We've been given a second chance.
Guide us, lead us.
I don't want your future!
We were supposed to protect them!
I've never really felt the X-Men movies
are classic popcorn movies, in the American term.
Because they've always had a much higher-minded goal, or ambitions
to be having something to say on themes which I think are fantastic.
Particularly for teenagers.
I've always been very fond of - resist the word "franchise"
- the continuing story of X-Men.
Because it's not just a spectacular movie of
special effects in a fantasy world,
that's all at the service of a rather human story of how does
society treat its minorities, and what is it like
to be in a minority when society is at odds with you?
Good afternoon, everyone, hello, thank you for coming.
With this weapon, there'll be no human collateral damage.
I turn it on, the system couldn't even activate in here.
DEVICE BLEEPS
Unless...there's a mutant.
PANICKED SHOUTING
We came along with First Class
and suddenly there's an X-Men movie without Wolverine.
And it was a case of "How's this gonna work?"
Michael and I were a bit like, "Hmm, we better make it work."
And of course, our relationship formed a new spine to
that particular story.
But to have him, to have that backbone of the X-Men
until First Class, come into our movie, was really exciting.
He's... He is the flame of X-Men, you know?
And he turned the heat up - to continue that metaphor.
Professor?
I was sent here for you. From the future. 50 years from now.
HE LAUGHS
Could you give me that one more time please?
If you imagine, one of the great conceits in this movie
is my character is actually carrying around the mind
from the future in his younger body.
So he actually wakes up...
Not sure if I'm meant to be telling you this, but I'm telling you now.
He wakes up in his apartment in New York City in the seventies.
So, I don't know about you, I'm only 45, but if I right now
woke up in my student digs in Perth,
that would be freaky enough in itself!
But it's sort of amazing to interact with people with
knowledge of the future with a very particular goal.
So you know you have to get something, but you need to
convince others, because every action you make affects the future.
Tell me whoever it was that sent you, I'm busy.
The person who sent me...was you.
He doesn't really believe any more, and that's the great...
That's what's fun about it, we turned Charles on his head
a little bit in the first movie, in that we showed him being....
GLASS CLANGS
..a glass breaker.
And somebody who really didn't care about the rules and all that,
who was very self-obsessed actually, when he was always so monkish
and selfless before.
But showing him now actually being the polar opposite of what
he has always been, which is somebody
who always believed in others, believed in himself,
believed in the cause, never gave up.
He doesn't believe.
And that's quite sad actually, so you've got to try
and find the route to giving him his belief again.
How did you lose them?
The treatment for my spine affects my DNA.
You sacrificed your powers so you could walk?
What do you know about it?
Dry your eyes, Erik, it doesn't justify what you've done.
You've no idea what I've done.
I know that you took the things that mean the most to me.
Well, maybe you should have fought harder for them.
It's a very different Professor Xavier than I've ever known before.
This is really his crisis, where he could really go off the rails,
in fact, he is very much off the rails
at the beginning of this movie, so...
What Wolverine's been called on to do, and the relationship between him
and all the other characters, what I like about it is he's not just
been sent in there to slice and dice and take people's heads off,
and just force things into happening,
but he's having to be something of a politician, a mentor,
a motivator, which I wouldn't have said were his natural skills.
So, I wake up in my younger body, and then what?
'Convince me of all of this.'
It's going to take the two of us.
And where do I find you?
A different path. A darker path.
I haven't seen the completed film,
but I've seen the rather spectacular trailer,
and at one point Fassbender as Magneto in the familiar helmet -
the gestures that I can recognise - is destroying his environment,
a stadium he seems to be in the middle of.
And then they photograph him from behind, and it could be me,
so in a sense, he and I are genuinely sharing the part,
and I think perhaps when these effects happen,
people aren't going to say, "Ooh, that's Fassbender,
"ooh, that's McKellan", no, it's not, it's Magneto.
I took over from Patrick in First Class,
and I thought that was it, I thought they were gone.
But having a scene with him in this one, bringing him back,
actually feels like the baton getting passed over a little bit.
And it felt quite ceremonial strangely,
and because it was quite a ceremonial setting,
we were in a monastery, very low lights,
and it felt a little bit like I was being - even though
I've played Charles before - like I was being initiated.
By some weird mutant/actor sect.
We need you to hope again.
Well, I don't think I was half
so surprised to be asked back into the world of X-Men
as Patrick Stewart was,
because Professor Xavier was resoundingly destroyed by Jean Grey,
I saw him shattered in the studio as well as on the screen,
but magically, back to life he came.
Neither of us had expected it,
but very pleased to be still in employment apart from anything else!
All those years wasted fighting each other, Charles.
Honestly, to be able to go and have scenes with Jennifer Lawrence
or Michael Fassbender or McAvoy or Nick Hoult,
these great actors, and then in the future, all the other actors
playing the same characters, it was pretty amazing, and...
You won't be surprised, cos you know Bryan Singer's movies,
and X-Men fans know, and they saw what he did with one
and particularly with two, he loves intricacies of big casts
and big ensembles, he likes to...
He doesn't serve it to you all on a plate,
he likes you to work it out a little himself,
and if you add to that the mechanics and the rules of a
time travel movie - which he's a massive fan of as well.
So he's trying to make a definitive time travel movie,
as well as a definitive superhero movie, so he had a lot at stake,
which I think is important for any of us, you know.
You'll need to go into the past.
He's a wonderful storyteller,
and he cares a lot about his audience,
he often refers to them while he's filming,
same with Peter Jackson on Lord of the Rings
- "What would they think?" And "they" is concerned cinemagoers.
Everyone involved - Simon Kinberg, Bryan Singer, Lauren Donner -
all these people love the comic book and actually see their role
as a great responsibility beyond making money for the studio.
Making something of value, making something that has something to say.
Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, these guys don't just do it
because they want to have a job.
Aghhh!
It was a bit like going to a family reunion and discovering,
"Oh, I've got some young cousins I haven't met before."
All on the same side, you know. All nervous together.
All friendly together.
Though I wasn't part of the hijinks that Fassbender
and McAvoy get up to when they're working together on set,
that's their sort of relationship.
Patrick and I are rather staid by example.
It's doing it together, that's what it's all about.
There's a line in Gods and Monsters, a favourite film of mine,
in which I play James Whale,
the English film director out there in Hollywood in the '30s.
And he's given a line by Christopher Bram,
"Making movies is the most wonderful thing in the world -
"working with friends, entertaining people."
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd