‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ Concept Art Shows Off the Sentinels That Could Have Been

'X-Men: Days of Future Past' features the true big-screen debut of some of the most iconic villains in Marvel comics history: the mutant-hunting robots known as the Sentinels. Thanks to the film's time-traveling plot, we get to see two very different versions of these things in action. However, some newly released concept art gives us a glimpse at what they could have looked like.

Here's the slightly crazy thing about all of this art, which was created and released by British visual effects company Framestore: none of the designs from either past or future versions of the Sentinels remotely resembles the comic book versions. Even the most divergent alternate designs still contain the DNA of the final looks, which look nothing like the bulky and imposing Sentinels that have been hunting the X-Men in the comics for decades.

However, what is here is pretty interesting. Although the '70s Sentinels don't look like they changed much from concept to execution, the future dystopian Sentinels look has a more organic and humanoid figure in some of these designs, with a few of them looking distinctly feminine -- SPOILERS -- probably alluding to how, in the film, Mystique's (Jennifer Lawrence) DNA is what leads to the creation of these futuristic Sentinels.

Still, it's interesting how unified everything seems to be. With most superhero movie concept art, there are dozens of wildly different versions created just for the heck of it. Here, it seems like director Bryan Singer and his crew knew exactly what they wanted from the start.

'X-Men: Days of Future Past' is currently in theaters and, according to our official Marvel movie ranking, it's quite good!

Framestore