X-Men: Days of Future Past

IIRC it was a 'soft' reboot. All the advantages of using the other films in the marketing etc, but with the ability to ignore them completely and go off in their own direction if they want to.

I don't think they've said anything one way or another. But if First Class is meant to be in the same universe as any of the other films then the films have bigger continuity problems than the comics. Which is saying a lot.

If I remember correctly First Class treated the first 2 X Men movies as canonical but ignored the 3rd movie and X Men Legends Wolverine in an attempt to distance from the bad box office reception the latter two received.

Which in itself is kinda sketchy. Hard to determine continuity if you're cherry picking based on which didn't suck, right?

Superman Returns and the CGI Ninja Turtles movie tried something similar (I think Word of God was that the latter ignored the two sequels but treated the original Turtles movie as canon, hence the refernces to Shredder being dead). But those might not be the best example....

Well, gosh. Isn't that what everyone does with movies anyways?

First Class would work a lot better as a reboot - it really isn't in continuity with any of the others - and a lot of viewers (including me) are happier thinking about it that way, but they made enough references to the past ones that it doesn't feel like they intended it to be one.

I wish they'd just ignore the couple of cameos and say, "It's a reboot", but they seem to have decided that, at the least, everything but Origins is in the same rough continuity.

Well yeah, but that's usually something done by fans on the side to get around the fact that they watched a shitty movie. Having that kind of logic applied officially muddies the waters a bit, if you get what I mean.

I get the sense that it's fairly common in comic books, after a fashion: if something is bad enough or unpopular enough, it just gets retconned. Sometimes the retcons are in-story (as many people seem to suspect Days of Future Past will be, given that it deals with time travel) and sometimes they're external, but something being changed or simply ignored because the preponderance of authors and fans agree it's crummy isn't uncommon.

It's not hugely surprising that that might bleed over into comic book movies, especially ones with as much variation in quality as the X-Men films.

I hope they make it a reboot. Unfortunately the continuity problems with the films Singer directed aren't as blindingly obvious, so it's possible those two might be considered cannon. Some stuff I've read indactes that this might have been the original intention and that while planning this sequel they realised the benefits of a full reboot. I hope so at least.

The problem with using the original films as a possible future is that they aren't extreme enough. They aren't bad enough to change; you could easily get a worse outcome. Nothing that happened was as bad as WW 2, a time traveller would be better off wanting to kill Hitler than Stryker or Magneto. Conversely it's too bad to be taken as the one true future the heroes need to fight to restore. Some advice about Jean Grey would save a lot of lives.

Well, they could make it something like, -Apocalypse shows up and not having Jean Grey/Xavier/Scott made it impossible to win" or something. Which could lead into another movie, where, in the new timeline, they have to fight Apocalypse.

Well that and because it makes a better story if you do. Isn't it better to make something good out of crap and salvage the good that was left than to just let it stagnate? I mean, X-men is a humongous enterprise. It seems a pity to just be restricted to Wolverine sequel after Wolverine sequel.

http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/rorschachsrants/news/?a=67504

Take with a massive grain of salt, but someone is claiming that Patrick Stewart is doing another X-Men film. Since the First Class sequel involves time travel it's safe to say that if true, he'll likely show up there.

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=95273

Mark Millar has apparently been hired by Fox as a consultant for their future Marvel movies. I know Marvel Studios had a similar program so this seems interesting.

Jean Grey/Famke Janssen might be returning, which, yes please.

edited 2nd Oct '12 12:05:39 PM by LE0Night

Just assume that comic-book style Continuity Drift is in effect and go with that.

Wasn't that already in effect with First Class uno, though?

It's what I assumed, anyway. I just tried to apply Comic-Book Time to the movie franchise since talk of a reboot aside, they obviously took steps to at least superficially make it seem in line with the original trilogy.

Tangently related, but how exactly can Fox use Viper in the Wolverine film? She's not like Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, where they're Mutants and first appeared in the X-Men. She first showed up in Captain America and for the longest time has gone by the name Madame Hydra (and HYDRA obviously is owned by Marvel Studios).

I've been asking myself that for some time and I still can't figure out the answer.

Now I don't know for sure, but the contracts between Marvel and Fox probably have a huge list of characters rather than something vague like 'all the x-men characters'.

Well, I just went to the wikipedia page and went down to the bit about first contact with the X-Men and saw that it involved the Silver Samurai and a love interest of Wolverine's so perhaps the story or set of characters is explicitly mentioned in the contract- you can adapt storylines featured in issues x to y, including all characters except for... any who also appear in other works may not reference etc.- but then there is no restriction to do things exactly and one is allowed to move characters around.

edited 10th Oct '12 2:03:48 PM by SomeSortOfTroper

http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/nailbiter111/news/?a=68506

More Wolverine rather than Days but there are the first leaked set pics of the Silver Samurai. Surprisingly, given that the X-Men franchise started the whole "What were you expecting, yellow spandex?" meme, it looks very accurate to the comics.

He's called the Silver Samurai, he dressed like a samurai but silver. There's not really that far away you can move from that.

I was expecting a guy in a trenchcoat with a Samurai sword. The Fox Marvel movies are very big on the Movie Superheroes Wear Black trope, after all. An actual guy running around in a mask and suit of Samurai gear sounds like the exact kind of thing they'd find too campy.

Mark Millar basically confirms (which was probably a foregone conclusion) that Sentinels will be in the movie. http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/StuartGreen/news/?a=68898

I'm always surprised it took us this long to get a proper Sentinel appearance in the films (discounting that brief cameo in Last Stand). They're definitely some of the X-Men's most iconic foes.