- NOTE: This article is about the incarnation of Bolivar Trask from the X-Men film series. The mainstream version can be found here: Bolivar Trask.
| “ | You know, when you sent our soldiers to Vietnam without the weapons they needed to win the war, you underestimated your enemy. You... you do that with this enemy and it won't be some border skirmish halfway around the world. This time, the war will be for our streets, our cities, our homes. And by the time you see the need for my program, it'll be too late and you will have lost two wars in one lifetime. | „ |
| ~ Bolivar Trask pitching his Sentinel program to Congress. |
| “ | Bolivar Trask: I see mutants as our salvation. William Stryker: A common enemy. Bolivar Trask: A common struggle against the ultimate enemy. Extinction. I believe our new friends are going to help us usher in a new era, Bill. A new era of genuine and long-lasting peace. |
„ |
| ~ Dr. Bolivar Trask to William Stryker. |
Dr. Bolivar Trask is the main antagonist of the 2014 superhero film X-Men: Days of Future Past, the seventh installment in 20th Century Studios‘ X-Men film series.
He is a brilliant but ruthless industrialist and weapons tycoon who believed that the mutants posed an existential threat to humanity and invented anti-mutant robots called Sentinels to eventually eradicate them all. His assassination at the hands of Mystique in 1973 only convinced world leaders that the Sentinels were worth sponsoring, eventually resulting in the Sentinels wiping out most of the mutant race in a devastating war by 2023 and leading the surviving X-Men to send Wolverine back in time to 1973 to prevent Trask's death and consequently avert the dystopian future.
He was portrayed by Peter Dinklage, who also played Simon Bar Sinister in the 2007 Underdog film adaptation, Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones, Captain Gutt in Ice Age: Continental Drift, Eddie Plant in Pixels, Roman Lunyov in I Care a Lot, Scourge in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts and Dean Highbottom in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
Biography
Background
Even from his early years as a research assistant, Bolivar Trask always maintained a particular interest in the origin and evolution of humanity. Following in the footsteps of Mendel, Watson and Crick, Trask made it his goal to unlock the mysteries of human DNA. What he did not anticipate was the discovery of the X-Gene, a genetic finding that would prove to be the most significant of the 20th century.
In his hatred towards mutants, Trask soon hypothesized the impending extinction of the human race. His early theories were ridiculed by his contemporaries and with no one to fund his research, Trask decided to pursue his ambitions on his own by founding Trask Industries in 1967. By 1973, the company had become the forefront of human progress, having partnered with governments all over the world since the start of the Nixon administration.
The Wolverine
During the end credits sequence, an ad for Trask Industries is shown at an airport where Logan (Wolverine) is just about to leave Japan. While there, he runs into Magneto and Professor X, who warn him that a new threat - the Sentinels - is rising to destroy the mutant race and ask him to rejoin the X-Men. Although Wolverine is initially reluctant, he ultimately relents and acquiesces to their request.
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Original Timeline
During the Vietnam War, Trask tortured and experimented on mutants for their DNA. These experiments eventually enabled him to create technologically advanced robots called Sentinels, whose sole purpose was to carry out his goal of wiping out all mutant-kind. Among those he experimented on were Azazel, Angel Salvadore, Riptide, Emma Frost and Banshee. He also attempted to use Havok, Toad, Daniels, and Ink as test subjects as well, but before they could be shipped into his custody, Mystique saved them from Trask's minions and got them to safety. At some point soon after this event, Mystique discovered what Trask had been up to and plotted to assassinate him as revenge for slaughtering her comrades and using their bodies for his own research.
In 1973, Trask made several attempts to convince world leaders to fund his Sentinel program, without success. During one such attempt at the Paris Peace Accords, he was attacked by Mystique, who had infiltrated the conference disguised as a Vietnamese general. Although there was at least a dozen other military officials in the room, Mystique swiftly incapacitated them all by herself and shot Trask in the head before he could flee, killing him on the spot.
Although Mystique succeeded in getting her revenge on Trask, doing so did not create the outcome that she intended. Due to the fact that she was a mutant, her decision to kill Trask only made him a martyr for the Anti-Mutant movement and persuaded world leaders of the need of his Sentinel program at the time. Mystique was also captured before she could make her escape and by experimenting on her and another mutant in their custody named Rogue, Trask's scientists were eventually able to create Sentinels with the ability to adapt to any mutant power. Over the next fifty years, these evolved Sentinels would launch a campaign of genocide against the mutant race. Humans who also had the genes to potentially produce mutant offspring were not spared and as a result, mutant-kind was on the brink of extinction by 2023.
