X-Men Movies New Timeline Explained

(Photo: Twentieth Century Fox)

X-Men: Days of Future Past is the film that reset the X-Men Universe, and gave the franchise a new lease on life.

Director Bryan Singer acknowledges that the events of X-Men 1, X-2: X-Men United, and X-3: The Last Stand, are all erased going forward. At the end of Days of Future Past, Logan sees a future where all the original X-Men (including the actors that played them in the original trilogy) are alive and well.

Singer spoke to Collider about specifics of the new timeline, and if indeed we are working our way towards that future that is seen at the end of Days of Future Past, and even towards the beginning of the original X-Men.

“It’s not leading necessarily toward exactly where we found Patrick Stewart and the X-Men at the beginning of X-Men 1. There are some things that lead in that general direction, that was part of the philosophy we had at the end of Days of Future Past is that you can’t fully change the course or current of the river, but you can just divert it a little bit, and we diverted it a little bit. So some things will be surprises; people could die that were alive in X-Men 1, 2 and 3, or people could survive that died during 1, 2 and 3.”While fans can use the other films as a sort of barometer for what could happen, Singer isn't promising those will match up, and that freedom was specifically the reason they got rid of those three films.

“So what I’m doing with these in-betweenqueels is playing with time’s immutability and the prequel concept, meaning that yes we erased those storylines and anything can happen. That means the audience goes into the movie thinking that anything can happen. I mean anything, anyone could die. Any possibility could occur, but characters are still moving towards their immutable place. Jean and Scott, are they meant to be together? Is Scott, this guy who hates schools and hates authority, destined to become a leader? You don’t know. Is Jean ever going to discover the full potential of her power? You don’t know, but we move in those directions character-wise but then we have the freedom story-wise to do whatever the fuck we want because we erased those three movies."

“The prequel, you don’t know where it’s going and yet you do kind of know where you want it to go, where you want to see those characters end up, and that’s the beauty of it, of Days of Future Past, of what it did for me. That’s why I fought so hard to make sure we have Hank McCoy talk about the theory of time’s immutability, because that defines what I’m doing with this universe and with these prequels to X1, 2 and 3, which are erased—or are they not?”

Screenwriter and Producer Simon Kinberg believes that the ending of Days of Future Past shows viewers ultimately where the movies want to go.

“All these movies now exist in the same timeline and certainly the intention at the end of Days of Future Past was that final future we saw was the destination for the characters. So barring another time travel or something else that would upset the timeline, that would be the fate of those characters.”

Singer doesn't buy into that theory as much, though, saying: “Time can always be fucked with, we’ve now learned that. We’ve now learned that once you alter time that could be the future, but I don’t believe if you look at all the X-Men movies and Days of Future Past, I don’t believe that’s definitive.”