, also known as Havok.  As children, the siblings parachuted from a crashing plane, piloted by their father Christopher.  Scott was injured in the escape and as a result was not able to control his mutant eye blasts when they emerged.  Alex, unscathed was quickly adopted and the boys were separated until adulthood.

Now comes word that the Summers boys will indeed be brothers in ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’, but obviously certain questions arise.

Cyclops, played by James Marsden, first appeared in the first ‘X-Men’ which was released in 2000 and was essentially set in the “present.”  But when the franchise was rebooted in 2011’s ‘X-Men: First Class’, the setting was switched to the 1960s and that film focused on younger versions of Professor Xavier and Magneto.  Not surprisingly, save the long-lived Wolverine, the contemporary cast was omitted.  But included was Lucas Till as Alexander Summers, who adopts the codename Havok in the film and joined the first incarnation of the X-Men.  He briefly reprised the role in ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’.

 

Debby Wong / Shutterstock.com

Now Tye Sheridan has been cast as a youthful Scott Summers and ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ is reportedly fast forwarding to the 80s.  How can these two possibly retain their brotherly relationship?

At one point, fans speculated that Alex would be recast as Scott’s father, but that was just that– speculation.  Then director Bryan Singer flat out nixed the idea that the pair would be brothers, stating:

“Yes, the timeline is different. It wouldn’t physically fit for him to be the brother of Cyclops. We take some liberties on that. There are notions, but, um, I don’t want to give away certain interrelations, but let’s just say there are some things that do adhere to the comic books and do so in a way the fans will get a kick out of. And those things can, perhaps, move forward into the future…. That’s one reason we wanted to call the film ‘First Class’ even though it isn’t the ‘First Class’ in the comics as fans know it. You couldn’t really tell that story without going even earlier and explaining how they got there and how it came to be. I liked the title, so we kept it, but this is a prelude in a way that will eventually lead to the [scenarios] that fit in more clearly with the ‘First Class’ comics and situations.”

But then came this Instagram posting:


Yep, the parents of Scott and Alex Summers appear in the movie.  How does this change things?  Or rather, how does this even make sense?

In the comics, the siblings’ real father, Christopher became the space pirate Corsair and tooled around the galaxy with his ragtag group of alien mercenaries called the Star Jammers.  Thus far, the X-Men films have remained strictly Earth-based and focused more on the political aspects of the discovery of mutants and their impact on the world at large.  The idea of bringing in cosmic elements would be jarring to say the least.

So it looks like the boys will have ordinary parents, or at least adoptive/foster parents.  It’s possible that Alex and Scott won’t be related by blood, but the odds of two adopted children both turning out to be mutants is a bit of a stretch.  My money is on the boys being related by blood, just with a long gap between their births, so that Alex was already a young adult when Scott was born.  I would assume the space part of the comic story will be omitted altogether and that the couple depicted in the picture are their actual parents.

(Also worth noting, Havok’s longtime girlfriend was Polaris, who was later revealed to be Magneto’s long-lost daughter.  In the movies, Magneto is played by Michael Fassbender, who is only a few years older than Till’s Havok.)

Maybe additional information will be released as filming continues.  Or maybe we’ll have to wait until the film’s release.

What do you think?  How will the Summers brothers fit into the world that was reshaped in ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’?  Comment below!

Source: Screen Rant