X-Men: Days of Future Past is a 2014 superhero film directed and co-produced by Bryan Singer and written by Simon Kinberg from a story he created with Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn.

Download Now👇

The film is based on the Marvel Comics superhero team the X-Men, the fifth mainline installment of the X-Men film series, a sequel to X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and X-Men: First Class (2011), a follow-up to The Wolverine (2013), and the seventh installment overall. It stars an ensemble cast, including Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Halle Berry, Anna Paquin, Elliot Page,[a] Peter Dinklage, Ian McKellen, and Patrick Stewart. The story, inspired by the 1981 Uncanny X-Men storyline “Days of Future Past” by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, focuses on two time periods, with Logan traveling back in time to 1973 to change history and prevent an event that results in unspeakable destruction for both humans and mutants.

Vaughn had directed X-Men: First Class and was set to return in Days of Future Past but instead left for Kingsman: The Secret Service and the 2015 version of Fantastic Four. Thus Singer, who had directed the first two X-Men films, made his return as a director, and brought along most of the crew from those productions. With a budget of $205 million, the film’s principal photography began in Montreal, Quebec, in April 2013, and concluded in August the same year, with additional filming and pick-ups taking place in November 2013 and February 2014. Twelve companies handled the visual effects.

Plot:

In a dystopian 2023, Sentinel robots hunt and kill mutants, as well as humans who either possess the genetic potential to have mutant offspring or try to protect them. In Moscow, they attack X-Men survivors Kitty Pryde, Colossus, Blink, Warpath, Bishop, Iceman, and Sunspot. The mutants sacrifice themselves to buy Kitty enough time to send Bishop’s consciousness a few days into the past to warn the others of the coming attack and ensure their survival.

Having averted the attack, the group retreats to a remote Chinese temple and are joined by Storm, Logan, Charles Xavier, and Erik Lehnsherr. Xavier explains that the Sentinels were originally conceived by Bolivar Trask, a weapons designer whom Raven Darkhölme assassinated in 1973. In response, the government captured Raven and experimented on her, using her DNA to create Sentinels capable of adapting to any mutant power. Xavier plans to go back in time to 1973 and prevent Trask’s assassination in the hopes of altering the future. However, upon learning that time-traveling too far would kill Xavier, Logan volunteers instead, as his regenerative abilities would allow him to survive.

Awakening in 1973, Logan goes to the X-Mansion, learning from Hank McCoy that the school has been closed for years due to the Vietnam War, and Lehnsherr has been imprisoned for assassinating JFK. A young, broken Xavier has turned to alcoholism and frequently uses a serum that allows him to walk, but at the cost of his telepathic abilities. Hoping to reunite with Raven, Xavier agrees to help Logan. They recruit Peter Maximoff, a mutant with superhuman speeds, and break Lehnsherr out of The Pentagon.

Raven discovers Trask has been experimenting on mutants and plots to assassinate him at the Paris Peace Accords, but Xavier, McCoy, and Logan foil her attempt. Lehnsherr attempts to kill Raven, believing this would change the future, so McCoy fights him, allowing Raven to escape but publicly exposing them as mutants. Trask takes advantage of this and convinces President Nixon to authorize the Sentinel program.

Storyline:

In the future, the mutants and the humans who help them are slaughtered by powerful robots named Sentinels. Professor Xavier, Wolverine, Magneto, Storm, Kitty Pryde, and her friends meet at a monastery in China and Xavier explains that the invincible Sentinels were created using the DNA of Mystique that was captured in 1973 when she tried to assassinate their creator Dr. Bolivar Trask. Xavier tells that their only chance is return to 1973 using Pryde’s ability to join Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr to convince Mystique to give up her intention. However, only Wolverine can withstand the damages of the time travel. Will he succeed in stopping Mystique and the Sentinel Program, and save the mutants and their human friends from annihilation?

Cast:

