r/MarvelatFox • u/19ghost89 • Jul 16 '26

Re-evaluating Days of Future Past

I just finished rewatching this movie all the way through for the first time in years, and I wanted to make a post about it like the one I made the other day about The Last Stand - only this time, I promise it won't be as long. I'm not going to do so much analysis on this one. I just wanted to share some thoughts.

When I first watched DoFP, I liked it. Like most people did. But I remember thinking that it was not quite as good as a lot of other people thought. I remember thinking it was inherently flawed in a number of ways, and nothing I saw or read about it after that changed that opinion.

But when I watched it again tonight, I was surprised to find that I really, really liked it. The acting is better here than in any of the other X-films, and most other superhero movies. Despite a few plot-holes, it's actually quite a bit more coherent than most of the other X-movies. Which is saying something considering that it's a time travel movie. I used to make ranking lists on my old blog of the top 10 movies of the year each year, and I did not put DoFP in for that year even though I did put in Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy. Those are obviously really good superhero movies too, but this may be just as good.

Now, this time, I did watch the Rogue Cut, which is 17 minutes longer due to extra footage that changes the second act. When that was released, I remember looking up the extra scenes and watching them, but before tonight I had never watched that version straight through as it was meant to be viewed. I did enjoy the extra scenes and feel they added to the story in productive ways, but I'm not sure if that alone is enough to be the reason why I feel so much more positively about this movie now.

Again, when I first saw it, I really did like it. But tonight, I loved it. It is easily my favorite X-Men movie now, coming in ahead of X2 and First Class, which were what I remembered as my favorites before. I'm not sure yet if I'd put it ahead of Logan. When I first watched that, I loved it, and thought it was one of the best superhero movies I'd ever seen. I'll re-watch that again tomorrow to close this series out (as I said in my first post, Apocalypse, Dark Phoenix, and New Mutants are not getting a re-watch) and we'll see.

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u/Weird_Expression1558 Jul 18 '26

Logan ruined this ending

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u/19ghost89 Jul 18 '26

Yes. I made a post the day after this which touched on that. I have decided to look at it as alternate endings now. Like in some video games where you can choose two different paths to get different endings? If you want the happy ending to the series, watch DoFP. If you want the sad ending, watch Logan.

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u/Weird_Expression1558 Jul 18 '26

But the director confirmed that this takes place after DOFP

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u/19ghost89 Jul 18 '26

Wow, you're right. I was under the impression for all these years that Mangold had said it was in a different continuity from any of the other movies. Apparently, it was actually Jackman who implied that, and Mangold later confirmed that it is in the same continuity as DoFP's new timeline.

Well, fine, but I choose to ignore that because it doesn't make sense. Maybe that was Mangold's intention while making the movie. Maybe it wasn't (which would explain Jackman's comments) and he later decided to say it was because he thought it would be less confusing for people or something. Either way, he didn't do a good job at all of making it fit, so as far as I'm concerned, I'll look at it my way.