Beginning in 2000 and spanning six entries, the X-Men films make up one of the longest-running and most successful superhero movie franchises ever. Come next year, the latest entry debuts in the form of X-Men: Days of Future Past, the plot of which will be based on a storyline from one of the most acclaimed X-Men comics, wherein Kitty Pride goes back in time to prevent a terrifying dystopian future from becoming reality (avoiding spoilers, let's just say it basically involves lots of lots of dead X-Men). Heavy stuff. With a storyline based on one of X-Men's most celebrated narrative arcs, then, and the return of cast members both new and old (the movie will bring both sets of characters from separate timelines together), Days of Future Past is shaping up to be one of the most anticipated X-Men movies ever. Its existence does, however, raise a few questions for those of us who are invested in the franchise, many of which have been bugging fans for a while. Questions such as...
10. How Did Professor X & Magneto Get To Be So Old?
As mentioned way back at the beginning of X-Men, it's stated that the events are taking place in "the not too distant future," meaning that we can't really put an exact year on when said events are transpiring - any amount of time could have passed between both First Class and X-Men, right? Maybe not. Firstly, we can rightly assume that the events of the first film take place sometime before September 11th, because the Twin Towers are clearly visible in the New York City skyline. But we can get even more specific with things. At the beginning of the film, Professor X confirms that Logan has been wandering around without his memory for fifteen years. According to Origins, he lost his memory in about 1981, six years after Vietnam, which puts the events of X-Men during... 1996. Which makes no sense, seeing as the movie was released in 2000. Back to the original point. By the first film, both Xavier and Magneto are fairly advanced in age, considering that they did meet in 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, thirty-four years prior. When they parted ways, Magneto was pretty dead set on doing... whatever it was he planned on doing to end mutant oppression. Yet, fast forward thirty-four years, and he's achieved nothing substantial. Granted, he could have spent all that time constructing the machine he uses in the first film to convert all humans into mutants, but that seems like sort of a stretch. I mean, it's fairly clear in First Class that he doesn't think too highly of the human race. Why would he go through all the trouble to turn humans into mutants?