The new X-Men: Days of Future Past trailer, now with 100% more FX action!

Of the crop of superhero movies ripening this summer, none is more intriguing than X-Men: Days of Future Past, which has a two-fold deeper significance not possessed by its peers.

It marks director Bryan Singer’s return to the X-Men franchise that he launched back in 2000, a rare case of going home again — and let’s be honest, in lighting that X-wick he also got the whole genre going. Without that first X-Men film’s success, it’s questionable whether we’d have Avengers, Batmen vs. Supermen Sinister Sixes or what have you. Secondly, the melding of old and new casts in a fanboy dream, an adaptation of one of the most treasured stories in the entire X-comic canon, is a heartening indicator that Hollywood studios have fully embraced the scope and breadth of the preposterous wonder inherent in our beloved medium. We’ve come a long way from former Fox chieftain Tom Rothman and his infuriating, dopey diktat that giant robots — namely Sentinels — would look ridiculous in live action (among his other crimes against fandom).

Bask in the ascendance, that’s all I’m saying.

Speaking of the Sentinels, one quibble with the above trailer, which looks wonderful, i.e. the one thing you need a trailer to be. The bulk of the giant robot action we see is set in the future, with the streamlined Sentinels which are Sentinels in name only (SINO?). We’ve come too far, waited too long to not get purple mutant hunters with headlight eyes squaring off with our favorite genetic freaks.

Again, this is a small quibble. This new trailer, with 100% more action than the first, has thoroughly whet the appetite. Old standbys Stewart and McKellen and hot new blood Lawrence and Fassbender get a mutual chance to shine in one capes-and-tights place, and we should be thankful for this. Oh, and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, which we seem to take for granted these days — no pun.