Revised Timeline
In 1973, Trask made several attempts to convince world leaders to fund his Sentinel program, without success. During one such attempt at the Paris Peace Accords, he was attacked by Mystique, who had infiltrated the conference disguised as a Vietnamese general. However, before Mystique could kill Trask, she was interrupted by Professor X, Beast, Magneto, and a time-traveling Wolverine in their attempt to prevent the dystopian future of 2023 from becoming reality.
Unfortunately, it was at that moment when Magneto came to believe that killing Mystique would be enough to alter the future, resulting in a battle between the himself, Mystique, and Beast that publicly exposed them as mutants to the world and led President Nixon to finally authorize Trask's Sentinel program. Furthermore, Trask was able to obtain a sample of Mystique's blood from where Magneto wounded her and upon analyzing it, became obsessed with capturing her, believing that her DNA was the key to engineering the Sentinels into the unstoppable killing machines he had always desired them to be.
Trask's imprisonment in the revised timeline.
After saving Nixon from being killed by Magneto, Mystique tried to kill Trask a second time, but Xavier telepathically convinced her to spare him, leading the public to believe that a mutant had saved the president. As a result, Mystique was hailed as a hero and the Sentinel Program was decommissioned, altering the timeline and successfully erasing the dark future of 2023 from history. Trask himself was also arrested by the American government after it was discovered that he had sold military secrets to foreign nations. After being convicted, presumably on charges of treason, he was then imprisoned in the same cell that Magneto had been held in for assassinating JFK.
Personality
Although Trask presented himself as a benevolent, mild-mannered, and altruistic businessman who wished to use his genius to improve the world and solve humanity's problems, in reality, he was a ruthless, arrogant, cruel, and genocidal xenophobe who was obsessed with bringing about the extinction of the mutant race. This attitude stemmed from his theory that mutant-kind would eventually wipe out those who did not have powers like themselves due to their status as the stronger and more evolved species, and as a result, he saw himself as a righteous soul who was doing whatever it took to save his species from a growing threat that most were oblivious to.
As he saw mutants as humanity's greatest enemy, Trask had no respect for them as people, as shown when he referred to Mystique as "creature" and "it", and showed great disdain towards those who did not agree with his views towards mutant-kind. He also showed no remorse for the unethical experiments he conducted on the mutants in his custody, and did not mind if he died as long as his goals were achieved, as shown when he made no move to flee and simply accepted his fate when Mystique attacked him at the Paris Peace Accords in both timelines. His hatred for the mutant race was also so great that he was willing to goto extreme lengths to ensure that his genocidal plans were carried out, as displayed by how he was content with having people who had the genes to produce mutant offspring to be killed off as well and was willing to betray his own country to get his Sentinel Program up and running.
However, despite his unethical actions and his intention to commit genocide against mutant-kind, Trask did have some more positive traits. He genuinely believed that his actions would save his species from extinction and was disgusted by the Vietnam War, viewing it as an unjust and pointless conflict in which millions of people on both sides were brutally slaughtered for no good reason. He also thought that by wiping out mutant-kind, he would be able to unite humanity as a whole and bring about a new era of long-lasting peace, thus ending the desire for war as well.
Ironically, what Trask ultimately failed to realize in the end was that even if world leaders were to side with him on his views towards mutants, that did not mean that all of humanity would side with him as well, especially since he had no qualms with killing off those who had the potential to produce mutant offspring. As a result, even in the timeline where Trask succeeded in his ambitions, humanity did not unite against mutant-kind as he thought they would; instead, they were only pushed further apart, to the point humans who sympathized with mutants and humans who had the dormant X-Gene in their DNA were seen in the same light as mutants themselves.
Gallery
Trivia
- While the original comic book version of Trask was never a hero by any means, he did eventually come to realize that mutants were not a threat to humanity and even heroically sacrificed his own life to stop the Sentinels from carrying out their intended purpose. Neither of those happen in to the Days of Future Past incarnation.
- In the film X-Men: Days of Future Past, Trask said he named the Sentinels after the guardians of the citadel. It was thought that he meant The Citadel, the real-life military academy in SC, since its guards were called Sentinels, but in the truth, he was talking about the ancient site called the Arx ("citadel" in Latin), as its guards were referred to as "sentries".
External Links
- Bolivar Trask on the X-Men movies Wiki
 Movies Villains
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Brotherhood of Mutants Department of Domestic Security and Defense Team X Omega Gang Hellfire Club Yashida Corporation Trask Industries Ashir En Sabah Nur/Horsemen of Apocalypse Essex Corp Others | ||
