The time-travel adventures of the X-Men in Days of Future
Past has been brought to the big screen by incredibly talented writer/producer
Simon Kinberg – who also penned The Last Stand in 2006 and is already hard at
work on DOFP sequel X-Men: Apocalypse (out in 2016) as well as scribing the
upcoming Fantastic Four reboot.
Simon stopped at the UK premiere of X-Men in London for some
quick questions about the latest instalment, future X-Men films and possible
Marvel cross-overs.
Days of Future Past
is an incredibly ambitious film – what was the biggest challenge brining this
vision to life?
It was two things – one is time travel is a nightmare as a
writer because there are all these logic problems and plot holes and paradoxes.
So getting the time travel right and creating the rules and sticking to the
rules was a big challenge. The second part is having eight-to-ten main
characters and giving them everything they want and need emotionally. They have
their own stories to play.
JJ Abrams 2009 Star
Trek’s reboot has wiped the slate clean for their time-line, will X-Men have a
similar impact for future instalments?
We knew with a time travel story, everything that happened
in the past was going to affect the future. So there are things that happen in
1973 Days of Future Past which are going to have an impact going forward. So
everything from 1973 onwards – which will cover X 1, 2, and 3 and The
Wolverine. There are ripples that don’t necessarily change the overall current
of the river, but do ripple on down.
What stage is X-Men:
Apocalypse at?
Just starting the writing process now. It’s going really
well so far. Luckily there is no time travel this time and I only have to worry
about one version of each character. But it has different challenges. The scale
of that movie will be even bigger or any superhero movie you have seen. It is a
disaster movie. It is an extinction-level event kind of film. So keeping it character
based, emotional and grounded while also having Roland Emmerich levels of
action – that’s the new challenge.
The Amazing Spider-Man
2 suggested there could be scope for an X-Men/Spider-Man mash-up when a teaser
for DOFP was attached to the end of the film credits – will the X-Men recruit
Spidey in the future?
I wish that was true and they let us put our tag at the end
of their movie but integrating the characters into one movie will have
different challenges.
What about a cross
over with the Fantastic Four?
It’s tough because they take place in different worlds. In
the X-Men movie’s we’ve never mentioned that there is the Fantastic 4
superheroes living in New York. I would love to see it, and there is probably
ways to figure it out. But for right now we are just making the best stand-alone
Fantastic Four movie we can make. It’s going to be good.
