Following the sixties-set First Class, the X-Men movies had something of a continuity problem. How come Charles Xavier was walking around? Why did he have hair? Why didn't he and Magneto look like a young Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, but instead him from Starter For 10 and the one who got his knob out in Shame? Then there's all the Mystique stuff, the people who appeared in later films and should thus have been a thousand years old by the original, present-day films, and let's not even get started on the absolute headache of problems that X-Men Origins: Wolverine brought up (besides the fact that it suggests Will.i.am is a superhero, as if his ego needed any more of a boost). Days Of Future Past was, essentially, a feature-length soft reboot of the franchise, hoping to clear up all this messy history and makes things more accessible to people who haven't had the time to watch fifteen years of superhero movies. A lot of problems were ironed out, those that couldn't be were just flat-out ignored, and when the film ended it seemed like a new status quo had been reached. Screenwriter Simon Kinberg, who penned that movie and is currently working on the follow up, has confirmed that the timeline beyond the past events portrayed in Days Of Future Past is a blank slate, thanks to the history-rewriting. So where they go next is really anyone's guess, and isn't that kind of refreshing?
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
