Naturally, San Diego Comic-Con is a huge event. They don’t call it the Mecca of Pop Culture for nothing. However, during the 20th Century Fox panel, ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ director Bryan Singer went ahead and made things so big that they almost ran out of room on the stage.
After revealing the first look at the Sentinels from Trask Industries and some character portraits earlier in the weekend, Fox brought together a large number of the cast members in Hall H including Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Omar Sy, Evan Peters, Halle Berry, Ellen Page, Anna Paquin, Peter Dinklage, Nicholas Hoult, Jennifer Lawrence, Shawn Ashmore, and Hugh Jackman, who was already there to show off ‘The Wolverine’ earlier in the panel to present the first footage from the director’s return to the X-Men franchise 13 years after it was launched under his direction. You can check out the massive gathering in the pictures below from Cinemablend:
Mostly, the news that came out of this panel was just confirmation and reiteration of what we’ve come to know already. For instance, we now officially know that Dinklage will play Bolivar Trask, the creator of the Sentinels. But hidden in everything that we already knew, there were still a few interesting things to report.
First, it was revealed through the footage that Wolverine is the one who goes back in time instead of Kitty Pryde. Comic Book Movie reports that Singer elaborated on the subject during a press conference featuring the director, writer Simon Kinberg, and the whole cast that appeared at the panel:
“Basically the notion is Hugh of the future is sent … his consciousness… is sent into his younger self [and] Hugh gets to play both parts because he is ageless.”
This isn’t a surprise since Wolverine is the character that most people identify with the X-Men movies. Apparently, Kitty is still involved in sending him back in time, but I’m very curious as to how that can be since I was of the understanding that her powers mostly involve phasing through solid matter. I know that she’s a genius too, so maybe she builds a machine to transfer Logan into his younger self. No matter how they do it, we’ll just have wait and see.
Next, /Film tells us that Quicksilver will actually be a part of the 70’s portion of the film. This will be interesting to see if they retain the Magneto’s son portion of Pietro’s history considering that Michael Fassbender’s Magneto does not look like he should have a teenage son. It’s possible that Quicksilver’s powers affect his aging process, but that might be a stretch, so chances are that that particular part of the story may be cut out.
Finally, at the end of the footage shown, it was revealed that the young Charles Xavier and the older Professor X would be sharing the screen together. It’s likely that this takes place within Xavier’s mind, but it’s still an exciting revelation nonetheless because it was previously believed that this wouldn’t happen.
If you want to relive the party in Hall H that was the ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ portion of the Fox panel (or if you want to imagine that you were there), check out this video of highlights from Digital Spy:
‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ hits theaters on July 18, 2014.