14 DAY TRIAL // “X-Men: Days of Future Past” drops in theaters in most territories today, Friday, May 23, 2014. It is the second installment in the rebooted “X-Men” franchise, sequel to the 2011 “First Class,” and one of the most anticipated releases of the year. It is at the same time, James McAvoy says, a more serious discussion on the “persecution of minorities.”
From excerpts released by the studio, the official movie synopsis, and the story arc in the comics on which the film is based, we know that the plot deals with a very bleak future in which Mutants and humans alike are being hunted down and killed by Sentinels.
The Sentinels are a project from Trask Industries, initially meant to detect and kill only Mutants, to save mankind from a very possible and very strong threat. Call it survival of the species, if you will.
In “Days of Future Past,” Logan / Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is sent back in time to change one event that happened on one specific day, so that he can alter the future and save the Mutants and the humans who died for joining their cause.
Asked by the Daily Beast whether The Sentinels stand for drone warfare, James McAvoy, who plays young Professor Charles Xavier in the film, says that the whole plot is actually a symbol for the persecution of minorities.
“Yeah, it’s got a little bit of a riff on drones going on. But what it’s really about is what the very first X-Men was about: the discrimination of others based on their ethnicity. The first scene of an X-Men movie ever was a scene in Poland in a concentration camp with Jewish people being killed for being slightly different. That’s exactly what the Sentinels are about. The key thing that makes the Sentinels work is they can discriminate between humans and mutants,” the actor explains.
“It is a robot, and a drone, but it’s about the persecution of minorities and people who are different, which is something that’s so constantly current. The drone argument will come and go, but X-Men’s connection to the persecution of people who are different will always remain. Everybody’s felt persecuted at some point or felt different at some point,” McAvoy continues.
And he does have a point: in most X-Men films, the theme of the persecution of minorities has always been very present, with Professor Xavier trying to eradicate all animosity between Mutants and humans in the hope of a happy, peaceful future, while Magneto fights for the Mutants, under the belief that humans represent the less evolved species that must perish.
From what McAvoy is saying, this also applies to “Days of Future Past.” So there, whoever said that you can’t have a superhero movie with actual substance should probably give “X-Men” a go.
Bonus for McAvoy fans, a video of the handsome (and very funny) actor on Jon Stewart a few nights ago.