X-Men Days of Future Past is an intriguing sequel title for fans of First Class, and a very exciting one for avid followers of the comics. Chris Claremont’s story arc from the Uncanny X-Men comics took readers on an adventure through time to a not-so-distant future, where mutants were hunted down and thrown into internment camps by the evil, autonomous sentinels. The confirmed returns of the likes of Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry leads one to believe that the plot for the new film will follow a similar storyline, but considering where the original three X-Men films left off, and all the news we’ve gathered since Singer’s arrival, we are left with some burning questions for this rather ambitious installment…
5. Who Will Be The Central Time Traveler(s)?
Or maybe the question should be: “just how will time travel work?”
The original storyline followed Kitty Pryde, who was able to transfer her consciousness back and forward between her future and past self to warn of a coming mutant holocaust. The recent casting addition of Ellen Page, who played Kitty Pryde in The Last Stand, may suggest a similar concept is in the works. Just one issue with this idea – Kitty Pryde has already been established as a student in the modern era of the X-Men franchise. Transferring her conscious back in time is therefore out, unless they want to use a five-year old version of Shadowcat back in the 70s with James McAvoy. It’s possible that they may just have her ‘phase’ into the past as a sort of translucent projection, which as ridiculous as that sounds, could be totally possible in a world where someone can control the weather.
Another option they could explore is simply having Xavier do this, which would actually fall in line with a concept they tried to introduce in The Last Stand (everyone was probably so angry about all the franchise murdering-ness going on at that point, though, that they missed it). Or they could do something completely new, all together. Whatever floats their boat.
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6 Comments
I can’t wait to see how this turns out, for better or worse. I think the assassination of Kelly as a catalyst could still work. He died in the first X-Men, basically at the hands of Magneto’s Brotherhood and Mystique covered for the fact. The end of The Last Stand implied that there’s a rosey and tolerant future ahead for mutantkind. But Mystique also lost her powers in The Last Stand. So maybe after the film’s events, without Mystique being able to mimic Kelly any more, the truth about his death came out, becoming the catalyst for renewed prejudice against mutants, leading to the events of Days of Future Past. If Trask is to play a role they should bring back Bill Duke. They’ve gone out of their way not to recast any characters from the original trilogy so far for the sake of fixing and keeping continuity that it only seems logical. How they’re gonna do the rest of the plot and keep continuity with both First Class and the original trilogy is beyond me though. Good luck to them with that! I’ll also be curious to see if The Wolverine has some sort of post-credits lead in to this film, along the lines of the Avengers franchise movies.
Also, maybe if they prevent the assassination of Kelly in X-Men 1 by warning Fassbender’s Magneto and Lawrence’s Mystique of the consequences of their future actions that could be your lead in to a soft reboot of the original trilogy. The question being, how differently would the events of X2 and The Last Stand have panned out if Kelly never died? Unfortunately it doesn’t explain the continuity errors already established between First Class and the original trilogy because the events of First Class would still have happened before the timeline was changed. So on that note, I again wish the writers luck!
I hope it reboots the old franchise with the same cast and have sequels of the younger guys.
As for Sending Prof X back to his olderself i agree with you it could work. But if we remember X3, Pheonix killed him. Now at the end they kinda acted like he is all alive and stuff. But if that is the case how does Patrick Stuart fit into it??? Does the charles who is in the other body send the message back, and then the original is back at the end of the movie? Regardless of how they do it they do have an opportunity to fix what was broken, and lead into X4 if they do everything right!
The body of the man born without consciousness that Xavier transfers his consciousness into in The Last Stand is also played by Patrick Stewart. It’s supposed to be Xavier’s twin brother. It’s on The Last Stand director’s commentary. Convenient? Perhaps. But I guess that’s how they get Stewart back. Still begs the questions of how much explanation they’ll give to his future resurrection in DOFP, ie, will he be alive at the start with some throw away reference to him transferring his consciousness to his twin brother or will his return from the dead, so to speak, be an actual plot point. Also, does that mean he’ll be walking in the future timeline? My guess is that if Cyclops doesn’t feature in this film, it’s because they don’t want to have to explain two character resurrections in a movie that isn’t exclusively X-Men 4 and probably won’t have time to dwell on such things.
These are all fantastic questions, and I have hope that Bryan Singer will find a way to answer them. I can’t wait to see how he does it, and to prepare, I have been watching the previous X-Men using Blockbuster @Home from DISH. It’s such a quick process to update my queue, which is great with my busy work schedule at DISH. I also appreciate the convenience of in store exchanges, when I can’t wait to get the next X-Men on my queue. Watching these movies, it’s amazing to see what needs to be connected, but if anyone can do it, it’s Singer.