The X-Men Cinematic Universe (General Discussion)

[The Borgified Corpse]

Not really. The events of O:W didn't happen in the altered timeline, and so Wade Wilson was born later.

WTF? "Wade Wilson was born later" due to Wolverine changing the timeline?!? I'm sorry, but I just don't buy that for a second. While Wolverine did make some significant changes to the timeline, I don't think that this theory of time travel can really allow for entire people to be born at a different date!

This isn't even a contradiction anyway. This Colossus is literally the only data point we have for what Colossus is like in the new (post-DoFP) timeline, so he is the new standard, not some 'aberration' of what the previous movies did.

At the end of Days of Future Past, we briefly saw Colossus in the altered 2023 and he was still played by Daniel Cudmore.

The fact of the matter is that the ending of Days of Future Past gave us a glimpse of so many characters that it kinda makes it difficult for them to maneuver too much with a lot of them in Apocalypse. For example, we know that Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, Beast, & Professor Xavier all have to survive. (Although, they could still use this opportunity to kill off Mystique or Magneto. I don't know.)

I'd say it's pretty much undeniable that Deadpool is an X-Men universe movie - certainly trying to disqualify it on the basis of continuity issues is ridiculous, since First Class caused far more significant ones and Apocalypse is set to introduce at least one other totally inexplicable one (how changing the timeline in 1973 can somehow cause a person who was supposed to be born in the late 80s/early 90s to suddenly have been born in the mid/late 60s, before the timeline was even changed).

I assume you're referring to Angel. That is a problem. Tentative theory: Perhaps the Angel in this movie is the father of the Angel we saw in The Last Stand. The elder Warren Worthington in that movie was actually that Angel's grandfather, not his father.

One thing I do think about Deadpool is that while it's definitely the same universe, it's probably not 100% a reliable description of that universe. It's all slightly filtered through Deadpool's general wackiness, leaving a certain distortion on characters (I've seen this in plenty of Deadpool comics and the movie seems to be pretty much the same idea), so I would say Colossus probably does look like that, but the personality is less what Colossus really is and more what Deadpool thinks of Colossus.

The "unreliable narrator" idea does fix some problems but it still doesn't explain Wade Wilson being born later.

 

[Gaith]

The fact of the matter is that the ending of Days of Future Past gave us a glimpse of so many characters that it kinda makes it difficult for them to maneuver too much with a lot of them in Apocalypse. For example, we know that Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, Beast, & Professor Xavier all have to survive.

Unless:

Cyke: Hey, why didn't future-possessed Wolverine warn us about this Apocalypse guy?
Xavier: Maybe he didn't wake up yet in their timeline; maybe their time shenanigans woke him up early. In which case, the whole future is now in doubt.

... and voila, the happy ending of DoFP no longer necesarily applies.

 

[DigificWriter]

WTF? "Wade Wilson was born later" due to Wolverine changing the timeline?!? I'm sorry, but I just don't buy that for a second. While Wolverine did make some significant changes to the timeline, I don't think that this theory of time travel can really allow for entire people to be born at a different date!

It entirely makes sense and is called the "ripple effect" principle, and for the very best example of it, you should check out the two new Mortal Kombat video games.

 

[Tosk]

Tentative theory: Perhaps the Angel in this movie is the father of the Angel we saw in The Last Stand. The elder Warren Worthington in that movie was actually that Angel's grandfather, not his father.

Nope, Michael Murphy officially played Warren Worthington II.

Psylocke is another one that springs to mind. She's younger in Last Stand than Apocalypse, even though it is set decades before. You just have to shrug and say, "Oh well."

 

[DigificWriter]

I've hit X-Men 1 in my chronological rewatch, and it turns out that both First Class, Origins: Wolverine, and official supplementary material retconned several more elements of the film than I had realized/remembered (Xavier's age when he met Erik, the establishment that he does in fact know why he can't read Erik's mind, the timing of when exactly Wolverine was experimented upon and turned into "Weapon X").

Retcons are of course neither a 'new' phenomenon in fiction or a particularly bad thing, but it's still fairly striking, at least IMO, just how much of the first X-Men film did end up being 'rewritten' via retcon.

 

[Skywalker]

Continuity, heh, consistency, heh, an X-Men movie craves not these things.

 

[DigificWriter]

Let me be clear: I'm not complaining about the retcons; I'm simply remarking that there were more than I had realized and that I found that fact to be interesting/striking just as a "point of interest".

I would also point out that retcons do not actually constitute either continuity errors OR inconsistencies.

 

[JoeZhang]

Retcons are of course neither a 'new' phenomenon in fiction or a particularly bad thing, but it's still fairly striking, at least IMO, just how much of the first X-Men film did end up being 'rewritten' via retcon.

The first X-men film was a generation ago (almost) so you have to wonder how many of the audience outside of people like us give a crap.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

WTF? "Wade Wilson was born later" due to Wolverine changing the timeline?!? I'm sorry, but I just don't buy that for a second. While Wolverine did make some significant changes to the timeline, I don't think that this theory of time travel can really allow for entire people to be born at a different date!

Well, if you allow for the idea that the 'same' person can be born in a different universe (which all comics do), then theoretically being born at a different date in the same universe shouldn't be any less possible. Though I would say that being born early ought to theoretically be far more difficult than being born late.

At the end of Days of Future Past, we briefly saw Colossus in the altered 2023 and he was still played by Daniel Cudmore.

