Even for our resident comic book nerds, Fox’s X-Men movie timeline is extremely confusing. There’s the rubbish post-apocalyptic world that they managed to prevent in X-Men: Days of Future Past, and the happy final scene where Wolverine was reunited with his old friends.
Then you get X-Men: The Final Stand, in which Professor X (among many other characters) was killed, which puts it outside of both those timelines. And then there’s a separate one where X-Men: Apocalypse and the future films are now set, right?
Well, we can’t offer a completely satisfying explanation of how all those fit together, but we do at least know the key events that precede the new Wolverine movie, Logan.
“We are in the future, we have passed the point of the epilogue of Days of Future Past,” director James Mangold told Empire following the release of the film’s first trailer this week. Mangold has confirmed that its indeed set in the future. What this means to future films remains to be seen.
To clarify, he means the scene where Wolverine returns to Charles Xavier’s school to find that Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), Cyclops (James Marsden), Beast (Kelsey Grammer) and his other pals are living in apparent bliss in a world that isn’t little more than a smoking crater patrolled by mutant killing Sentinels.
But of course, this means that the ‘good’ ending doesn’t last, as by the time we get to Logan, the mutants are “gone” – which presumably involved the death of all his friends (again) – and Wolverine and Professor X are sad, infirm old men. So much for happily ever after, right?
Talking to Empire, Mangold stated that, “We are in the future, we have passed the point of the epilogue of Days Of Future Past,” and while that may seem obvious, Mangold has confirmed that its indeed the continuation of
Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Boyd Holbrook, Richard E Grant and Stephen Merchant star in Logan, which will be released on March 3, 2017. Hugh Armitage