Poster Picks: X-Men: Days of Future Past

Foregoing Flashback Friday this week because…well, because I’m not really in a reminiscent mood this evening. Although, I suppose that’s a bit of a lie, since I’m instead reviving a lamentably ignored featured series (lamented, I’m sure, mainly by me).

As I’m sure you’ve no doubt deduced, I’m a bit of a geek about many things, including comic books. I’m not quite Comic Book Guy-level geeky (Worst. Confession. Ever.), but I can hold my own when it comes to certain comics. One of my absolute favorite series belongs to those band of merry mutants, the X-Men. I was massively disappointed in the last of the first round of X-Men movies (so disappointed that I apparently wanted to try Bryan Singer for multiple counts of mutanticide).

I must confess, though, that I was pleasantly surprised by the…whatever they want to call X-Men: First Class (What was it? Reboot? Prequel? Preboot?). By going back to the very beginning, the movie succeeded in at least distilling the horrible taste left by X-Men: The Last Bland Stand.

Needless to say, First Class did well enough to actually warrant a sequel (Sequeboot?). Thus, X-Men: Days of Future Past. I’m equal parts excited and terrified about this one, denizens. It’s based on another John Byrne/Chris Claremont story, just like part of X-Men: The Last Stand. It’s also directed by Bryan Singer, just like Last Stand was supposed to be before Singer bailed to give us Stripper-Pole Panty Superman.

Thanks for that. Really.

Regardless of my worries and excitement about the movie, I’m here now to share what I consider one of the most wonderful movie poster designs I’ve seen in a very long time. Surprisingly enough, the entirety of the design is a massive head shot, one of Sir Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier and one of Sir Ian McKellen as Magneto. You might remember in my first Poster Pick that I took the piss out of posters that relied heavily on showing only head shots of the movie’s star(s) rather than putting any effort into a creative design.

These two head shot posters, however, actually do rely on a lovely bit of creative zing, incredibly simple in concept but a tricky gamble in execution. You see, while the primary design elements are close-ups of Stewart and McKellen, each face contains a great surprise. A red X cuts across McKellen’s face. Look closely and you’ll realize that the X has revealed the face of Michael Fassbender, the young Magneto from First Class, beneath the older Magneto’s skin. Same with Stewart’s face

Flashback Friday: X-Men

xmen

There are many different entries I could make on this particular topic, focusing on the comics, the movies, the characters, or a little bit of it all. For the purposes of this Flashback, however, I just want to focus on the Saturday morning cartoon that ran from 1992 to 1997.

Actually, all I really want to focus on is the theme song from the cartoon, which was another of the themes discussed during the podcast mentioned in my last Flashback. Of all the cartoon themes from my adolescence, this is definitely on my list of Top Ten Favorites:

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/wZAhqEiq4cA

Not only did I love the theme, I adored the cartoon. It was 30 minutes of awesome every Saturday morning at 11 (I always suspected that Fox aired the cartoon so late in the morning because it was geared more toward teens than younger children…and we sure could sleep late when we were teens, eh?). This was also my gateway into the wide wonderful world, not just of this merry band of mutants, but of comics in general. This cartoon made me see comics as something more than silly drawings. The shows were smart and relevant, the characters believable (for the most part) and flawed and provocative, giving me a glimpse of how comics and cartoons had the potential to be something deeper, something greater. They could be full of social commentary, challenging notions, incendiary thoughts…hidden within the line art and primary colors of a cartoon world.

Funny how a half hour Saturday morning cartoon could open up such possibility, especially considering the fact that the show aired during the insouciance of my adolescent years.

Also, these were the character iterations of many of the primary X-Men I first met and, ultimately, the iterations with whom I fell madly, truly, deeply in love. No matter how different they now look, or even how different they looked in this cartoon from their original versions, whenever I think of these particular X-Men, I envision them just as they appeared in this cartoon…massive shoulder pads, yellow spandex, and all.

Maybe at some other point, I’ll say more on the X-Men. For now, though, I’m just going to leave this metal guitar version of the theme song right here, for your enjoyment. Rock on, my mutants. Rock on.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/6Nm7wKc9VB8