X-Men: Days of Future Past’s first trailer was released today to much anticipation, and director Bryan Singer has released some quotes explaining some shots from the trailer.

Singer continues to reach out to the X-Men fanbase as he tweets behind-the-scenes photos daily and now has revealed some very interesting comments coupled with some screenshots from the film’s first trailer. If you haven’t seen the film’s trailer yet, watch it first, then check out the director’s comments below thanks to Empire.

“The grey in the hair is something I took from X-Men Days Of Future Past, it’s a look in the comic,” says Singer. “I liked it, even though he hasn’t really aged physically it’s something that shows how tough things have gotten in the future, and brought that out in him and given him a little more world-weariness.”

“She’s one of the last surviving X-Men in this post-apocalyptic world,” explains Singer of Storm’s place in the movie. “She’s part of that with Wolverine and Charles and Magneto, they’re some of the last folk standing from the original X-Men. They’re at the spearhead of this mission, this last chance at saving the world. This is their only hope, their mission into time. Can you actually go back and affect time? Can you go back and change things or will time correct itself? Will history fight you back and is your destiny pre-determined or can you change it?”

“You’ll need me as well…” Ian McKellen’s Erik Lehnsherr, AKA Magneto, is also a fixture in the future war, facing an enemy so monstrous that it forces former foes to band together. When we meet the X-Men in the future, the X-Men effectively no longer exist. “They’re on the run,” says Singer. “There’s no organisation. It’s all been shattered. Most of them have been hunted down. Most of them are dead.”

Days Of Future Past isn’t all about the old guard. Singer and writer Simon Kinberg have introduced some new mutants too, and here’s our first look at Omar Sy as long-term fan favourite Bishop, Adan Canto as fiery Brazilian mutant Sunspot (who almost appeared in X-Men 3), Booboo Stewart as the Native American strongman Warpath and Fan Bingbing as Blink, whose ability to conjure portals may come in handy during battles. Just don’t think of them as X-Men. “They’re not really fresh recruits,” explains Singer. “They’re more refugees that are living day to day in this hideously ruined world. They don’t have much hope in the future. They’re on the run and they join forces with the remaining X-Men to try to do this one last attempt at fixing the world.”

“There’s a line in the movie, ‘he’s always had a way with guns’,” reveals Singer. “That’s how he crippled Xavier, and he’s such a powerful mutant but in this particular moment he’s holding a gun and I like that. He’s a product of the Second World War and he knows how to use a gun as much as he does his powers.”

The monastery or temple or whatever the heck it is comes under attack as a bulky figure runs through the destruction. Is this our first look at the return of Daniel Cudmore as Peter Rasputin, aka the metal-skinned Colossus? It sure is. Minus the metal skin.
“He may be his human form in that shot, I’m not sure. By that time in the sequence he may actually be metal but I have no visual effects done!” laughs Singer. “So for that shot you just get what’s on the set – a big, live, real explosion. No CGI yet. We’re in process on very elaborate effects but there’s really none of them done except for a couple of backdrops and a couple of shots I could slide in.”

Now this is a big one. Logan, in the 1970s, takes out some dude. You can just about see them in this grab, but Wolverine’s claws aren’t adamantium. Instead, they’re all bone, baby. All bone.

“He doesn’t have his metal yet in 1973,” confirms Singer, which places this movie before the events of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and Wolverine’s first meeting with a man by the name of William Stryker, head of the Weapon X programme. Here, Stryker (previously played by Brian Cox in X2 and Danny Huston in Origins) is played by Josh Helman. And we’re intrigued to see how Magneto and Wolverine get on now that the former can’t make the latter behave like a puppet on a string…

And Old Charles. This juxtaposition between Fassbender and McAvoy’s broken Erik and Charles and the dignified old men they become will be one of Days Of Future Past’s major themes.

“When I try to direct an actor, you always try to give them a sense of who they were as young men, who they were in their past lives, and in my imagination I always had that [with Charles and Erik],” says Singer. “I was able to introduce those notions in X-Men First Class but to actually have them performing simultaneously on screen, that was a real thrill and a challenge.”

And the trailer ends with the big visual that sent 6,500 people in Hall H nuts when the footage debuted at Comic-Con: the meeting of the two Xaviers, presumably on the astral plane. “Please…” pleads Stewart’s Xavier of his reluctant younger self. “I need you to hope again.”

“It’s an abstract scene, without giving away its origin and how it happens,” says Singer. “It’s a trippy scene, it has a bit of 70s style in it and the entire scene involved a lot of interesting practical photography using mirrors and other things. It was fun to shoot, and it was great to get the two actors together.”

Interestingly, it was McAvoy’s first day on set – not a bad way to ease yourself in gently.

“I did get goosebumps,” says Singer. “I’ve got a picture on my iPhone of the two of them talking to each other. These moments need to be photographed.”

It’s nice of Bryan Singer to give us some insight into the trailer, as it certainly raised some interesting questions. This was bound to happen as X-Men: Days of Future Past involves quite a bit of time travel and introduces over half a dozen new mutants.

The response from fans concerning the first trailer have been favorable, although there seems to be a minority who had somewhat mixed feelings. It’s definitely piqued our interest and hearing more about the trailer from the director makes us feel a bit better already. We look forward to X-Men: Days of Future Past when it lands in theaters on May 23, 2014.

The film stars returning actors Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, McAvoy, and Fassbender. Also rejoining the X-Men franchise are Halle Berry, Anna Paquin, Shawn Ashmore, James Marsden, Ellen Page, and Hugh Jackman. Fan Favorite Peter Dinklage will be playing one of the villains in the film.