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"The future: a dark, desolate world. A world at war. Suffering, loss, on both sides; mutants and the humans who dared to help them. Fighting an enemy we cannot defeat. Are we destined down this path? Destined to destroy ourselves like so many species before us? Or can we evolve fast enough to save ourselves? Change our fate. Is the future truly set?"
Charles Xavier[src]

X-Men: Days of Future Past is the seventh installment in the X-Men film series and is directed by Bryan Singer, who returned to the franchise as a director after last having helmed X2: X-Men United 11 years prior. The film is a sequel to X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men: First Class and The Wolverine, taking place in both 1973 and 2023 concurrently.

Based on the Days of Future Past comic written by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, the film stars Hugh Jackman as Wolverine in a dystopian future where mutants have been driven to the brink of extinction by anti-mutant robots called Sentinels. Aided by Professor X and Magneto, Wolverine is sent back in time to 1973 by Kitty Pryde to stop Mystique from assassinating Bolivar Trask, which led to the creation of Sentinels, and is forced to recruit the younger versions of Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr, and Hank McCoy to aid him in his mission.

X-Men: Days of Future Past was released worldwide on May 23, 2014 to highly positive critical and audience reviews, praising the story, action, thematic elements and the visual effects, and is currently the second highest best-reviewed film of the series. The film also received an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects.

The events of this film are also responsible for severely altering the timeline of the X-Men film series, erasing the events of X-Men, X2: X-Men United and X-Men: The Last Stand as well as most of the events of X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Wolverine. An extended edition, known as "The Rogue Cut", was released on DVD and Blu-Ray on July 14, 2015.

Synopsis

The ultimate X-Men ensemble fights a war for the survival of the species across two time periods in X-Men: Days of Future Past. The beloved characters from the original X-Men film trilogy join forces with their younger selves from the past, X-Men: First Class, in order to change a major historical event and fight in an epic battle that could save our future.[1]

Plot

Theatrical Cut

In a dystopian 2023, robots called Sentinels are programmed to kill mutants and any humans who sympathize with them. In Moscow, they ambush a small group of X-Men survivors consisting of Warpath, Bishop, Blink, Sunspot, Iceman, Colossus, and Shadowcat. Cornered in their underground hideout, the remaining mutants deliberately sacrifice themselves to buy enough time for Shadowcat to project Bishop’s consciousness a few days into the past to warn the others of the impending attack and ensure their survival.

With the attack having been averted, the survivors regroup in a remote monastery in China, where they are joined by Storm, Wolverine, Magneto, and Professor X. Xavier explains to the others that the Sentinels were originally invented by Bolivar Trask, a weapons designer who was assassinated by Mystique in 1973, and that his death served as the catalyst for the creation of the advanced Sentinels that hunt them down in the present day. Xavier then reveals his plan to have Shadowcat send him back to 1973 so that he can stop Mystique from killing Trask in hopes of altering the future, but when Shadowcat protests that doing so would kill him, Wolverine volunteers to go instead, as his regenerative abilities would enable him to survive the trip.

Upon arriving in his younger body in 1973, Wolverine heads to the X-Mansion to find Xavier. While there, he meets a younger Hank McCoy/Beast, who explains that the school has been closed for years due to the Vietnam War and that Magneto has been falsely arrested for assassinating JFK. Broken and alone, the younger Xavier turned to alcoholism and regularly injects himself with a serum created by Beast that enables him to walk but inhibits his telepathic powers. Although Xavier and Beast initially find Wolverine’s story of the future hard to swallow, they both ultimately agree to help him in hopes of reuniting with Mystique. With the help of Quicksilver, the trio then successfully break Magneto out of the Pentagon.

Mystique discovers that Trask has been experimenting on mutants to create his Sentinel prototypes and plots to assassinate him at the Paris Peace Accords. She impersonates a Vietnamese general in order to get close enough to kill him, but ultimately fails when Trask notices her presence using mutant-detecting technology and his right-hand man, Major William Stryker, incapacitates her. Wolverine, Xavier, Beast, and Magneto arrive and subdue Stryker, but before they can decide their next move, Magneto attempts to kill Mystique, believing that her death would be enough to alter the future. Meanwhile, Wolverine recognizes Stryker, which induces a series of traumatic flashbacks and causes his future body in 2023 to violently lash out, severely injuring Shadowcat before future Magneto is able to hold him down.

