X-Men Days Of Future Past Trailer: 6 Time-Travelling Headaches Already Created

4. Will The Future Be More Than Just A Framing Device?

Whenever time travel is employed, the future plays a varying, but always critical, role. Most of the time, it is relegated to merely the role of a framing device, putting greater emphasis on the ripple effect created by the past. It seems the post-apocalyptic future in X-Men: Days of Future Past is on track for the Terminator route - a future so bad it only exists as a plot device to motivate the protagonists in the "present". And while the trailer indicates that is where the focus will lie, it seems there is a chance of the future playing more than just a supporting role. There has been a lot of the future shown in this trailer - on top of just the monologues from Charles and Erik, there are small sequences featuring everyone from Kitty Pryde to Storm and the other supporting mutants from Xavier's school. This all begs the question: how large will these rolls be? They will either be glorified cameos in the opening sequence, or have their own subplots and extended action sequences, which could make the proceedings all the more cluttered. But then, if they manage to prevent the mutant apocalypse, any sequence set in the Future will be rendered meaningless. The whole problem with "the future as cautionary tale" thing is it tends to make one plot or the other fairly one note (do you remember much of anything in the future-set Terminators other than bleak wastelands and explosions?). As of now, it seems the future is more in use for framing device purposes as of now, but we'll get more as this story develops.