Bryan Singer's X-Men: Days Of Future Past has now been in cinemas for a couple of weeks - long enough to pick up an impressive box office return, and a largely positive critical response - and though it hasn't quite answered all of the questions some fans were looking to be answered, it did achieve precisely what Bryan Singer wanted, wiping out the worst bits of the franchise he started, and giving his original cast the farewell they deserved. But that nostalgic full-stop on the "future X-Men" timeline did come at a cost. According to the new time-line, by the time we re-meet the old cast in the nostalgic epilogue, very little in X-Men: The Last Stand - if anything - has actually happened, which likewise means The Wolverine has been wiped out, and the logical assumption from the conclusion of the 1970s timeline means that Gavin Hood's wayward X-Men Origins has also been removed from the timeline. Additionally, the end of X2 cannot have happened, which means a considerable number of excellent franchise moments basically didn't happen. Strictly speaking, it's conceivable that none of the franchise actually happened, but as the film was very keen to state, sometimes changing the path of the river only serves in delaying the inevitable, or cutting a different path to the same place, and you have to suspect that that philosophy was included as a means to preserve the first two X-Men movies without having to acknowledge anything else. And that suggestion means that all of the good bits from the timeline that has now been wiped out have also been dumped on the growing pile of movie events that have been ret-conned out of existence. And when you think about it, some of the moments deserve better...