Although Beast stops Magneto from killing Mystique, their fight publicly exposes them as mutants, leading Nixon to finally authorize the Sentinel Program and arrange for Trask’s Sentinel prototypes to be unveiled to the public in Washington. At the same time, Magneto breaks into Trask Industries, retrieves his helmet, and secretly takes control of Trask’s Sentinels by infusing them with steel. Upon his return to the X-Mansion, Xavier abandons the serum, allowing his powers to return, and by reading Wolverine’s mind, converses with his future self, who motivates him to continue the mission. After Xavier locates Mystique using Cerebro, he, Beast, and Wolverine travel to Washington to prevent her from killing Trask.

At the ceremony where Nixon reveals the Sentinels to the public, the trio successfully locate Mystique in the crowd, disguised as a Secret Service agent. However, before Xavier can talk her down, Magneto activates the Sentinels and drops a baseball stadium around the White House, trapping Nixon inside and unintentionally injuring Xavier. During the battle, Wolverine attacks Magneto, prompting the latter to impale the former with rebar and hurl him into the Potomac River. Nixon, Trask, and a disguised Mystique then retreat to the White House bunker, but Magneto uses his powers to rip the bunker out of the building with the intention of killing everyone inside.

In 2023, the X-Men make their last stand as an army of Sentinels attack the monastery. In the ensuing battle, Storm, Bishop, Warpath, Sunspot, Colossus, Blink, and Iceman are all killed, while Magneto is severely injured trying to aid them. In 1973, Beast injects himself with the serum, inhibiting his mutant powers and causing one of Magneto’s Sentinels to turn on him. Although Magneto disables the Sentinel, it distracts him long enough for Mystique to reveal herself and subdue him with a plastic gun. She then attempts to kill Trask, but Xavier telepathically convinces her to spare him, leading the public to believe that she saved the president. As a result, Mystique is hailed as a hero, the Sentinel Program is scrapped, and Trask is arrested for selling military secrets to foreign nations, altering the timeline and successfully erasing the dark future of 2023 from history.

Wolverine wakes up in 2023 to find himself at the X-Mansion in a revised, idyllic future where Xavier's school is thriving and the X-Men are all still alive. Upon finding Xavier, Wolverine asks him for information regarding the last fifty years, and upon realizing that the Wolverine from the original future has returned, the professor welcomes him back. Back in 1973, the younger Wolverine is saved by Mystique, having disguised herself as Stryker.

In the post-credits scene set in Ancient Egypt, a crowd is seen bowing and chanting to a young En Sabah Nur as his Four Horsemen watch him from a distance.

Rogue Cut

When Xavier explains his plan to the surviving X-Men to travel back to 1973 and prevent Trask's death, Bishop is the first to argue against it and explains that he does not want to sacrifice himself for an alternate future where he and the others may never be born. Blink and Sunspot are quick to echo his sentiments, but Xavier, with Storm's support, convinces them otherwise so that all of mutant-kind will get a second chance.

After Shadowcat is severely injured by Wolverine, Iceman gives her first aid and informs both Xavier and Magneto that she's lost too much blood and might not stay conscious for much longer. He also explains to them that Rogue - the only mutant who could take Shadowcat's place - is currently imprisoned in Cerebro and the only reason why they weren't able to rescue her before is because the X-Mansion is too heavily guarded. Concerned over Shadowcat's safety and the possibility that she might pass out from blood loss before Wolverine can carry out the mission, Xavier agrees to help Iceman rescue Rogue and the two of them, accompanied by Magneto, head out to the X-Mansion in the X-Jet.

With Xavier's guidance, Iceman and Magneto successfully infiltrate the mansion and rescue Rogue, but before they can make it back to the X-Jet, the three of them are attacked by a group of Sentinels and Iceman is killed while buying enough time for the others to escape. Rogue and Magneto make it aboard the X-Jet, but before they can take off, they are attacked by another Sentinel. Professor X manages to maneuver the Sentinel off the jet, but not before the robot jams a piece of its arm into the side of the ship.

In 1973, Mystique returns to the X-Mansion and shares an intimate moment with Beast after he fixes up her wounded leg. During the night, she sneaks into Cerebro and destroys the computer. The next morning, Beast wakes up to find the damage that Mystique left behind and he, Wolverine, and Xavier come to believe that all hope is lost until Beast remembers that Trask will be present at the unveiling of the Sentinels in Washington and realizes that Raven will definitely be there as well.

