Updated at 11 a.m. May 17
The first full-length trailer for Dallas-shot The Gifted dropped on Monday, May 15. And, according to Deadline via Fox, the trailer had been viewed more than 31 million times by Tuesday afternoon.
(That's more than 11 million on YouTube, 200 of them by me and others from other sources.) First thought on those numbers? Whoa.
And, if those numbers mean what they did in predicting the success of NBC's This Is us, then "The Gifted" has a golden ticket to at least two seasons. Remember how the first trailer for This Is Us had more than 50 million views on YouTube, in less time than it took to binge-watch the first half of the season? Like that.
First thought on the trailer? How very Agent Coulson (Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) of him. That would be Stephen Moyer (Shots Fired, True Blood) playing an official, it seems, who is tasked with putting away mutants for their own good.
"Believe it or not, I am here to help you," Reed tells an apparently "troubled" Lorna Dane/Polaris (Emma Dumont, Aquarius), who is held in some sort of stasis-field contraption.
Then the trailer moves to two teens, Lauren (Natalie Alyn Lind, Gotham), who knows how to use her power and her brother (Percy Hynes White, Between), who she's going to teach.
Then parents Reed and Kate (Dallasite Amy Acker, Angel, Person of Interest) are in the office at a school, where they believe their son Andy, from earlier in the trailer, is being bullied. And, of course, he is. Because in the X-world, that's usually when and how powers manifest themselves: a combination of trauma and the onset of puberty. And when his let loose in a big way, someone with a badge (well, hello, Coby Bell, The Quad, The Game, Burn Notice) comes calling at their home to get Andy.
To which Kate says, "I'm not going to be able to do it." OK, for real, she says, "They're not going anywhere with you."
The trailer is filled with the flash and bang any fan would look for from any TV adaptation of the X-Men saga, as the teens feel free to use their powers to help them go on the run from the organization of which their own father is a part.
"Dad puts people like us in jail," Lauren says. For her dad's part: "There's nothing more important to me than my family."
And so it begins.
Are those mechanical spider-like things on their trail another (or an advance) version of the comic's mutant-hunting Sentinels? Is that Havoc saying, "Tell me about Polaris?" Hey, look, we're on TV; that's part of the Dallas skyline in an early shot. Is that, for the love of God, please let it be, a portal? And, if you care to dig, you'll see Stan Lee in the list of credited actors. Whatever, man, it looks as if they're going for broke.
We see Blink and a glimpse at what seems to be that dystopian future we saw in Days of Future Past, one where "The X-Men, the Brotherhood [formerly of Evil Mutants?] ... we don't even know if they exist any more."
This X-Men fan in me is just saying, "Oh, what a time to be alive."