The cast of X-Men: Days of Future Past promoting the film at the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con. From top to bottom: Jackman, McAvoy, Fassbender, Lawrence, Berry, Hoult, Paquin, Page, Dinklage, McKellen, Stewart, Ashmore, Sy, and Peters.
Hugh Jackman as Logan / Wolverine:
A mutant with accelerated healing, heightened animal-like senses, and—in 1973—retractable bone claws; in the future, his skeleton and claws are laced with adamantium in his body, making him virtually invulnerable. His healing factor also slows his aging, allowing him to live above the lifespan of an ordinary human. Jackman noted how Wolverine driving the plot in spite of his gruff personality made for interesting story choices, as “if you want someone to go back to take someone’s head off, fantastic, but he’s really got to go back and almost act in parts as inspiration, as mentor, as guide, because he can’t do it all on his own, which is always his preferred method”.[7]
James McAvoy / Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier / Professor X:
A mutant pacifist and the world’s most powerful telepath. He is also the founder of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, and the leader of the X-Men. Singer described the younger Xavier as “a very different beast from First Class’s feckless playboy. He’s a wounded animal, bearded, long-haired, filled with rage at the way the world has treated him”.[8] Kinberg said the film was intended to be the story of the younger Xavier beginning to “become the Professor Xavier we know” as Wolverine mentored him.[9]
Michael Fassbender / Ian McKellen as Erik Lehnsherr / Magneto:
A powerful mutant who can manipulate magnetic fields. While he dissents with Xavier due to a wish to prove mutant-kind’s superiority, they revert to being allies as the older Erik helps the X-Men battle against Sentinels in the future.
Jennifer Lawrence as Raven / Mystique:
A mutant with shapeshifting ability, and also Xavier’s childhood friend and adopted sister. Singer said Mystique “is less innocent, evolved, getting closer to where Mystique was in X2 (2003)”.[10] Lawrence had suffered skin irritations from the full body make-up used in First Class, and the process was changed so from the neck down it would be a bodysuit,[11] whose zipper was digitally removed in post-production.[12] As a result, the make-up process was reduced from eight hours to three.[13] The make-up team at Legacy Effects sculpted Mystique’s scales digitally, making them shorter in size and placed in a way that they would accentuate Lawrence’s face.[14]
Halle Berry as Storm:
A mutant who can manipulate weather and is one of the most battle-tested and powerful X-Men. Asked if her pregnancy affected her role, Berry replied, “I wasn’t in as much as I was meant to be. My ever-growing belly was posing a constant challenge! What I could do was getting more limited so the role that I play is so different from what it could have been, due to my surprise pregnancy”.[15] According to Kinberg, Berry had another scene in the film that was cut because of Berry’s limited schedule.[16]
Anna Paquin as Rogue:
A mutant who could absorb the life force and mutant abilities of anyone she touches until taking a cure in The Last Stand. Kinberg wrote a shorter part for Paquin than initially planned because she had little time to be on set.[16] During post-production, Paquin’s role was reduced to a cameo after most of her scenes were cut; these scenes were later restored on an alternate version of the film, which was released to home media.[17][18][19][20] According to Kinberg, Rogue was to be rescued by the future Magneto and Xavier to provide the elder characters a mission, “something like Unforgiven (1992)”. Eventually, the producers felt it was a subplot that did “not service the main story”, and reshot scenes to replace them.[21] However, she was still featured in the film’s various promotional materials.[22][23] Paquin later stated that she still had fun making the film and did not mind that the majority of her scenes had been cut from it.[24][25]
Elliot Page[a] as Kitty Pryde:
A mutant who can pass through solid objects. As the youngest member of the X-Men, she plays an important role in their fight for survival.[26] Singer described Pryde as the prime facilitator and that Pryde’s phasing ability enables time-travel to happen.[27] Kinberg, when asked why Pryde is not the time-traveler in the film adaptation of the comic-book story, said, “[If] we tried to follow the original and use Kitty, we had a problem because [Elliot] is 25 years old and [he’d] be -20 in the First Class era”.[9]
Peter Dinklage as Dr. Bolivar Trask:
A military scientist and the head of Trask Industries who creates a range of robots called Sentinels, designed to find and destroy mutants. Dinklage said Trask “sees what he’s doing as a good thing—[his ambition is] definitely blind and he’s quite arrogant. He has striven all his life for a certain respect and attention”. He also said Trask is opposed by Richard Nixon.[28] Sing.

Production:

Development-
Producer Lauren Shuler Donner stated in August 2006 that a continuation of the X-Men main film series would require a renegotiation. New cast members of X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) were signed, while the older cast members were not.[42] Donner said, “There is forty years worth of stories. I’ve always wanted to do Days of Future Past and there are just really a lot of stories yet to be told”.[43] She later pitched the idea of a fourth installment of the X-Men franchise to director Bryan Singer, following the completion of the 2011 prequel X-Men: First Class (2011).[44] In March 2011, Donner said the film was in “active development at Fox”; she said, “We took the treatment to Fox and they love it … And X4 leads into X5”.[45]

20th Century Fox saw X-Men: First Class as the first film of a new X-Men trilogy.[46] Donner compared the franchise plans to the darker, more mature content of the Harry Potter film series.[47] Early reports said Matthew Vaughn and Singer were returning to direct and produce the sequel, respectively.[48] While still attached to the project as a director, Vaughn said, “First Class is similar to Batman Begins (2005), where you have the fun of introducing the characters and getting to know them, but that takes time. But with the second one, you can just get on with it and have a rollicking good time. That’s the main difference between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight (2008)”.[49] Describing the possible beginning of the film, Vaughn said, “I thought it would be fun to open with the Kennedy assassination, and we reveal that the magic bullet was controlled by Magneto”.[50] Singer said the film could be set around the civil rights movement or the Vietnam War,[51] and that Wolverine could once again be featured.[52] Singer also talked about “changing history” in an interview with Empire magazine. He said he does not want people to panic about events in the past “erasing” the storylines of the previous X-Men films, as he believes in multiverses, explaining the possibility of certain events can exist equally in the histories of alternate universes.[53]

Writing:

Kinberg said the main focus of this film was the future of the X-Men film series. With the use of cast members from the original trilogy and from First Class, they needed to decide the sequels’ destination.[16] In preparation for the film, Kinberg studied films about time travel, including Back to the Future (1985), The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). Singer originated a philosophy and a set of rules for time travel in the film so the story would be as plausible as possible.[16]

“Days of Future Past” is a storyline in the Marvel Comics comic book The Uncanny X-Men issues #141–142, published in 1981. It deals with a dystopian future in which mutants are incarcerated in internment camps. An adult Kate Pryde transfers her mind into her younger self, the present-day Kitty Pryde, who brings the X-Men to prevent a fatal moment in history that triggers anti-mutant hysteria. This storyline was the basis for the film.[55]