The idea of time travel is appealing because, in part, who among us wouldn’t want to journey into the past and fix a few things?
“Dear younger self, you’re probably gonna wanna pass on those tickets to Woodstock ’99. Also, no matter what you read, trucker hats will never be in style.”
“X-Men: Days of Future Past” star Hugh Jackman would like to revisit his teen years, when he was presumably slightly less handsome and not built like an oak tree.
“I’d certainly love to go back to high school and the first few years out of high school,” the man who plays clawed mutant Wolverine tells The Post. “I think that’d be fun.”
The writers and producers behind the new “X-Men” movie, however, are out to remedy mistakes made during the franchise’s six-film run, including the “Wolverine” spinoffs.
“Days of Future Past” begins around 2023. Civilization has been destroyed by powerful robots called Sentinels, whose mission is to hunt and kill mutants.
In a last-ditch effort to save the world, Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellan) send Wolverine’s consciousness to 1973 so he can avert the apocalypse by rallying the young X-Men and derailing the still-gestating Sentinel program.
“Weirdly, my experience as the writer on this film is not that different from the characters’,” says scribe and producer Simon Kinberg. “I get to go back to the past as my little bit older, wiser self and correct whatever mistakes I made.”
The various “X-Men” movies have enjoyed differing critical and audience receptions. The first film and its follow-up, 2003’s “X2” — both of which, like “Days of Future Past” were directed by Bryan Singer — are considered by many to be the best in the franchise. The third movie, 2006’s “X-Men: The Last Stand” directed by Brett Ratner, and 2009’s “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” are generally ranked at the bottom.
“I worked on ‘X-Men 3,’ and there are . . . things I like about that movie but [also] things I regret — choices we were forced to make,” says Kinberg, who co-wrote the script.
One of the missteps, he says, was killing Cyclops, played by James Marsden. His character was quickly disintegrated by his possessed lover, Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), and many fans and critics felt the death seemed like a non-event.
“I didn’t love the way we treated Cyclops. His death didn’t have the drama it deserved,” Kinberg says. “Part of why that happened was that we were fighting a scheduling issue where James Marsden was in Bryan’s ‘Superman Returns’ movie, so we only had him for a short time.”
Some fans have also been griping about the continuity glitches among the films. For example, in 2000’s “X-Men,” why doesn’t Wolverine recognize Professor X, even though the two are shown meeting in “X-Men: First Class,” set in 1962? And why does Xavier say in “X-Men” that he first met Magneto when he was 17 while “X-Men: First Class” shows that meeting happening years later?
“Bryan did the first two movies, and then we had other directors doing others, some of the things didn’t make sense in the context of the series,” Jackman says. “Different directors were like, ‘Ah, no. We’re going to start this fresh.’ We were the first to come out in the [superhero] genre, and we just took it movie by movie.”Some things didn’t make sense in the context of the series. We were the first to come out in the superhero game, and we just took it movie by movie.
- Hugh Jackman
Those days are over. The studio behind the franchise, Fox, is now trying to build a cohesive X-verse, as Marvel has done with its films about the various Avengers: Captain America, Iron Man, et al.
Anyone who saw that terrible Ashton Kutcher movie “The Butterfly Effect” knows changes to the past can have a big effect on the future. So it stands to reason — without spoiling anything — that the events in “Days of Future Past” will end up altering or nullifying some of what we saw in the movies set later in the X-timeline, namely the first three “X-Men” films.
Keeping track of the timeline was not easy. The events set during 1973 in “Days of Future Past” had to jibe with those set in 2023 and also sync with much of the timeline created in the other six movies.
“I would never want to write time travel again,” Kinberg says. “The paradoxes it creates and the complexities are like nothing else.”
To keep track of everything, Kinberg created a notecard system. He assigned a color to each main character and pinned cards to a board detailing that character’s journey throughout the film and beyond. At the top of the board, he had a row of white cards recording how the past was affecting the future.
Kinberg and Singer studied other time-travel films, including “Star Trek.” The director also bounced the plot off James Cameron.
“[Cameron] was really into it, as he hadn’t talked time travel since ‘The Terminator,’ ” Singer says. “He seemed to approve and then gave me all the physics behind it. But yeah, [we’re] trying to create a time-travel film with time-travel integrity.”
That said, a time-travel story line wasn’t initially on the drawing board. The plan was to produce sequels to “First Class,” using the younger cast until the action dovetailed into the events depicted in “X-Men.”
When a studio exec suggested bookending the next movie with cameos by McKellan and Stewart, Kinberg thought, “We should just do ‘Days of Future Past.’ ” The story line is one of the best-loved from the comic books. It also seemed a good way to reboot the X-verse.
The table appears to be set now. “Days of Future Past” contains a post-credits sequence that leads directly into the next film, “X-Men: Apocalypse.” It will feature James McAvoy (young Professor X) and the rest of the younger cast, and will be set in the 1980s as the heroes fight an ancient mutant.
A third “Wolverine” film is also in the works. Jackman says he’s game if it takes the character “places you haven’t seen before.” After that, he’s likely to hang up the claws.
More mutant-centric films are in development, including “X-Force,” “Deadpool” and, possibly, a movie starring Channing Tatum as Gambit, first played by Taylor Kitsch in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.”
Troubled by the change in actor? Don’t be. Those events in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” took place after “Days of Future Past,” so they now reside in some alternate universe — one where Gambit and Wolverine might never have met, and Kitsch is a tentpole star.
Double trouble
He’s so fast he can be in two franchises at the same time.
Meet Quicksilver, the fleet-footed mutant who appears in Fox’s “X-Men: Days of Future Past” and is also set to play a part in next year’s “The Avengers: Age of Ultron” from Marvel.
In the Marvel comics, Quicksilver made his first appearance in 1964’s “The X-Men” #4, but later joined the Avengers. Because of the dual allegiance, both studios have rights to use him.
It’s easy to see why both wanted to stake a claim. Quicksilver’s super-speed power is fun to translate to the screen, and his one big scene in “Days of Future Past” looks to be a talker.
It’s 1973 and young Magneto (Michael Fassbender) is locked in a prison beneath the Pentagon. To break him out, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Professor X (James McAvoy) turn to Quicksilver for help.
The speedster outwits the guards by racing around a room, which is portrayed by a slow-motion effect developed by Singer.
“The scene took several days,” says Evan Peters, who plays Quicksilver. “It was a lot of people ‘doing mannequin’ — staying put — while I ran around them.”
Peters says there wasn’t much training required for the role, so he spent his time figuring out the character’s personality.
“One of the comic books said [having his power] was like being stuck in line at the ATM behind a person who can’t figure out how to use the machine,” Peters says. “He’s constantly frustrated, because everyone [else] is moving so slow.”
Comic fans know that Quicksilver has a sister named Scarlet Witch (played by Elizabeth Olsen in “The Avengers: Age of Ultron”), though that character does not show up in the X-verse. Well, not yet anyway.
A brief history of the X-Men
