A 10th Anniversary Retrospective on X-Men: Days of Future Past
X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) is the movie that turned me into an X-Men fan. I was 12 when the film was released. At this point in my life, I had seen all the other X-Men films, albeit out of order. I had the slightest grasp of the storyline (if you even want to call it that) that unfolded across the six previous movies in the series, but if there’s one franchise that has proven time and time again that it doesn’t care about continuity, it’s X-Men.
I had appreciated all the movies I had seen, but I wouldn’t have gone so far as to say I enjoyed them. Days of Future Past changed that. I didn’t immediately appreciate what the film did to save the franchise. Looking back on it a decade later, it delivered exactly what the X-Men series needs again today ahead of the long-awaited Deadpool and Wolverine (2024): redemption.
The film picks up sometime in the future following the events of X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and The Wolverine (2013). However, the film never confirms or hints at how many years have passed since these films, considering it begins with the present society completely collapsed and overrun by Terminator-like machines known as Sentinels. One of the minor problems I’ve always had with the film is that the audience doesn’t get the proper context that leads up to these events. Instead, it’s all just sprung upon viewers, and they’re asked to simply hop on board without questioning anything. It’s the type of forget-everything-you-know storytelling that devoted fans were likely okay with, considering this was a massive return to form for the franchise.
When Days of Future Past was released, I barely appreciated what it meant to X-Men fans. I had a basic understanding of why everyone hated The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009); these are two movies that were the butts of many jokes for the better part of a decade. I knew that the first two films in the franchise were beloved and seen as two of the most important comic book movies of all time, pushing the genre forward alongside Sam Raimi’s first two Spider-Man films. Together, they showed what the genre was capable of if taken seriously. While X-Men: First Class (2011) and The Wolverine came closer than ever to bringing the franchise back to the quality it was known for with X2 (2003), Days of Future Past brought everyone back on board and relaunched the core franchise.
Not only did Days of Future Past bring back key cast members who had been relatively absent from the franchise since 2006 — like Patrick Stewart as Professor Charles Xavier, Ian McKellen as Magneto, and Halle Berry as Storm — but it also brought back director Bryan Singer, who launched the franchise with X-Men (2000) and X2. Considering Singer produced what many fans viewed as the two best films in the franchise, his return was hugely significant, giving fans hope that the dying series would finally be revitalized.
To be fair, X-Men: First Class got extremely close to accomplishing this feat. Directed by Matthew Vaughn of Kickass (2010), Kingsman (2014), and Argylle (2024) fame, First Class was better than it had any right to be and was the movie that set Days of Future Past up for greatness. Above all else, I would consider Days of Future Past as more of a sequel to First Class than to any of the previous X-Men films, considering the audience spends more time with the First Class versions of the X-Men characters than with any of the core entries’ original characters.
Within the first 20 minutes of Days of Future Past, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is sent back in time to the 1970s to try to prevent the Sentinels, who are destined to destroy both human and mutant kind, from being created, thus saving the future. The bulk of the plot plays out here with sparse cuts back to the dystopian present where the film began.
Days of Future Past is the grand culmination of the core X-Men franchise as audiences knew it up to this point. It honors the original films by bringing back characters and themes while also moving things forward in the story set up by First Class. By the time the film reaches its conclusion, it feels like everything has been brought full circle. The storyline that takes place in the past is left in a place that makes it easy for fans to imagine what happens to lead to the first X-Men film, while the future storyline ends by giving fans what they’ve wanted since The Last Stand: a complete and utter retcon of The Last Stand. The film ends with Wolverine succeeding in his mission to save the future, erasing the apocalyptic timeline that served as the story’s launch point and replacing it with a present timeline that gives the franchise a happy ending, bringing back beloved characters who had perished in The Last Stand like Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) and Cyclops (James Marsden).
Regardless of how deeply connected you are to the franchise, it’s difficult to watch Days of Future Past and not get swept up by what it accomplishes. It gives X-Men, a series of films plagued by storytelling that can be described on a good day as inconsistent, a happy and satisfying ending. If not for the core X-Men movies that followed, like X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) and X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019), the legacy of the franchise would have been left in a place that would see it held up today as one of the best the superhero genre had to offer. If the only other movies to follow Days of Future Past were the two Deadpool films and Logan (2017), the franchise’s legacy would not need to be saved. However, that isn’t what happened. This is why it is so important that Deadpool and Wolverine sticks the landing.
In a way, it’s poetic that Deadpool and Wolverine will be released shortly after fans celebrate the 10th anniversary of Days of Future Past. The Merc with a Mouth’s multiverse adventure will serve as a last hurrah for the X-Men saga and all of the superhero fare produced under 20th Century Fox. It will look to accomplish the same goals that Days of Future Past set out to achieve a decade ago: restore enthusiasm for a franchise in sore need of revitalization. It’s also been dealt the additional task of establishing where X-Men will stand in the Marvel Cinematic Universe under Marvel Studios.
The entertainment juggernaut has already begun the process of incorporating the X-Men into its ever-expanding mythos of movies and television shows through small cameo appearances as well as the acclaimed series X-Men ‘97 (2024-), the long-awaited revival of the animated X-Men series from the 90s. It’s unconfirmed if this series will be made canon in future MCU installments. If its success proves anything, though, it’s that Marvel Studios and chief Kevin Feige are intent on taking these characters and their legacy seriously.
As far as Deadpool and Wolverine, the fact that Ryan Reynolds and the team behind the film were able to bring back Hugh Jackman as Wolverine after the bitter-sweet swan song the character had with Logan should put fans’ anxiety at ease. It was previously thought that Jackman would never return to the character. Many fans found the announcement of his involvement in Deadpool 3 upsetting, but I think they’re missing the bigger picture. Jackman cares about the character more than any fan. Wolverine was a part of him for nearly 20 years and still is to this day whether he stars in new X-Men movies or not. The idea that he agreed to return one last time indicates that fans have something special to look forward to and should approach the film with an open mind.
If Deadpool and Wolverine manages to achieve for some young fan out there — who sees the hard R-rated film accompanied by a parent, of course — what Days of Future Past did for me, then the X-Men franchise will gain another fan. I certainly didn’t expect much when I watched Days of Future Past 10 years ago, but it ended up being one of the movies that made me fall in love with the superhero genre.
Article Courtesy of Evan Miller
Feature Image Credit to Disney via ComicsOnline
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