All the current superhero casting hype lately has revolved around who is going to play Doctor Strange in director Scott Derrickson’s upcoming version of the character for Marvel. And that’s justified, fans have been clamoring to see Stephen Strange onscreen for years. Damn near every actor in Hollywood has been rumored in connection with the part (I feel like eventually I’m going to be linked to the role), but buried under all these reports and speculation, there’s another interesting superhero casting rumor. Fox reportedly wants Tom Hardy could play a villain in the next X-Men movie.

Continuing down their timeline-tweaking, not-quite-a-reboot path that started with X-Men: First Class and picked up this summer with X-Men: Days of Future Past, X-Men: Apocalypse is up next. According to reports, the studio is after Hardy to play the role of the titular villain in the Bryan Singer-directed mutant adventure. Right now he’s being “courted,” and what that means remains to be seen—he could be in talks, or maybe he’s just at the top of the wishlist, we don’t really know.

You know what your Blu-ray shelf is lacking? A scowling ape’s head. I feel pretty confident in declaring that, but if I’m wrong, then I congratulate you for being ahead of the scowling-ape-head curve. As for the rest of us, we’ll be able to remedy our scowling-ape-head deficit with the rather snazzy Caesar’s Warrior Collection Blu-ray set, which packs all sorts of goodies into a replica of Caesar’s intimidating mug. It’s available for pre-order this week both at Comic-Con and online, so now you folks in the midst of the San Diego chaos have a good reason to swing by the Fox Booth (#4229).

The Caesar’s Warrior Collection is a four-disc set that will include Blu-ray 3-D, Blu-ray, and Digital HD versions of both Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, as well as “hours of special features.” The Warrior Collection also includes four collectible character cards and a 32-page “Planet of the Apes: Building an Icon” booklet that looks at WETA’s creation of the Caesar replica. The set lists for $129, but you can pre-order it now at Fox’s Comic-Con booth or via FoxConnect for only $99. There’s no official release date yet, but the set will apparently be arriving in time for the holiday season.

With X-Men: Days of Future Past, director Bryan Singer returned to the franchise he’d left after 2003’s X2: X-Men United (still an awful title). The X-sequel adapted one of the best-loved X-Men stories of all time, sort of streamlined the complicated mess the movie mythology had become, and retconned the shit out of Brett Ratner’s unfortunate X-Men: The Last Stand, something X-fans had already been doing in their heads for years. Days of Future Past also let Singer add the X-Men’s giant robotic nemeses into the mix: the mutant-hunting Sentinels. The comics’ iconic ‘bots got to strut their stuff — in all their purple glory — during the storyline set in the 1970s, whereas the bleak dystopian future had the mutants being wiped out by shapeshifting, power-absorbing future Sentinels. But we actually could have seen the Sentinels facing off against Xavier’s X-Men years ago, if only they weren’t so damned expensive.

If there’s one thing we learned from X-Men: Days of Future Past, it’s that our future depends on peacefully co-existing with whatever the next evolution of humanity is, even if it’s a gross warty guy with a six-foot tongue. If there’s two things we learned from X-Men: Days of Future Past, it’s that Jennifer Lawrence holds the key to our doom. Nevertheless, we have nothing to fear except fear itself, and also people who can shoot death rays out of their eyes, control the weather, or run amok inside our brain like a sugared-up toddler in a ball pit. Thankfully, Dorkly has provided the world with some comforting PSA posters to help ease you into a world where humanity’s limits are bounded only by Chris Claremont’s imagination. And I, for one, welcome our new mutant overlords.

A few weeks ago we brought you the story about hyperactive British inventor Colin Furze, who combined his love of the X-Men with his knack for figuring out how to translate fiction into reality. The result? A truly badass set of retractable Wolverine claws. (No, they don’t retract into his actual arm, but it’s still pretty damn impressive.) Nor did he take the safe path and keep the blades dull — over the course of the video, he demonstrates their sharp edge on some cardboard, a watermelon, and an inflatable Mystique sex doll. Just stuff he had lying around, in other words.

Well, it turns out the Wolverine claws aren’t his only mutant-inspired invention. After all, Marvel’s merry mutants just returned to the big screen with gusto in the epic X-Men: Days of Future Past. So where do you go after “Wolverine claws?” The answer, it seems, is Magneto shoes. Now, Magneto can actually control metal in all sorts of ways, which is pretty hard to replicate I’m guessing. So instead Furze opted for one singularly impressive display of magnetic mastering: walking upside down on the ceiling with magnetic shoes.

X-Men: Days of Future Past is a movie steeped in the history of everyone’s favorite squad of mutants. Not only does it tell one of the franchise’s most cherished narrative arcs, written by legendary comic scribe Chris Claremont in the early 1980s—though admittedly with some major changes to the plot—it also reunites the titular superheroes with director Bryan Singer for the first time in more than a decade. Fun, epic, and wide reaching, Days of Future Past is a solid follow up to First Class, but a number flaws keep it from being one of the best of the franchise.

In addition to the internal history of the X-Men, the plot also revolves around the literal past—this is where you roll your eyes and say duh. In a dystopian near future, giant robots called Sentinels hunt down and kill mutants, mutant sympathizers, and even any humans who may spawn mutant children down the line. All that’s left in charge is the absolute worst of humanity, and the remnants of the X-Men is all that stands in the way of total annihilation. They’re able to stay ahead of their pursuers, but barely, and at great cost. In a last ditch effort, Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), Magneto (Ian McKellen), and the rest of the team send Logan (Hugh Jackman), AKA Wolverine, back in time to 1973. This is a key moment that first led to the development of the Sentinels, a moment where humans became so afraid of mutants that they were willing to take drastic measures they didn’t fully understand in order to combat the perceived menace.