In 2023, Rogue arrives at the remote Chinese monastery where the X-Men have gathered and solemnly informs Shadowcat that Iceman didn't make it before copying her powers and taking her place, which Wolverine senses back in 1973. The Sentinel arm trapped inside the X-Jet is revealed to be a beacon, alerting the other Sentinels to the location of the monastery. After Magneto is severely injured during the ensuing Sentinel attack, instead of Blink creating a portal for him to enter the monastery like she did in the theatrical cut, Shadowcat uses her phasing ability to pull him inside instead.

In an additional post-credits scene that was not shown in the theatrical cut, Trask is revealed to have been imprisoned inside Magneto's old cell in the Pentagon.

Cast

Appearances

Locations

    • Great Pyramid of Giza

Items

Vehicles

Organization

Mentioned

Videos

Trailers

TV Spots

Power Pieces

Viral Marketing

Clips

The Rogue Cut

X-Men X-Perience

Premieres

Miscellaneous

Trivia

  • The filmmakers selected the "Days of Future Past" storyline because it would allow the filmmakers to reconcile any continuity dissonances within the X-Men film franchise.
  • The original "Days of Future Past" comic mentioned time travel from the year 2013, the same year in which filming began. In this movie, the future action is implied to take place in 2023.
  • In the original comic storyline, Marvel heroes other than the X-Men are wiped out by the Sentinels , such as Spider-Man, Ghost Rider, Daredevil, Iron Man, Hulk, The Fantastic Four and someone who looks like the Silver Surfer, but is more likely Bobby Drake (Iceman).
  • Bishop is the first mutant Kitty Pryde sends through time. This is an homage to Bishop being a frequent time-traveller in the X-Men comics.
  • Quicksilver 's slow-motion sequence was filmed with mostly practical visual effects (high-speed photography and stunt rigs), with CGI used only for the objects in mid-air.
  • (At around one minute) An older version of Ink is visible in the Mutant Internment Camp scene early in the movie. He is accompanied by an older version of Sabretooth .
  • Although Anna Paquin 's screentime is only three seconds, and she has no lines, she still was one of the top billed cast members during the ending credits. The extended cut of the movie, however, restores a subplot in which she features prominently, and has therefore been dubbed "The Rogue Cut".
  • A life-size model of a 1973 Sentinel robot was constructed for filming.
  • In the "Days of Future Past" comic, it was Kitty Pryde who went back in time. In this movie, it's Wolverine . According to writer Simon Kinberg, Kitty was intended to be the time-traveller, but it didn't work out: "Kitty in the era of young Magneto and Xavier would have been -20 years old. The reflex response to that was a character who doesn't age. Wolverine is the only character who would look the same in 1973 as he does in the future." Thus, Wolverine was picked for being an ageless immortal character who would bridge past and future.
  • (At around one minute) At the beginning, as the mutants and humans march down the corridor, a quick glimpse is shown of an older Quicksilver from behind. He is directly in the center of the frame, and is easy to spot with the same hairstyle and hat his younger self has in the movie.
  • (At around one hour and fifty-five minutes) In her cameo,Rogue is seen wearing her trademark green jacket and pants from the comic books.
  • This the first X-Men movie ever to be nominated for an Oscar (Best Visual Effects).
  • Angel, Azazel, Riptide, and Emma were originally going to return, but when the filmmakers decided to go with the "Days of Future Past" story, they had them all killed off.
  • Young Xavier's alcoholism is presumably a reference to his mother Sharon becoming a drunk not long after the death of her first husband in the comics.
  • This movie establishes the reset timeline.
  • Peter Maximoff is never called Quicksilver in the film. He is always being referred to as Peter.
  • (At around two hours and ten minutes) In the post-credits scene, the pan around to the front of the character building the pyramids reveals the silhouette of four individuals on horseback. These are the Four Horsemen  of Apocalypse, four super-soldiers he converted and enslaved.

Music

Song title Artist Location(s)
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face Roberta Flack

Wolverine wakes up in 1973 and again in the new 2023.

Hello Hooray Alice Cooper

Wolverine, Professor X and Beast meet Quicksilver in his basement.

Time in a Bottle Jim Croce

Quicksilver runs through the kitchen in the Pentagon at great speed, knocking out all of the guards.

Stop Au Nom De L'Amour Claude François

Plays in the nightclub in Paris.

Dixie Chicken Little Feat

On the radio before Magneto lifts the stadium.

References

External Links

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