X-Men: Days of Future Past will be at the center of one our most anticipated panels at this year's Comic-Con, but it turns out, we didn't have to wait until Saturday's Hall H panel for the big reveal. The above photo, taken outside the Hard Rock Hotel facing the convention center in downtown San Diego, reveals the robotic menace that we've suspected for a while would be at the center of the new X-Men films-- the Sentinels. Standing in front of the logo for Trask Industries, the corporation that created the Sentinels, this helmeted head confirms another piece of what's looking like a complicated plot for the new X-Men film, which unites characters from both Bryan Singer's original two X-Men movies and 2011's X-Men: First Class. Check out a few more images of the exhibit in the gallery at the bottom of this post.
The mini-exhibit also comes along with an ad for the viral site Trask-Industries.com. So far it's just a shadowy robot head along with an ad for the exhibit itself in San Diego, but what do you suppose are the odds of it getting bigger and more interesting between now and the conclusion of the Con?
We've had our eye on the Sentinels ever since the sequel's titled was confirmed to be Days of Future Past, the same as a 1981 run of comics that introduced an alternate future, in which the Sentinel robots have been created to hunt mutants down. Kitty Pryde-- played once again this time by Ellen Page-- travels back in time to warn the X-Men about this future and help avert it, and though rumor has it that it will be Wolverine, not Kitty, sent back in time, the Sentinels still seem to be at the center of the drama. If this robot head isn't scary enough for your on its own, consider that all signs point to Game of Thrones superstar Peter Dinklage playing Bolivar Trask, who invents the Sentinels. You may not want a bunch of giant robots on your tail… but you really don't want Peter Dinklage with a villainous mustache added into the mix.
We're hearing that a huge number of the X-Men: Days of Future Past cast, along with Bryan Singer, will be on hand in Hall H for Saturday's panel, and given this Sentinel tease it's seeming very likely that we'll see the giant robots in action. You might think it wouldn't take a lot of work to get a Comic-Con crowd excited for a book based on comic characters as famous as the X-Men, but these guys can be tough customers. X-Men: First Class didn't even make an appearance at Comic Con before it came out, perhaps worried about lingering backlash from X-Men: The Last Stand or even X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which was the last X-Men movie to appear at the convention. They've certainly bolstered themselves with as good a cast as they could ask for and the return of X-Men and X2 director Bryan Singer… but you never know. Saturday is a stacked day in Hall H, and not everything can knock it out of the park. Does X-Men: First Class has what it takes? Come back Saturday for our liveblog to find out.
For more on X-Men: Days of Future Past you can click here. Despite all our speculation, this one-sentence synopsis is all the official detail we've gotten: "The X-Men must travel in time to change a major historical event that could globally impact on man and mutant kind."
