With all the X-Men news on casting recently it’s quickly becoming more a question of who won’t be returning from Bryan Singer’s original films in the new story ‘Days of Future Past’. Recently the question was posed whether Halle Berry would indeed return to don the silver wig once more as the character Storm, and now we have an answer.
I love Storm and I’m happy I get to be a part of it this time.
That was straight from the actress in an interview discussing the new film which is currently scheduled to go into principal photography mid-2013 for a release date of mid-2014.
So with Halle Berry back what does this mean for the character? While storm was in the spotlight she wasn’t really a prominent part of the original X-Men trilogy however Brett Ratner did amp up her role somewhat in ‘The Last Stand’. Reportedly Berry was unhappy with her level of involvement under Singer’s direction before Ratner took over.
It’s difficult to imagine Storm having a significant role beyond that of other cast members, particularly giving the number of characters, and the different versions of some characters that are likely to appear the new instalment. But obviously Berry wouldn’t be returning if she was unhappy with her character’s role so no doubt there’s something in there for her to do.
It seems not every character will be back however, Kelsey Grammer who appeared as Beast also in ‘The Last Stand’ has stated through his twitter account that he’s not schedule to return.
No I will not return as Beast. Pointless as Beast looks the same in youth and later on.
With the number of casting announcements recently things might finally start to settle in this regard as they project moves into filming, but it certainly hasn’t been without its surprises along the way. Interestingly Chris Claremont has recently weighed in with a few comments on Singer’s new film. Claremont is a long time X-Men writer having worked on ‘Uncanny X-Men’ for no less than an astounding 17 years which included co-creating a number of characters such as Rogue, Shadowcat, Mystique, Emma Frost, Jubilee, Sabretooth and Gambit. He also wrote many now classic X-Men stories including ‘The Dark Phoenix Saga’ and ‘Days of Future Past’.
Chris had this to say;
The challenge, I would think, for Bryan is that the heart of the original story is not the fight with the Brotherhood back in the present day. The challenge, the story, is actually what happens in the future. Getting them to the point where you can send Kitty back, and seeing the consequences of what will happen if they fail, and not knowing at the end how it’s going to turn out.
You could look at it as time travel, or you could look at it as pan-dimension. It’s all a matter of how you want to define it, and I’m sure they’ve got some brainiacs out on the left coast earning a small research stipend figuring out a plausible way of making it fly. That’s the fun and games of Hollywood. How the hell they’re going to fit it into 120 minutes, I have no sodding idea. I’d be looking on this as your basic 1974 film with an intermission.
The really nice thing with Future Past is that you actually have a superhero film — much to everyone’s surprise, I will hope — that is about something, it’s about racism, I hope. It’s about resisting oppression. It’s about fighting for freedom and the cost of fighting for freedom. I will be fascinated to see how they weave the two together.
We’ve left off a few of the more spoilerish comments for those who haven’t read the books, and he raises some good points, particularly about fitting it all into the one film. No doubt there will be some compromises unless they are planning for the story to spill over into a second film?
