'X-Men: Days Of Future Past' Video Places Mutants At Historic Turning Points

If nothing else, the marketing department at Fox is doing a great job with the "viral" ad campaign for X-Men: Days of Future Past. A new Days of Future Past video and slideshow website runs through 25 big moments in modern human history, showing along the way how mutants, and those who are concerned with them, have played into the evolving course of our times. Bolivar Trask works with Richard Nixon, and eventually has a hand in Guantanamo. Familiar mutants are present at important points in time, and one fan-favorite character has a significantly revised origin.

Check out the video below.

See if you can spot the element that is particularly counter to classic X-Men canon. After watching, check out the 25 Moments website for some pretty detailed story points that will act (presumably) as backstory to Days of Future Past.

So, yep, that shot of Colossus is a pretty big background change. The classic X-Men story is that mutants first show their mutations during or after puberty, but here we've got an infant Colossus who is clearly not a regular ol' human. But tying the character's mutation to Chernobyl is interesting — this X-Men timeline is explicitly saying that mutants aren't necessarily born of their inherent DNA, but that mutations can happen due to outside forces. (Edit: Er, I misread the caption on the 25 Moments site — the story here has Chernobyl accelerating mutation, not creating it. So the change for Colossus is basically superficial.)

X-Men: Days of Future Past, directed by Bryan Singer, opens May 23. It stars Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Halle Berry, Anna Paquin, Ellen Page, Shawn Ashmore, Nicholas Hoult, Peter Dinklage, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart.