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X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST
Starring Hugh Jackman (Logan / Wolverine), James McAvoy (Charles Xavier / Professor X), Michael Fassbender (Eric Lensherr / Magneto), Jennifer Lawrence (Raven / Mystique), Nicolas Hoult (Hank McCoy / Beast), Patrick Stewart (Charles Xavier / Professor X), Ian McKellen (Erik Lensherr / Magneto), Halle Berry (Ororo Munroe / Storm), Ellen Page (Kitty Pryde), Daniel Cudmore (Peter Rasputen / Colossus), Shawn Ashmore (Bobby Drake / Ice Man), Peter Dinklage (Bolivar Trask), and Evan Peters (Peter Maximoff / Quicksilver) with special appearances by James Marsden (Scott Summers / Cyclops), Famke Janssen (Jean Grey), and Anna Paquin (Rogue)
Directed by Bryan Singer
Produced by Lauren Shuler Donner, Bryan Singer, Simon Kinberg, and Hutch Parker
Written by Simon Kinberg with Matthew Vaughn
Music By John Ottman
Distributed by 20th Century Fox
Run Time: 2 hours and 11 minutes
World Premier: May 10, 2014, New York City
Opening Weekend Box Office: $90 million (United States)
Worldwide Box Office: $746 million
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 90%
Marvel Entertainment / The Walt Disney Company
Fun X-Men: Days of Future Past Facts
Producer Laura Shuler Donner made her fandom of the Days of Future Past comic book story no secret as Fox developed their X-Men film franchise, and she reportedly began campaigning for an adaptation of that story as far back as 2006. After production wrapped on X-Men: First Class, she formally pitched the idea to adapt Days of Future Past to X-Men and X2: X-Men United director Bryan Singer and by the Spring of 2011, the film was in active development. X-Men: First Class Director Matthew Vaughn had already begun working on ideas for a sequel to his critically acclaimed film, plotting to have the sequel set during the 1970’s, to reveal that Magneto had been involved in the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy, and to bring back Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine in a prominent role. These ideas would ultimately be used in the film, but the First Class sequel quickly evolved into either a prequel or a sequel to all of the X-Men films that Fox had produced up to that point! Bryan Singer ended up returning to the director’s chair of an X-Men film after flirting with the idea for years, while Matthew Vaughn received a writer’s credit due to his work on the script. Singer and Vaughn actually collaborated on the best way to make it all work, with Singer ultimately establishing the film’s Time Travel rules, leaning into the concept of Multiverses, Alternate Histories, and Alternate Futures.
The Days of Future Past comic book storyline was written by Chris Claremont and John Byrne and was first published in 1981 in the pages of The Uncanny X-Men #141-142. John Byrne also illustrated the series. The story deals with a dystopian future in which a mutant genocide has occurred at the hands of the powerful robotic mutant-hunting Sentinels with surviving mutants incarcerated in internment camps. The United States has fallen under the complete control of the Sentinels, and they are now looking to branch out into other parts of the world to continue their conquest. Amongst the dead are Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Angel, Ice Man, and Beast. Desperate surviving members of The X-Men unite in an effort to change their present by altering the past. They hope to do this by sending Kitty Pryde’s consciousness into the body of her past, younger self in order to prevent the event that had been deduced as the catalyst for the dark future they now inhabit: the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly and the hands of Mystique and her Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. The dystopian future is set in the year 2013.
The Days of Future Past comic book story greatly influenced the X-Men: Days of Future Past film, with the most obvious change being Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine fulfilling the role that Kitty Pryde played in the comics. Simon Kinberg noted that this change was made due to Wolverine’s ageless look and ability to heal quickly, though I imagine that Hugh Jackman’s unrivaled star power at the time played a contributing factor, as the person traveling back in time was going to essentially be the star of the movie. Also, going by the previous films, Kitty Pryde was probably not even born yet in the time that Logan was sent back to (1973), given her age when she was seen in previous films; most notably X-Men: The Last Stand. Kitty Pryde did receive a significant role however, as she was given a power set upgrade of boasting the ability to send people’s consciousness into the past. This was not in any way true to the comics.
In the Fall of 2012, Bryan Singer confirmed the returns of James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, and Nicholas Hoult from First Class. Days later, Singer announced the returns of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen to specifically portray older versions of the characters portrayed by McAvoy and Fassbender.
X-Men: Days of Future Past marks the seventh appearance of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine; a superhero and comic book movie record at that time. Jackman previously appeared in X-Men, X2: X-Men: United, X-Men: The Last Strand, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, X-Men: First Class, and The Wolverine.
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Both Chris Claremont (co-creator of William Stryker, Rogue, Kitty Pryde, and Mystique) and Len Wein (co-creator of Storm and Wolverine) have cameo appearances in X-Men: Days of Future Past.
X-Men: Days of Future Past commenced filming on April 15, 2013, and wrapped on August 17, 2013.
Aside from Laura Shuler Donner’s appreciation for the comic book story, the Days of Futurre Past premise was also decided upon as a way to try and right some of the continuity errors that existed within the X-Men film franchise, as well as a way to right some of the perceived past wrongs that plagued the franchise as the characters and stories moved forward coming out of this film.
The future Sentinels in X-Men: Days of Future Past are essentially gigantic, weaponized versions of Mystique, with their technological development having been perfected through Mystique’s DNA. The design of the future Sentinels is sleek and feminine with bodies that are covered in mechanical scales that move during the process of adapting to mutant attacks. The future Sentinels are also perfected versions of what Danny Huston’s William Stryker was trying to create through Weapon XI in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, as they boast the ability to absorb the powers of mutants that they encounter, much in the same way that Stryker was able to imbue Weapon XI with the abilities of mutants such as Cyclops, Wolverine, Wraith, and others. This means the respective works of William Stryker and Bolivar Trask were highly dependent upon each other, and the filmmakers were careful to stress that connection with the casting of Josh Helman as a very young William Stryker in this film, complete with Stryker and Trask sharing a very important scene together.
The dystopian future scenes in X-Men: Days of Future Past are set in the year 2023. By that point in time, the characters Beast, Mystique, Angel, and Nightcrawler have all been killed.
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X-Men: Days of Future Past introduces several new mutants from the Marvel comics, including Bishop (portrayed by Omar Sy), Blink (portrayed by Fan Bingbing), Sunspot (portrayed by Adan Canto), and Warpath (portrayed by Booboo Stewart). Quicksilver is also amongst the newly introduced characters, portrayed by Evan Peters. Quicksilver was in a unique position as a character at the time in that both Marvel Studios and Fox shared the rights to him, as well as to his sister Wanda. Fox would introduce the character here in Days of Future Past while mere weeks earlier, Marvel Studios introduced the character during a mid-credits scene for Captain America: The Winter Soldier (portrayed by Aaron Taylor-Johnson), with an expanded role for the character forthcoming the following year in Avengers: Age of Ultron. The two Studios would present the Quicksilver character quite differently, with the Fox version named “Peter” and the Marvel Studios version named “Pietro.” The Fox version also appears to be an American (and the son of Magneto) while the Marvel Studios version is of Sokovian descent. Also, the way each character moves is quite different, with the Fox version more or less being shot as if time has slowed down to a virtual standstill around him while the Marvel Studios version moves nearly too quickly for the eye to perceive, sort of in a blur. Marvel Studios would actually kill-off their version of Quicksilver in Age of Ultron, while Fox would feature the character in two more X-Men sequels. Ironically, Evan Peters and Aaron Taylor-Johnson starred together in Matthew Vaughn’s 2010 superhero film Kick-Ass.
Several of the mutants that aligned with Magneto at the end of X-Men: First Class are revealed to have been killed by Trask as part of his ongoing experiments on mutants, complete with autopsy photos. These include Angel and Azazel.
Being set in 1973, it is generally agreed upon that X-Men: Days of Future Past‘s scenes that are set in the past take place six years before the primary events seen in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, beginning with Stryker’s assembling of Team X and his recruitment of Wolverine and Sabretooth. This means that Logan does not yet have his Adamantium claws, and his lingering memory issues from the future present go back to 1973 with him, hence his surprise at the sight of his bone claws. Logan furthermore retains the memories that he does have as of 2023. This is why Logan freaks out at the sight of the young William Stryker in Washington. Though they’d yet to formally meet, Logan, while not fully remembering all of his experiences with Stryker in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, does remember his experiences with Stryker in X2: X-Men United.
One month before the theatrical release of X-Men: Days of Future Past, Director Bryan Singer was accused in a civil lawsuit of sexual assault of a minor. Singer denied the allegations but withdrew from all planned public appearances to promote the film; his official X-Men homecoming. Singer’s accuser withdrew his suit in August, but in the meantime, Singer faced new and similar allegations from another accuser. Those charges were dismissed in July. Singer would go on to direct X-Men: Apocalypse (the formal sequel to Days of Future Past), after which he helped develop Dark Phoenix for Fox. However, further sexual assault allegations emerged in 2017 and 2019 which resulted in Singer being dismissed by Fox and the longtime director’s subsequent self-imposed exile from the public eye.
X-Men: Days of Future Past was one of four Marvel films that were produced in 2014, but Days of Future Past was made without any input from Marvel Studios, as the working relationship between Marvel and Fox ended with 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand, with Marvel Entertainment promoting Kevin Feige to lead the Marvel Studios team that would birth the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Marvel Studios produced both Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014. Guardians of the Galaxy ($773 million and the third highest-grossing film of the year) outperformed X-Men: Days of Future Past ($746-million and the sixth highest-grossing film of the year), but Days of Future Past outperformed The Winter Soldier ($714 million and the seventh highest-grossing film of the year). All three of the aforementioned films outperformed Sony’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ($708 million and the ninth highest-grossing film of the year). Having four different movies all cross the $700 million mark and place within the Top 10 highest grossing films of the year was a huge testament to the popularity and appeal of Marvel characters, however! It should also be noted that X-Men: Days of Future Past was the highest-grossing X-Men film ever produced up to that point, as none of the previous six films had managed to cross the $500 million mark.
On July 14, 2015, Fox released a special edition Blu-ray titled X-Men: Days of Future Past: The Rogue Cut. This version of the film restores 17-minutes of previously cut footage, much of which involved Anna Paquin’s Rogue. In the most pivotal scene, Ice Man, Magneto, and Professor X break Rogue (who was being held hostage) out of Xavier’s Mansion, a mission during which Bobby Drake loses his life. Rogue is then taken to Wolverine, who has inadvertently wounded Kitty Pryde after encountering Stryker in the past. Rogue absorbs Kitty’s powers and calms Logan and keeps him at bay for the rest of his mission. It is also much more heavily implied that Mystique was not the only mutant whose DNA was imperative to making the future Sentinels into the ultimate mutant killing machines, but Rogue’s as well, as it was through her DNA that they obtained the ability to absorb the powers and abilities of other mutants. Another pivotal scene in The Rogue Cut sees Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique visit the X-Mansion on the night before the Sentinel unveiling ceremony in 1973 where her previous romance with Beast is revisited and she destroys Cerebro so that Xavier will be unable to locate her. There is also an additional credits scene that shows Bolivar Trask imprisoned in Magneto’s now former cell beneath the Pentagon.
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Beyond X-Men: Days of Future Past, 2016 saw the release of Deadpool and X-Men: Apocalypse, and 2017 saw the release of Logan.
On December 17, 2017, the Walt Disney Company announced that an agreement had been reached with 20th Century Fox that would see Disney acquire Fox’s television and film divisions, among other things. Disney had acquired Marvel Entertainment at the end of 2009, and Marvel Studios with it. The lucrative Fox deal therefore landed the film rights to Marvel’s mutants under the Disney / Marvel Studios umbrella. Fox shareholders unanimously approved the transaction on July 27, 2018, and the deal was finalized on March 20, 2019. In the meantime, Deadpool 2 was released theatrically in 2018, followed by Dark Phoenix in 2019, and New Mutants in 2020. New Mutants marked the thirteenth X-Men film and the last X-Men project produced by the previous regime at Fox.
The Fox X-Men film Universe is more than a little complicated, and a lot of those complications were addressed in X-Men: Days of Future Past. This film was an effort by Fox to cohesively tie each of their previous six X-Men and Wolverine films together while setting the stage for the future in a cohesive and appealing way. X-Men: Days of Future Past deals with Time Travel, which is always a tricky plot device to balance in a satisfying way. In this film, no one is physically sent back through time, but rather psychically; Wolverine’s consciousness is sent into the body of his past self, overriding his past consciousness. X-Men: Days of Future Past is a sequel to X-Men: First Class, a prequel to X-Men Origins: Wolverine, both a prequel and sequel to X-Men, X2: X-Men United, and X-Men: The Last Stand, and a sequel to The Wolverine. Days of Future Past establishes that sometime after Logan reunited with a re-powered Magneto and a yet living Xavier, the Sentinels rose to power and began eradicating the mutant race, leaving what was left of the mutants to rally together and try and deduce a way to prevent their awful present from ever coming to fruition. By the end of the movie, the narrative seems to suggest that Logan successfully changed the future, as evident by the erasure of specific characters in the dystopian 2023 in the moment before their deaths.
This goes against the Time Travel logic that was embraced by Marvel Studios in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame. For that MCU movie, the filmmakers took an approach to Time Travel that has been theorized within Quantum Mechanics in the “Many Worlds Theory.” This was not a familiar approach for general moviegoers, as Time Travel has been traditionally presented from a very different perspective in most films that utilize the plot device, as was the case with X-Men: Days of Future Past. In Avengers: Endgame, popular theories such as “The Grandfather Paradox” do not apply, because you can’t go to back to the past and change your future, because your future has already happened. Time Travel does not work that way. In trying to change the future from the past, one would instead create a Branch that would extend from off their base Timeline, and anything that they change would only apply to that specific Timeline. This is where the “Many Worlds” angle comes in, and what this theory suggests is that the Universe exists in a state of constant expansion in which it is continually splitting (or Branching off) into infinite extensions that exist initially as duplicate Parallel Universes that evolve into a range of either very similar or very different New Realities as new choices are made. These theoretical Universes comprise what some in Quantum Physics have labeled the “Multiverse.” The concept of the Multiverse is not new to comic book readers, and it has been a Marvel Comics plot device since the 1970’s.
In Endgame, an attempt is made to explain how the Multiverse ties into Time Travel through the dialogue of several characters. As it is told in the film, the mere act of traveling back through time can create one of these Branched Timelines / New Realities. Upon the arrival of a time traveler or time travelers, the Universe executes a sort of copy / paste initiative, and a New Timeline is born. The time traveler / time travelers now exist within this New Reality; one that shares the exact history of the world from whence they came … up until the exact moment that they arrive in the past. This is why in Endgame, people and places look and act identical to the same people and places from whence The Avengers came … Because they are. They are for lack of a better word, Cosmic Copies of the people and places they knew. From that point of arrival however, things are free to move forward in whatever way they may, and one simple change or alteration to the history that the time travelers know can result in unfathomable changes to the New Reality that they’ve spawned.
According to these rules, it seems that Logan’s actions in the past should have created some sort of a New Reality and that seems to be the case when the film flashes forward to the present and Logan awakens to reunite with Xavier in 2023, discovering that Cyclops and Jean and Kitty and Colossus, and Rogue and Bobby and even Beast are all alive and well, and are X-Men. The future has been dramatically changed! It would seem that this New Reality is one in which everything wrong has been set right, and essentially, this turn of events altogether erased many of the events specifically scene in X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and The Wolverine and would now not result in the dystopian future that befell the mutants at the hands of the Sentinels. Furthermore, key events seen in 2000’s X-Men and 2003’s X2: X-Men United have been altered as well, with the roles that the likes of Mystique and Magneto play in this New Reality being unknown. The concept of this being a Branched Timeline doesn’t really work though, due to the sudden erasure of the Timeline from whence Logan came. I therefore lean into the belief that everything in Days of Future Past was part of some sort of a complicated Time Loop wherein everything that happened had to happen the way that it did so that everything would happen the way that it did. Beyond Endgame, we have seen one specific case of a Time Loop in the MCU, courtesy of the Ms. Marvel Disney+ series, so this does not betray the established MCU canon. In fact, the person who experienced this Time Loop (Kamala Khan) just so happens to be a mutant, so perhaps there is a connection there?
Also, the 2022 Marvel Studios film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness introduced the concept of dream-walking into the MCU. This is a dangerous mystical technique in which one’s consciousness can be transported into the body of one’s Multiversal self, which is quite similar to Days of Future Past and Wolverine’s consciousness being transported into the body of his younger self. It does not appear that Wolverine’s technique caused an Incursion (which occurs when the boundary between two Universes erodes and they collide, destroying one or both entirely) though, something that dream-walking can cause.
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Hopefully, Marvel Studios’ Deadpool and Wolverine will clear up all of the how’s and why’s involving Time Travel, the Multiverse, and Wolverine and The X-Men. The presence of the Time Variance Authority (introduced in Marvel Studios’ Disney+ series Loki: Season One) in Deadpool and Wolverine means that we should at least get some answers to these kinds of lingering questions.
Actor Peter Dinklage, who portrayed Bolivar Trask in X-Men: Days of Future Past, would go on to portray Eitri, the King of the Dwarves in Marvel Studios’ Avengers; Infinity War, released in 2018.
In 2021’s WandaVision series produced by Marvel Studios for Disney+, Evan Peters was cast by Marvel Studios to seemingly portray Quicksilver within the MCU 616-Universe (and upon the Sacred Timeline), complete with the power set and name of Marvel Studios’ version of Pietro Maximoff that was previously portrayed by Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Peters as Pietro looks as he did in Fox’s X-Men films and shares several scenes with his “sister” Wanda (portrayed by Elizabeth Olsen), and furthermore retains the same sort of charisma and comedic timing that made him so likable as the character in Fox’s X-Men films.
At the time, many fans thought that Marvel Studios’ casting of Peters was to be MCU fans’ formal introduction to the Multiverse and that this version of Quicksilver was in fact the same version of the character that was introduced in X-Men: Days of Future Past, but the series went on to reveal that the character that Peters was portraying had merely been brainwashed by an ancient Witch named Agatha Harkness, who bestowed his identity and accompanying abilities upon him through magic. The character Peters was actually portraying was a resident of Westview, New Jersey (a whole town that had fallen under Wanda’s spell) named Ralph Bonner.
The aforementioned 2022 Marvel Studios film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness saw Marvel Studios cast actor Patrick Stewart to reprise his role as Charles Xavier / Professor X under the Marvel Studios banner. Stewart’s casting was followed by the casting of Kelsey Grammer to reprise his role as Hank McCoy / Beast under the Marvel Studios banner during a mid-credits scene in 2023’s The Marvels. From there, Hugh Jackman was cast to reprise his role as Wolverine under the Marvel Studios banner in the also aforementioned 2024 film Deadpool and Wolverine. All three versions of the characters are Multiversal Variants of the characters they portrayed in Fox’s X-Men and Wolverine films, and in Jackman’s specific case, several.
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My X-Men: Days of Future Past Review
X-Men: Days of Future Past opens in the year 2023 and a dystopian future where mutants are relentlessly hunted by Sentinels. We quickly catch up with a small band of surviving members of The X-Men, some we know and recognize from previous films such as Kitty Pryde, Colossus, and Ice Man, and others we are introduced to here such as Blink, Warpath, Bishop, and Sunspot. As the Sentinels invade, we see several of these mutants get killed in an effort to buy Kitty enough time to send the consciousness of Bishop a few days back into the past in an effort to prevent the attack before it ever happens. This is accomplished successfully, and we soon learn that Kitty has been routinely using this tactic to ensure the survival of herself and her friends.
The group of mutants meet up with Storm, Wolverine, Professor X, and Magneto inside a Chinese temple where they decide to try and use Kitty’s gifts to send someone far enough back in time to prevent the entire mutant genocide from ever happening. Xavier narrows fifty-years of history down to one distinct point of origin in the 1973 assassination of weapon’s manufacturer Bolivar Trask by Mystique. This act resulted in Mystique being captured and experimented upon, during which time her DNA was discovered to be the key to bringing the Sentinels to life as they now existed.
Wolverine volunteers to be the one to take the dangerous mental journey into his past self in 1973, and Kitty sends his consciousness back through time. Logan awakens in his younger body and gets himself into some immediate trouble while being baffled by the existence of his bone claws, which had yet to be coated in Adamantium by William Stryker.
Logan gathers his composure and sets out to Xavier’s mansion to fill the esteemed leader of The X-Men in on his mission.
There, he encounters Beast and is taken aback by his human appearance. He then encounters a much younger and very different Charles Xavier.
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The elderly Xavier in 2023 had warned Logan that he would have great difficulty in convincing his younger self to cooperate with him, going so far as to suggest that Logan would have to do for Xavier what Xavier once did for Logan (give him hope and help him find his way). The Charles Xavier that Logan encounters in 1973 is angry, bitter, defiant, and hopeless. He has lost his “sister” and best friend (Mystique). He absolutely hates Erik Lensherr, who caused his paralysis and betrayed him in an unimaginable way. He had to send away the woman with whom he’d fallen in love, and he’d watched helplessly as mutant after mutant was recruited to fight what many saw as a meaningless war in Vietnam. Xavier was a drunken, disheveled, drug-addicted shell of his former self who wanted no part of anything that Logan was trying to sell him, and it was indeed a tough sell to try and convince a man of science that his future self had sent the consciousness of Logan back through time in an effort to change the future; a future that was directly tied to Raven and her actions after being swooned over too Erik’s way of thinking.
Logan eventually deduces that the only way for Xavier to understand that he was telling the truth would be for Xavier to read his mind, but this was complicated by Xavier’s use of a revolutionary drug devised by Hank that when under the influence of which, he was able to walk, but unable to access his psychic abilities. Logan persists, and Xavier does ultimately read his mind, and what a powerful scene this is, as he bears witness to Logan’s complicated and extremely traumatic past from Weapon X through Jean’s death, and on up to the dystopian 2023! Xavier manages to mutter “you poor, poor man” after accessing Logan’s mind and pain, but while now believing he is who he says he is, Xavier sees little hope for a team-up with Magneto, not only due to their differing philosophies, but due to the fact that Magneto is imprisoned underneath the Pentagon for his alleged part in the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy!
Xavier begrudgingly agrees to assist Logan nonetheless, if for no other reason to help Raven shape a better future for herself, and he, Logan and Hank successfully recruit the mutant speedster Peter Maximoff. I’ll go ahead and admit that I am one of the people that thinks that Quicksilver is one that Fox got over on Marvel Studios. I really loved Evan Peters’ take on the character as well as the way Fox executed his powers. The ensuing scene with Peter helping Logan, Xavier, and Hank infiltrate the Pentagon is one of my favorite sequences in the film, from the subtle reference to the possible family heritage between Erik and Peter, to the uneasy reunion between Erik and Charles, and of course, on to the iconic Time in a Bottle by Jim Croce sequence which sees Peter destroy a kitchen and rescue his teammates in an instant that is presented to us as viewers in a slow-motion presentation that was wildly entertaining!
From there, we catch up with Raven, who has decided to kill Trask after learning the extent of his experiments on mutants, some of which were her friends. She plots to carry out the deed at the Paris Peace Accords.
Logan, Xavier, Hank, and Erik intervene of course, but things do not go as planned due to Logan encountering a young William Stryker. This sends Logan into a rage and back in the future, he wounds Kitty Pryde with his claws. Mystique is nonetheless prevented from killing Trask, but everyone’s identities as mutants are exposed. Desperate to emphatically change the future of which he has been foretold, Erik decides to kill Mystique right then and there, going so far as to open fire on her. Mystique is wounded and Beast fights Erik in broad daylight in front of countless witnesses. The carnage is capitalized upon by Trask, who convinces President Nixon to authorize his Sentinel program in the face of this new mutant threat.
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With hope seeming lost and the mission all but a complete bust, Logan allows young Xavier to communicate with his older self through Logan’s consciousness in what is an absolutely beautiful scene! The elderly Xavier encourages his younger self to persevere, and young Xavier finally finds the motivation he has been lacking. Xavier tries to reach out to Mystique, but to no avail, as she is still hellbent on murdering Trask. In the meantime, Magneto has (unbeknownst to anyone) reclaimed his helmet and has commandeered control of the large robotic Sentinels that are to be presented to the public by Trask.
At the ceremony, everything comes to a head! Magneto unleashes the Sentinels upon the public, Mystique sets out to finish the job with Trask, and Xavier, Logan, and Hank set out to try and stop the both of them. There is some fantastic Wolverine vs Magneto stuff here and some great visuals with Magneto showcasing his powers, but it all comes down to Xavier getting through to Mystique and convincing her to do the right thing.
Back in the future, the Sentinels close in on The X-Men. Magneto is mortally wounded, and everyone is about to be killed until the change triggered by Mystique’s choice registers in real time and the dystopian future from which Logan came is erased.
It worked!
Back in 1973, the Sentinel program is decommissioned, and Mystique and Charles make amends. Young Charles has hope again and he sets out to reopen his School for the Gifted. Meanwhile, Logan (who had been hurled into the river by Magneto after being pierced by and wrapped in rebar) is fished out by what appears to be William Stryker but is actually Mystique in disguise.
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Back in the apparently changed future, Logan awakens to find himself surrounded by The X-Men; all of whom are alive and well. From there, a credits scene takes us back to ancient Egypt and introduces En Sabah Nur.
Despite a few flaws, overall, I consider X-Men: Days of Future Past a masterpiece. As ambitious as making The Avengers undeniably was for Marvel Studios in 2012, this was quite ambitious in its own right; juggling so many moving pieces and returning characters had to be an undertaking, but somehow, some way, Fox got it (mostly) right!
I will admit to feeling uncomfortable praising Bryan Singer’s work as a filmmaker during these X-Men film reviews. If he did in fact do the things that he has been accused of doing, he is a despicable human being and he sucks and he deserves no praise and no adulation. Yes, he has made some good movies. In this specific case, he made one of my favorite movies of all-time, but who he is as a human being far outweighs who he is as a filmmaker in the grand scheme of things. While I understand that some people may have vowed to never watch another movie that he made ever again, that is a choice that I decided against. In my view, yes, Bryan Singer worked on many of these films, but he is far from the only person that worked on them. There are still the writers, the producers, the choreographers, the cinematographers, the production designers, the costume designers, the set builders, the music composers, the stuntmen and women, and of course, the cast!
Personally, I don’t think it’s fair that the work that people like Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, and Jennifer Lawrence put into this film should be ignored due to the sins of one other person. If you do, that’s fine and that’s great and that’s your prerogative, but it is not a choice that I have made.
So, that being said, again, this is my favorite ensemble cast X-Men film. It was an amazing sequel to X-Men: First Class while paying tribute to everything that came before it.
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James McAvoy is where I have to start in praising this movie, as he gave such an amazing performance as a young Charles Xavier struggling with depression and disability. I related to Xavier SO much in this film and McAvoy was tremendous once again throughout this movie, eclipsing the great performance he gave in First Class.
Next, Hugh Jackman was incredible! His performance in X-Men: Days of Future Past was even better than his solid performance in The Wolverine and after salvaging lesser films in recent years such as X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and The Wolverine, Jackman finally starred in an X-Men film that had the script and direction to appropriately compliment his driven performance!
Jennifer Lawrence was also wonderful in this film once again as was Michael Fassbender, and Evan Peters was a scene stealer as Quicksilver! I thought the plot was weaved together perfectly with Mystique at the center of the story and all of the ways that connected with Professor X, Magneto, and Beast. Lawrence was defiant, driven, and vulnerable and there was a real sense of lost innocence that made her character work in this film.
As for Magneto, I loved the fact that this film proved that he’d been right all along! All of the things that he warned Xavier about, and that Xavier insisted he was overreacting to ended up happening just the way Magneto predicted that they would way back in the first X-Men film. Humans let their fears control them and mutants were consequently victimized. That dystopian 2023 that we see in this film really grounds Magneto with a very unique sense of conviction as a character and enhances the viewing experience of the previous X-Men films. Whether or not you agree with his methods, Magneto is correct; he is right, and in the end, that justifies his war.
I don’t know where to start or finish in praising Evan Peters as Quicksilver. If you’ve read my other writings on this site, you know how I feel about the debacle that was his (sort of) recasting in WandaVision. It was a huge miss by Marvel Studios in that it wasn’t what I wanted it to be, but at the same time, I wouldn’t trade it for anything, because I so enjoyed seeing Peters interact with Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda and Paul Bettany’s VISION in that series and in that specific role. He was great with the kids too! Evan Peters is my favorite version of Quicksilver and whenever he is on the screen in Days of Future Past, it’s impossible to look away. He was a huge asset to this movie and to this Cinematic Universe as a whole and could have been a huge assert to the MCU Multiverse at large (maybe he still will be).
20th Century Studios
X-Men: Days of future Past boasted tons of heart and loads of emotion, and the way that Time Travel was utilized was unique and captivating. My only real knock on the film is the Mystique as Stryker scene and where Fox decided to (or decided not to) take this franchise moving forward.
I like to think that I’m pretty good at coming up with explanations for plot holes within the context of these stories, but I’m at a loss for why the decision was made to have Mystique impersonate Stryker. Having Stryker commandeer Logan’s body made perfect sense both to the plot after Stryker saw Logan in action in Washington, and to the trajectory of Wolverine’s future (which we saw teased in X-Men: Apocalypse).
However, if Mystique pulled Logan out and Xavier commissioned her to do so, how would Logan end up with Stryker? I mean, pretty much anyone can come up with a reason I’m sure, but it just seemed completely unnecessary and detrimental to an otherwise pretty perfect narrative.
Last but not least, I will say that I liked the way the film ended with Logan finding that the future had been fixed. I thought it was cool that so many people agreed to come back and shoot that one scene and it seemed to set the franchise up for an exciting future, but … well, that’s another topic for another day in a future review.
For now, this stands as the peak of the X-Men film Universe in terms of ensemble casts and the traditional X-Men superhero team, and it is a film that I will long cherish and enjoy revisiting.
X-Men: Days of Future Past was a triumph!
20th Century Studios
Highlights of X-Men: Days of Future Past
Hugh Jackman is Wolverine
James McAvoy as Charles Xavier / Professor X
Jennifer Lawrence as Raven Darkholme / Mystique
Michael Fassbender as Erik Lensherr / Magneto
Evan Peters as Peter Maximoff / Quicksilver
Utilization of Time Travel in a Unique and Clever Way
Magneto Being Accused of Causing the Kennedy Assassination
Wolverine’s Reaction to Seeing a Young William Stryker
Music
Essentially eliminating the divisive events of X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine from continuity through Wolverine’s changing of future events through time travel to create what is apparently a new Alternate Timeline
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