With X-Men: Days Of Future Past being available on Digital HD at the moment, and the official Blu-ray/DVD release on track for October 14th, now's a good time to revisit the world of Professor Charles Xavier and his gifted and talented youngsters we call the X-Men. However, this is also a good time to look ahead to see what's coming down the line for everyone's favorite uncanny mutants. Now, two new websites look like they're going to give us exactly that sort of information between now and X-Men: Apocalypse's 2016 release date.
The official X-Men Movies website, amidst the fanfare for the home video release of X-Men: Days Of Future Past, has two new websites it's advertising: the TandemInitiative.com and M-Underground.com. While these two sites look like nothing special on the surface, it's what's hiding in plain sight that really gets us going about what the future present looks like after the events of the future past.
Looking at the Tandem Initiative first, we see a site that's looking for a few good mutants to display their powers and share their story with the world. Encouraging its visitors to spread the message #WeAreGifted, Tandem wants you to show off your powers in exchange for the chance to be one of five people chosen for a full genome sequencing, courtesy of Tandem's very own research labs. Of course, if you're a mutant, you should probably think twice before submitting any sort of proof of said condition to anyone until you've fully vetted them. Something about a genetic research facility actively searching for mutants just sounds so... entraping.
On another front of the mutant revolution is the "news site" M-Underground. Through their own investigative journalism, it has been revealed that the late Senator Ted Kennedy's plane crash in 1964, as well as his "original" draft of the speech he gave at the 1978 Democratic National Convention, are both tied to his mutant abilities in some sort of secret history that might explain the Kennedy Curse as a mutant hate crime of the largest scale. Of course, when you look at the evidence of Senator Kennedy's mutant genomics, it's no surprise that there's a gigantic Tandem Research stamp on all of the pertinent medical reports.
So what does this all mean for X-Men: Apocalypse? For starters, it looks like Tandem Research/The Tandem Initiative are going to be something to look out for going forward. They have historical connections to knowledge we don't have yet, and it's yet to be seen whether they're a threat or a safe haven. Also, it looks like M-Underground is going to be the feed that helps catch us up to speed with the events of the mid-to-late 1970's and the early1980's, leading up to the events of X-Men: Apocalypse, which is set in 1983.
With more than a full year now and the release of X-Men: Apocalypse in 2016, these two websites are going to have a lot of work ahead of them to not only fill in the gaps between the films, but also to keep the fans excited and informed about the X-Men universe. Considering the bang up job Fox managed to turn out with the viral marketing for Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes and even X-Men: Days Of Future Past, we could be seeing some interesting materials coming to us in the space between battles.
X-Men: Days Of Future Past will be available on Blu-ray and DVD next month, and the extended edition is scheduled to hit store shelves sometime in 2015. X-Men: Apocalypse will be in theaters on May 27th, 2016.
