Five Ways "X-Men: Days of Future Past" Fixes the Franchise's Previous Mistakes

X-Men: Days of Future Past is a miracle of a comic book movie. Not only does it right the franchise after a majority of fans lost faith in it, but it also takes a cinematic eraser to some of the series’ low points. From the first X-Men film in 2000 through last year’s The Wolverine, no X movie is safe as Days of Future Past re-imagines the franchise’s history and rights many of the wrongs committed over the past 15 years.

By the end of Days of Future Past, dead characters are revived, lovers reunited, and entire movies are gone in the blink of an eye. To help you make sense of how the new timeline completely tramples on the old, we’ve distilled the whole thing down to this: Five Ways X-Men: Days of Future Past Fixes the Franchise’s Previous Mistakes.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

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If you want to activate a comic fan’s gag reflex, simply utter the words X-Men Origins: Wolverine in their presence. It’s five years later, and the wounds of this colossal dud still haven’t healed yet. Thankfully Bryan Singer and writer Simon Kinberg must feel the same way, because by the end of Days of Future Past, all history of Origins has seemingly been erased.

In Origins, Wolverine is seen as a soldier and mercenary during Vietnam before working for William Stryker in the Weapon X program in 1975. Days of Future Past doesn’t do away with Wolverine’s history in Vietnam, but by the end, Mystique, who is masquerading as Stryker, takes Wolverine with her after he is rescued from the Potomac River in 1973.

This completely throws Origins into the wood chipper as the real Stryker seemingly never recruits Logan for Weapon X, nor does he seem to know who Sabretooth is here. It’s sloppy and a little bit of a cheat, but our long national nightmare is over. You can finally bury Origins in the deep recesses of your mind along with The Incredible Hulk, Daredevil, and all of the other comic book movies that were unceremoniously ignored over the years.

We don’t know what the X-Men ever did to Brett Ratner as a child, but it had to be something heinous because the guy hauled off and killed three of the main characters during X-Men: The Last Stand within an hour of each other. The most shocking of all of these deaths had to be Professor X, who is literally torn apart by Jean Grey halfway through the movie. Yet here he is in Days of Future Past without a mention of his temporary brush with the great beyond.

How did he come back? Well, it was shown at the end of The Last Stand that Xavier had placed his consciousness inside of another body. But that doesn’t explain why that body looks just like Patrick Stewart, or why he would choose another body that was paralyzed. There is no explanation here, just a giant middle finger from one director to another, courtesy of Bryan Singer.

Plus, unless you unfortunately own the DVD or are one of those people who watches FX at 3 a.m., chances are you’ll never see The Last Stand ever again anyway, so these little details can be ignored.

During X-Men: The Last Stand, Brett Ratner completely undid the relationship between Rogue and Iceman, which Bryan Singer meticulously spent two movies building towards. Instead he had Bobby Drake leave Rogue for Kitty Pryde, making Iceman look like a scumbag, Rogue look like a fool, and Kitty look like a floozy.

In Days of Future Past, once Wolverine helps establish the new timeline, we get a quick glimpse of Rogue and Bobby holding hands (gloves on, of course), while Kitty teaches a class as she embarks upon her new life as a spinster.

It’s not completely logical why the destruction of the Sentinel program would keep Bobby Drake and Rogue together, but it likely has to do with the cure from The Last Stand never being invented in the first place, thus never driving a wedge between the two.

One of the most emotional moments from Days of Future Past comes when Logan awakens in the new future he helped create to find that Jean Grey never died during X-Men: The Last Stand in this reality. Instead, she is still a member of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, and still blowing off Logan’s sexual advances. This also raises the question of whether or not her initial "death" in X2 ever actually happened. It's possible that this movie also wrote one of the series' highpoints out of existence.

With her final death in The Last Stand never taking place, you can also make the claim that The Wolverine never happened either. In that movie, Logan is found as a despondent drifter after Jean’s death drives him into an emotional tailspin. Without her death, the motivation for that film doesn’t exist. So there you go, another Wolverine movie bites the dust.

For all of the sins that X-Men: The Last Stand committed against comic book lore (and cinema in general), the one that fans can never forgive is the pointless death of Cyclops. In the comics, Cyclops is the real leader of the X-Men, while Wolverine is more like your crazy uncle who lives in a mobile home so the government can’t send their drones to find him. But Brett Ratner and writer Simon Kinberg decided the best way to treat the character was to give him a few flat lines of dialogue and make him get slaughtered by Jean Grey within 20 minutes.

However, when Logan fixes history in Days of Future Past, he finds Cyclops alive and well back at Xavier’s school. He is also, of course, still married to Jean, and still kind of a dick. With all of the changes and retroactive continuity going on, it’s safe to say that the only X-Men movie other than Days of Future Past definitely still in existence is 2011’s First Class. You're probably regretting that X-Men Blu-Ray collection you shelled out $130 for.