X-Men
Days of Future Past
Film · 2014 · 131 minutes · First Class Era
In a bleak 2023 where Sentinels have hunted mutants to near-extinction, the surviving X-Men send Wolverine's consciousness back to his 1973 body to change history. His mission is to stop Mystique from assassinating Bolivar Trask at the Paris Peace Accords, since her capture and vivisection there instead gives the government Mystique's shapeshifting DNA and hardens its resolve, kicking off the Sentinel program that leads to the dystopian future. To succeed, Wolverine must reunite a fractured, estranged young Professor X and Magneto and convince Mystique not to take her vengeance. The 1973 storyline culminates in a separate climax at the White House, where Magneto attempts to kill President Nixon with a captured Sentinel prototype; Mystique intervenes and publicly saves Nixon's life instead of assassinating Trask, and her act of heroism — rather than her capture — leads the government to shelve the Sentinel program. Wolverine's success erases the apocalyptic 2023 timeline, restoring a hopeful future in which the classic X-Men are alive and together.
Follows on from
- X-Men: First Classdirect-sequel — Continues the story of the young Xavier, Magneto, and Mystique from First Class into 1973, showing the direct fallout of their fractured friendship.
- The Wolverinedirect-sequel — Picks up from The Wolverine's mid-credits scene, in which Magneto and Professor X (revealed alive) approach Logan at an airport to recruit him for the mission that opens this film.
- X-Men: The Last Standcrossover — The 2023 future segments feature the surviving original-trilogy X-Men (including a returned Professor X) and reference the deaths and fallout from The Last Stand, which this film's ending ultimately erases/alters.
- X2: X-Men Unitedcrossover · optional — The original-trilogy cast's future storyline continues directly from the continuity established in X2, before this film's changed timeline supersedes it.
- X-Mencrossover · optional — Part of the same original-trilogy continuity whose future the 2023 segments depict and whose history this film's time-travel plot ultimately rewrites.
Leads to
- X-Men: Apocalypsedirect-sequel — Continues the rebooted timeline established after Days of Future Past, following Xavier, Mystique, Beast, and Magneto's altered post-1973 paths a decade later in 1983.
- Logancrossover · optional — Set in the altered timeline established at the end of Days of Future Past, in which most of the original X-Men have since died (referenced via the 'Westchester Incident'); the film deliberately keeps exact continuity details vague rather than depending on them.
- Avengers: Doomsdaycrossover — Professor X, Magneto, Cyclops, Beast, Nightcrawler and Mystique return in the original-trilogy versions last seen together in Days of Future Past.