The cover has Sentinels on it. The opening credits have Sentinels in them. The back cover seems to promise this will be a really cool, animated adaptation of the classic X-Men comic-book two-parter “Days of Future Past.” So where in the flying hell are the Sentinels and a war-ravaged future in the freakin’ movie?

Oh, right — they’re all at the end. For about ten seconds. Niiiiiiice.

Adult fans of Marvel’s mutant super-hero team the X-Men — and even smaller fans over the age of seven — might be seriously disappointed in the new Wolverine and the X-Men: Heroes Return Trilogy. The DVD comprises the first three episodes of the same-titled series running on Nicktoons, and is in no way a spin-off of the previous X-series that came before it. Wolverine and the X-Men starts off by jumping right into the story, figuring that pretty much everyone on the planet knows by now who the various X-Men are, courtesy of Bryan Singer.  We’re shown a typical training sequence with Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde and Colossus in the Danger Room, before we find out that Wolverine is leaving the mansion for some alone time. On his way out, he says his goodbyes to Beast and Jean Grey, and is about to chat with Storm and Professor X, when suddenly the Professor and Jean–being the resident telepaths in the group–feel a profound psychic assault, and then a bright light solarizes the screen, taking us forward to one year later. (more…)