Last week we brought you the first part of our X-Men: Days of Future Past set visit coverage, where we spoke to director Bryan Singer about whether or not the film’s time travel story could alter the continuity from the previous films and change the fates of certain characters from those past movies.
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Today we continue our chat with Singer, who spoke to the assembled press in between takes on the set last summer. It was day 43 of a planned 84-day shoot, and here a 1973 speech by President Nixon is being given on the White House lawn (or an approximation of it anyway, with green screens surrounding the area for some CGI trickery yet to come). The president is flanked by a huge (partial, again with the CGI) American flag, various White House staff members, and military men. Extras styled as 1970s types crowd the lawn, while old-school, clunky TV cameras “film” the event.
The actor made up to look like Nixon reads variations on his speech with each take, but the gist of it is clear: Mutants are to be feared, and humans are ready to do something about it. “We face our greatest threat,” he says at one point. “What the world faced in Paris…” “We have a new weapon to battle that threat,” he later reads. “Mutants are an entirely new species… They are as different as any species on Earth.” He also name-drops Oppenheimer at one point.
We huddle in Singer’s tent, where his monitors show the scene along with a White House background superimposed over the green screen. While we chat with the director, he gives his AD instructions on what angles to shoot the faux-Nixon at so that he doesn’t look too faux.
On Nixon’s place in the film -- villain or just pawn?
He’s Nixon. [laughs] But yeah, not all that speech [that he’s making today] is going to make it [into the finished film]. There’s two parts of the speech, which I’ll use the rest as kind of a filler because we cut away from the scene to this ominous thing that’s happening. You hear it on the radio, so I just asked him for some filler dialogue. It was a bit draconian, he’s not so “raaaar.” He’s just nervous.
What we can expect from the relationship between Xavier and Magneto this time around.
I just shot some… yesterday we did James’ first scene, not his very first scene but the scene that follows it promptly. When we come upon him, he looks like a homeless guy. [laughs] I mean James, he’s really found a great character for where he’s at. That’s kind of fun. When I made X-Men one and two, Patrick and Ian always had questions about where they came from, what their relationship was, what was their friendship. And so First Class was a beautiful way to explore that, and now this is the story of them slowly becoming, on the journey to becoming Patrick and Ian. So it’s nice to have Patrick and Ian in the movie as well to remind us where we want them to go.
Are Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen’s performances informed by their younger counterparts at all?
Perhaps a little, but I think they know their characters. And also their characters are in a different place in this movie than they were at the end of X-Men 3.
On why he chose Days of Future Past over the many other X-Men comic-book sagas.
Well, this one because of the notion of the time travel element of it. It enabled us to find a way to incorporate both casts, and we really wanted to do that. And as the story structure was coming through I suddenly, I believe, cracked the time travel, the logic of it. And then once that happened it was, “Oh, this is the story worth telling, this will be fun,” Especially for people, people like my mother who are not particularly X-Men fans. Those are not her favorite movies of mine, but the moment I told her what it was, she was like, “Oh, I love time travel.” Because a time travel movie is very specific, whether it’s Back to the Future or Time Machine or Looper, there is something eternally fascinating about going back and affecting the past and future, multiverses, and all that stuff.
X-Men: Days of Future Past director Bryan Singer (and friend)
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Since he has to make these films for audiences like his mom, and not just the comics fans, is his mom the reference point?
No! [laughs] If I was doing it, you would not want to see that movie. “Oh, there’s so many explosions and it’s so loud. Frank and I can’t understand.” Oh, but she loves Hugh Jackman. I take her to see his plays and backstage. But no, I care primarily about the fans. I know you’re never going to please every fan because it’s such a struggle -- it’s a movie, and you’re bound by [that].
On the X-Men’s popularity versus Marvel Studios’ characters.
I am conscious of the audience outside the fan base, particularly with X-Men. Because if you really compare the success of the X-Men films versus the Marvel films, you see Marvel’s reach is so much greater. My mom, everyone knows who Hulk is and Spider-Man -- well, that’s Sony, but it’s still Marvel. But X-Men has always been a little bit of the bastard stepchild of the comic book universe. It’s its own thing, it’s very rooted in… it sort of exists on the outside. And it’s not instantly… I didn’t initially know who Wolverine was or any of that, but I knew who Spider-Man was and who Batman was. So it’s important to help make a film that… what I hope with this one, because it deals with so much more and our cast is pretty big, that I can reach a little outside the X-Men bubble of exposure and interest.
On being inspired by ensemble films from the 1970s.
Well, I’ve always been. Those are my favorite movies from the ’70s. But no, I think I’ve grown. I think from The Usual Suspects I’ve grown to like ensemble features, because there are more things to shoot and more characters to cut to.
Read on for more of our chat with Singer...
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