The fact of the matter is that the ending of Days of Future Past gave us a glimpse of so many characters that it kinda makes it difficult for them to maneuver too much with a lot of them in Apocalypse. For example, we know that Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, Beast, & Professor Xavier all have to survive. (Although, they could still use this opportunity to kill off Mystique or Magneto. I don't know.)

I agree the ending kind of gets in the way of what seemed to be the whole point of changing the past. But, then, we didn't actually learn anything about the world outside in that ending. Maybe it was all totally fake.

And, it's just a simple fact that allowances have to be made for recasting sometimes. Just like there's no need to be upset about continuity just because War Machine's face looks different than the first movie.

I assume you're referring to Angel. That is a problem. Tentative theory: Perhaps the Angel in this movie is the father of the Angel we saw in The Last Stand. The elder Warren Worthington in that movie was actually that Angel's grandfather, not his father.

Angel is the biggest name, but Jubilee is in exactly the same position. And apparently Psylocke, but that was such a nothing part in X3 that I didn't realize it was supposed to be her until someone mentioned it in this thread, so I wouldn't really count her.

 

[Set Harth]

I don't think that this theory of time travel can really allow for entire people to be born at a different date!

Well, it happened to Chekov...

 

[kirk55555]

Well, it happened to Chekov...

I thought I heard the theory that he's not the same Chekov. He has the same parents and name, but being born at a different time makes him a different person, kind of like a brother more than a doppleganger if you compared him to the Prime Universe Chekov. That would explain the difference in hair color, etc (from an in universe perspective, obviously).

Going back to X-Men, I really don't think that Wolverine's time traveling could cause a person to be born at a different time. Its easier to just treat Wolverine Origins as either completely non canon or at least mostly non canon (the stuff without Deadpool, and possibly also without Gambit, could probably still be stuck in the time line fairly well, if you really wanted to keep parts of the movie).

 

[Set Harth]

Going back to X-Men, I really don't think that Wolverine's time traveling could cause a person to be born at a different time.

Why not?

 

[DigificWriter]

Going back to X-Men, I really don't think that Wolverine's time traveling could cause a person to be born at a different time

Actually, it very much could. It's the "ripple effect principle", where one change creates a ripple that leads to other changes.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

I thought I heard the theory that he's not the same Chekov. He has the same parents and name, but being born at a different time makes him a different person, kind of like a brother more than a doppleganger if you compared him to the Prime Universe Chekov. That would explain the difference in hair color, etc (from an in universe perspective, obviously).

Going back to X-Men, I really don't think that Wolverine's time traveling could cause a person to be born at a different time. Its easier to just treat Wolverine Origins as either completely non canon or at least mostly non canon (the stuff without Deadpool, and possibly also without Gambit, could probably still be stuck in the time line fairly well, if you really wanted to keep parts of the movie).

If you try to go by real world science where a person's genetic profile is determined by one specific egg being fertilized by one specific sperm, then sure, it's ridiculously unlikely that the same person could be conceived at two different times.

But comic book universes don't follow those rules, because if they did, then it would be equally impossible for the same person to exist in an alternate universe (unless that alternate universe was almost exactly the same as the original). By the standard rules of comic book universes, if Banshee has a daughter then that daughter is almost certainly Siryn, regardless of what differences might exist between the two universes. Because Siryn is supposed to be Banshee's daughter. And if that works for AUs, then it logically should work just as well for time travel.

 

[kirk55555]

Alternate Universe is different then altered timeline. Anyway, I don't really care. Its weird how the worst X-Men movie has people trying to jam it into canon, when at least one and possibly two of the characters in it (depending on when the Gambit movie is set, if it even comes out) won't match age wise and Deadpool has almost nothing in common with the Origins version. Even if you like the movie, its been so retconned that it seems a bit silly to try to justify its existence by talking about major changes to the timeline.

I suppose Wolverine's time travel also caused Psylocke to be born 15 plus years earlier too, and gave her completely different powers. The time travel apparently also made Banshee have a daughter some time after he died. Actually, the second thing couldn't have happened, since Banshee died before Wolverine went back in time, so it was something that already happened in the original timeline. Yet, Siryn still exists. In the end, the X-Men movies had (and still have, to an extent) a stupid trend of using a bunch of cool X-Men as background characters, then having to eventually retcon those into something else when they want to use the character "for real".

Bolivar Trask, Hank McCoy, Deadpool, Psylocke, Angel, even Sabertooth were all used as background characters (or barely coherent henchmen in Sabertooths case) and then the X-Men people went "Oops, we shouldn't have done that, now we want to use them and what we did doesn't fit with what we're doing now". All of these weren't the result of Wolverine's time travel. I like the X-Men movies, but there is a lot of stuff you just have to shrug off because of the weird things the franchise does sometimes. Using Wolverine's time travel to explain that is ridiculous, and doesn't even fit with half of the characters anyway, even if you accept that people can have the same kids decades before they time they were supposed to.

 

[DigificWriter]

This kind of "ripple effect" reasoning when it comes to how certain things play out is exactly what the nuTrek films and comic book have been built on; it's just been "couched" differently.

It's also the same concept that Mortal Kombat (2011) and Mortal Kombat X have been based on.

 

[Marsden]

You mean Bill Duke and Peter Dinklage aren't playing the same character?

 

[DigificWriter]

You mean Bill Duke and Peter Dinklage aren't playing the same character?

You fail.

 

[Marsden]

Fail what, is this some kind of test?

Wait let me read your post again using Shang Tsung's voice.


Ok, I understand.

 

[DigificWriter]

Fail what, is this some kind of test?

"Not sure if serious."

Many people share last names without being related.

"That is why you fail".