Nicholas Hoult Tells us Why Beast Isn’t Blue for Some of Days of Future Past

Among the many events of X-Men: First Class was the extended origin of Hank McCoy, AKA Beast, who attempted to cure his visual mutant traits using some of Mystique’s DNA or whatever, and instead made himself hairy and blue. Eagle eyed folks have been given to wonder, if Beast got all fuzzy in the last movie, what’s with the shots of a normal looking Nicholas Hoult in the trailer for its sequel? Hoult himself has explained.

What’s happened up to this point is between the time of the last movie and this movie my character has created a serum which basically controls his mutation so his appearance is normal as long as he doesn’t get worked up. Any animal instinct or urges, that kind of brings him out. So yeah, he changes into Beast a few times throughout the story and they’ve done some great action sequences with him this time, particularly in the mansion flying around on these chandeliers and stuff.

Hoult also talked about how even when in makeup, his prosthetics for Days of Future Past are smaller than First Class, making the whole get up more wearable and less hot. Still, when in it he has the challenge of acting through a lot of layers. It’s safe to say that many folks will consider this a departure from Beast’s character, whose whole tragic mutant arc is caught up in the brilliant mind/inhuman body trope and how he believes himself to be fundamentally unloveable and cannot avoid being judged on sight. He can’t replace that trope with the Hulk’s, since he doesn’t actually lose control of his actions when he gets mad, just his physical form. On the other hand, this could be seen as an explanation for why the Easter Egg version of Hank McCoy in the background of earlier X-Men movies looked human, while the version in X-Men: The Last Stand was blue and furry. On the other other hand, if Bryan Singer doesn’t use Days of Future Past as a way to completely wipe X-Men: The Last Stand from continuity, I think he’s missing a golden opportunity. (via JoBlo.)

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Susana Polo

Susana Polo thought she'd get her Creative Writing degree from Oberlin, work a crap job, and fake it until she made it into comics. Instead she stumbled into a great job: founding and running this very website (she's Editor at Large now, very fancy). She's spoken at events like Geek Girl Con, New York Comic Con, and Comic Book City Con, wants to get a Batwoman tattoo and write a graphic novel, and one of her canine teeth is in backwards.

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