If you stuck around through the credits for The Wolverine (and if you go see it, make sure you do), you may have noticed the logo on the airport television. The ad being shown was for Trask Industries, led by founder Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), creator of the sentinel robots that will serve as the chief physical antagonists in X-Men: Days of Future Past.
The sentinels themselves, or at least their heads, were recently shown off at Comic-Con. But it seems that 20th Century Fox isn’t content with riding the current X-Men publicity swell with the release of The Wolverine. A site for Trask Industries hit the web today, and includes plenty of details on next summer’s film.
First off, we learn that the Trask sentinels have been instrumental in containing the “mutant threat,” and have now been active 50 years:
Startlingly compelling. The mutants vs. humans theme has long been a favorite of the X-Men series, both films and comics, but will be coming to the fore like never before in Days of Future Past. As the Trask site goes on to point out, Trask Industries has long been on the cutting edge of “responding to the genetic threat.” Poking around reveals the various ways they’re going about it.
It’s all very compelling stuff to the X-Fan, but beyond that the site could serve a couple different purposes. First and foremost, it’s obviously to build grassroots interest in the new movie. The timing’s a bit odd, as Days of Future Past doesn’t release, as mentioned, until next May and the site could steal interest from The Wolverine, but this could play into a second purpose: get the viewers ready. Days of Future Past figures to have a rather complex premise, introducing an alternate history from many of the existing X-Men movies and rationalizing a number of new concepts. The site could go a long ways toward preparing audiences as information about the film gradually becomes dispersed by word of mouth.
X-Men: First Class was generally heralded as a triumph, particularly following the debacles of X-Men 3: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. By all appearances, Days of Future Past is building something compelling on that foundation.