There’s a new trailer for X-Men: Rise of the Machines today. Wait, that’s not right. X-Men: Enter the Matrix? No? Oh yeah, X-Men: Days of Future Past.
If you weren’t clued in by the first trailer for the movie, this isn’t quite the same old X-Men – although this trailer is careful to emphasize that this one is “From Bryan Singer, the Director of X-Men and X2: X-Men United” without any mention of the other movies, save the implicit references to X-Men: First Class based on the carryover cast. Probably not a terrible move given the vitriol from both fans and critics over X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, neither of which Singer had anything to do with. (He wasn’t involved with the more recent The Wolverine, either, but that movie included a Days of Future Past lead in with its post-credits scene.)
The similarities to other machine-apocalypse sci-fi like the above-referenced Terminator and Matrix franchises is kind of inescapable, which represents a hard departure from the modern world (or historical) grounding of the other X-Men movies. A futuristic look is probably implied by the title, but the visual similarities are striking nonetheless, and could be considered a strike against the film. On the other hand, it’s been up front for while now about including what are essentially mutant-hunting machine agents, so maybe we shouldn’t hold that against the movie.
Also featured in the new trailer: roughly 50% more crying, as we see both Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) and Professor X the Younger (James McAvoy) with tears rolling down their faces, as well as our first look at Evan Peters as Quicksilver (at 1:10). What this really looks like, though, is the X-Men franchise’s attempt to capture The Dark Knight style glory, roping in not only fans of the comic book, but also sci-fi aficionados as well the public at large. It’s unclear at this juncture whether it will be able to rise to such lofty aspirations, but the trailer does preserve the hope that this movie might have some high-quality escapist fun even if it falls a little short of its target.
20th Century Fox is set to release X-Men: Days of Future Past on May 23.
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