Why was Wolverine sent back and not Kitty Pryde? How did Prof. X come back to life? And what does this mean for the literal future of the X-Men? Warning: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!
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If you ask an X-Men comics fan about his or her favorite storylines from the series, you are most likely to hear one of two titles (or both): The Dark Phoenix Saga, and the issues called "Days of Future Past." Writer-producer Simon Kinberg has been at the center of adapting both of those respective runs into feature films, as co-writer of 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand (directed by Brett Ratner), and as the producer and the sole credited writer on X-Men: Days of Future Past, which opened this weekend.
As part of its larger story about a "cure" for mutations, The Last Stand incorporated The Dark Phoenix Saga, which saw Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) transform into the rage-filled, destructively powerful Phoenix. Over the course of the film, Rebecca Romijn's Mystique and Ian McKellan's Magneto lost their powers, and James Marsden's Cyclops and Patrick Stewart's Professor X were killed off — obliterated, really. Fans were not happy with the film, and it eventually earned a reputation as one of the most disappointing comic book adaptations of the last 15 years.
Kinberg, it appears, would agree. "There are things I regret about X-Men: The Last Stand," he told BuzzFeed. In fact, the screenwriter saw Days of Future Past — in which the consciousness of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is sent back to 1973 to prevent the horrific events of the future — as an explicit chance to right the wrongs of that earlier film. "There's no question from me that both for the characters and for the writer, Days of Future Past was a chance to do things differently."
But making the "Days of Future Past" arc — which is really just a two-issue stand-alone narrative — function as a feature film within the established parameters of the previous six X-Men movies and spin-offs still led Kinberg to make some noticeable changes and pointed creative decisions. Below, he explained to BuzzFeed why and how he brought "Days of Future Past" to the screen.
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