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The latest issue of Total Film magazine features an in-depth interview with X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST writer Simon Kinberg, who talks about tackling the massive cast of characters and giving each their time to shine, while also creating a “main” character arc. He also explains why Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) was chosen as the time-traveler instead of Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page).
The biggest challenge handling a massive cast of characters:
“You have time travel, you have robots, and you have 10 or 12 real main characters played by Oscar, or Emmy, or Tony-winning actors.” says Kinberg. “They all need good drama to play and ideally some arcs to be able to track over the span of the movie. That was probably the biggest challenge, more than the time travel.”
How “First Class 2” turned into “Days of Future Past”:
“After we finished First Class, Matthew Vaughn and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what we wanted the sequel to be. There was an idea that came from Fox asking us if we would consider using Ian and Patrick, initially just as the old Xavier and Magneto at the beginning and the end but not really tying them into the story.
“It was something that thematically interested us, but narrative-ly we didn’t really know how to connect. We were thinking about it as a pure sequel to First Class, still in period with that cast. As we started talking about the potential of Ian and Patrick in these small roles, I brought up to Matthew Days of Future Past, not feeling, frankly, that it would be possible to make the movie. But he liked the idea, and I would say we kept a lot from the comic book – somone being sent into the past to save mutants of the future from Sentinels.”
Why Wolverine is the time traveler and not Kitty Pryde:
“We made the decision for a lot of reasons, some of them obvious and some of them more nuanced, to make it Wolverine who goes back in time. One reason is that he’s the protagonist of the franchise, and probably the most beloved character to a mass audience. Probably the bigger reason is that when we started thinking about the logistical realities of Kitty’s consciousness being sent back in time, to her younger self, as opposed to her physical body being sent back… it was impossible.
“Obviously in the book it’s Kitty that’s sent back, but because we cast Ellen Page in X-Men: The Last Stand, you’re talking about an actress who, in the age of Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy, would have been negative 20 years old. So we started thinking again. The first reflex response to that was a character who doesn’t age. Wolverine is the only character who would looks the same in 1973 as he does in the future.”
The rules of time travel in “Days of Future Past”:
“Bryan came up with the time travel rules being that while the person sent back in time is back there, whatever they’re doing in the past doesn’t affect the future. There’s a sort of ticking clock, [and] when Wolverine wakes up back in the future, whatever he’s done in the past will take hold. The idea was that we wouldn’t be worried about every little butterfly’s flutter in 1973 turning into a tidal wave in the future.”
Young Charles Xavier as the main character arc in the film:
“For us, very early on we made the decision that it was young Charles’ arc, and that really the emotional story of the movie is watching him go from the guy who’s lost his legs, lost his best friend, lost his sister and in some ways lost his mind, to a guy who will become the all powerful benevolent Professor Xavier. So when you start the movie, McAvoy is really about as far as one can be from the Patrick Stewart that we know from X1, and we’re really watching him take the first big step towards owning that chair and being a leader.”
Interesting comments. I agree that it made sense to send Wolverine back instead of Kitty, though I do wonder how well balanced the movie will be with the “future” and the “past” portions of the movie. To be honest, I haven’t been fond of the costumes of the “future” mutants. They are too dystopian for me.
If by balance you’re asking if one time-frame will be favoured more than another, then you’ll find that will certainly be the case.
The seventies portion’s of the movie will be the most prominent. Which makes sense, this started life as a First Class sequel after all.
SIMON KINBERG – THE HOPE OF THE FRANCHISE
ugh, I swear if this movie turned out bad I blaming Simon Kinberg right away!
… and if the movie’s good, you’ll be praising him just as quick?
I just don’t trust him at all. Have you seen the other films that he wrote? most of them sucked.
Hopefully he will not screw up another X-Men film, thats what we all want. But I’m gonna give my faith to him especially he’s track record is bad.
I have seen most of the movies he ‘written’. He’s been something of a studio grunt for the majority of his career so far, churning out obvious entertainments inside the system. I always find it difficult though, to accept work done under those conditions as being truly representative of the writer in question.
More recently Kinberg has started to gain some prominence, so I expect we’ll get a better sense, over the course of his next few projects, of what exactly his voice is.
I liked his script for Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes. I thought Jumper suffered mainly from trying to be the first of a series, rather than simply telling a self contained story, but there was some clever writing in there. X3 was such a mess of changing directors, and studio interference that it seems churlish to lay the blame for it’s failings at Kinberg’s door. Particularly when the studio couldn’t settle on what movie they wanted to make. I happen to quite like Doug Liman’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith though, so I’d give him credit there too.
Bottom line: I don’t think we’ve really gotten a clear picture of Kinberg as a writer yet. He seems to have a good grasp of structure, and his character interplay seems fairly solid. But listen; when the likes of Kathleen Kennedy offers a vote of confidence, as she has for Kinberg in bringing him on board the new Star Wars films, I tend to take heed.
We should remember as well, that James McAvoy was quite praising of the Days’ script, and he seems to have an eye for a good one. You’d be hard pressed to find a movie he’s featured in that doesn’t have a solid screenplay.
Kinberg also strikes me as being a fan of this stuff. This isn’t just a job for him. There’s some passion there. We can only hope that that’ll translate into a good film.
I was being cheeky before, with my question, but we fanboys are IMO all too eager to rage an bluster at movie folk when they get it wrong. One minute we anoint someone a hero, the next we’re vilifying them with a vehemence that seems utterly disproportionate. I was just being flippant though… 🙂
I’m feeling genuinely good about this one, but there’s an alchemy to these things, so it’s difficult to be certain, but I like everything that I’m seeing and hearing, and I have high hopes that Kinberg is about to earn the faith that many seem to have in him.
I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see…
I just need to see how they balance every character in the film. There are tons of it and they need to show the powers of each individuals with incredible fighting scenes..
Well, I don’t know that each character needs to get an ‘incredible’ fight scene. They should each get a moment Absolutely! Though some will have more, and bigger moments than others, obviously.
More importantly, each character needs to have their own arc. The more peripheral figures, of course, will have less involved or detailed stories, but everyone needs to get a little something. Even if it’s just to say ‘this is who this person is’.
Tricky certainly, but what the movie has in its favour is a solid narrative backbone that should help them to hold focus… 🙂