Top Ten Mutants I Want in New X-Men Movie

Now that it’s been confirmed that the sequel to ‘X-Men: First Class’ will be based (to some degree) on the classic story arc ‘Days of Future Past,’ it’s time to start thinking about which new mutants we want to see in the movie.

But first a word, actually two words, on continuity: forget it. The ‘X-Men’ movies have long abandoned the idea of hewing closely to the comics in terms of who is on the team during what time period, so we’re not going to sit here and twist ourselves in knots trying to make it all work out according to the published chronology. But we can at least try to be reasonable.

The ‘Days of Future Past’ arc, written by the great Chris Claremont and drawn by the equally superb John Byrne, was originally published in ‘Uncanny X-Men’ #141 and #142 (January and February 1981), It opens in the year 2013, 30 years after the attempted assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (led by Mystique) has set the U.S. against mutants once and for all.

With Sentinels deployed everywhere to track mutants, kill them or put them in camps, America has become a police state — albeit one policed by 40-foot-tall androids. The Sentinels plan to expand their reach beyond our borders, but the other nations of the world are not happy about it and are ready to bomb the U.S. back to the Stone Age the minute the Sentinels make their move.

A ragtag group of mutant rebels comprised of Storm, Wolverine, Colossus and others hatch a plan to send Kate (Kitty) Pryde’s consciousness back through time and into her younger self — where she can warn the X-Men of 30 years ago to prevent Kelly’s murder and hopefully avert the dark age that follows.

Anyone who’s followed the ‘X-Men’ movies knows there are a lot of issues here: for one, Kitty Pryde was seen in the first three ‘X-Men’ films as a young girl in the modern era (she had cameos in the first two films and was played by Ellen Page in ‘The Last Stand’) — so they’ll have to send someone else back or disregard the Kitty established in those movies. Second, none of the characters in 2013 — with the exception of Magneto and a cameo by Wolverine — were introduced in the ‘First Class’ movie. So we’re talking about a lot of introductions and re-introductions to make this thing work.