In terms of superhero team-up movies in 2014, not even “Guardians Of The Galaxy” (first trailer here) can touch “X-Men: Days Of Future Past” which has supersized the cast with faces new and old, from films past and present, to present more mutants than we have ever seen on the big screen. But with a story that will be jumping through time, how on Earth will Bryan Singer manage the narrative and allow it to be easy to follow, while juggling so many characters? Well, he’s looked back on his breakout film “The Usual Suspects” for some inspiration on how to keep things in check.
“[It resembles the ‘Usual Suspects’] in two ways. One structurally, and also in the way I’ve shot it. Because I shot the future elements that take place in the future first,” the director explained to IGN. “And it was like with ‘Usual Suspects,’ it was a movie that carried one actor through both the flashbacks and the present day, so it was like shooting a little movie first. ‘Usual Suspects’ was this movie starring Kevin Spacey, Chazz Palminteri, Dan Hedaya, Giancarlo Esposito, and then they all left, and then a new group came, the suspects. The same thing here—we had the X-Men of the future, all of them, all the actors I had worked with from the past all came, and then they left and a whole new group arrived, so you really feel like you’re making two very different movies.”
That being said, the scale here is obviously much greater, and when it came to managing the cast, Singer had to make some tricky decisions. “There are 26 main characters, seven of them with a lot of restrictions in schedules. I wanted Evan Peters , I wanted all these actors but they all have these TV shows, which makes it really hard to schedule,” he explained. “The reason he was announced so late is that I didn’t want to announce the character until I had an actor. It took me so long to figure that out.”
We’ll see if all it works out on May 23rd. Until then, here’s some new pictures, including (unintentionally hilarious) character profiles from the newly launched website. Update 2/25: A new Instagram teaser has arrived.
