It doesn't work dramatically though, it's too random.
Spoilers Been working on an Arrowverse "viewing order"...
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It doesn't work dramatically though, it's too random.
I've been convinced since earlier in the season that Zoom was Earth-2 Henry, which could have just been an early misdirect; but its a small jump from having Shipp play alternate Henrny, to Shipp play alternate Barry/Pollux. Either way the reveal is the face of Barry-1's father. It could still just be Earth-2 Henry; His mom did want to give back those Atlantis tickets...
The fact that Rogue still has the skunk stripe in her hair, which she acquired while in Magneto's mutant making radiation machine in X1, attests to this.
X3 may not be entirely erased, as it's possible that Warren Worthington II still created the mutant "cure" in the altered timeline, leading to a similar scheme from Magneto. However, this time he would face an X-Men team not weakened by recent losses.
The events of "The Wolverine" were instigated by outside events that would have occurred anyway, specifically Yashida seeking out Logan upon his death. Once in Japan, events may have taken a similar course. In fact, I hope they did. It would suck for Logan to finally get the girl in an X-Men movie, only for the whole thing to be erased.
The fact that Rogue still has the skunk stripe in her hair, which she acquired while in Magneto's mutant making radiation machine in X1, attests to this.
X3 may not be entirely erased, as it's possible that Warren Worthington II still created the mutant "cure" in the altered timeline, leading to a similar scheme from Magneto. However, this time he would face an X-Men team not weakened by recent losses.
The events of "The Wolverine" were instigated by outside events that would have occurred anyway, specifically Yashida seeking out Logan upon his death. Once in Japan, events may have taken a similar course. In fact, I hope they did. It would suck for Logan to finally get the girl in an X-Men movie, only for the whole thing to be erased.
X3 has to be erased, because Angel's age would be totally off in the new Apocolypse movie, and because Trask was a black guy, not a midget. The Wolverine still happened, but Origins conflicts too much and is deleted (the Xavier scenes, Cyclops, Deadpool, Sabretooth, etc.)
Peter Dinklage prefers the term "dwarf," which is more medically accurate. "Midget" used to be used to refer specifically to proportionate dwarfs, people with typical adult proportions on a smaller scale, but has fallen out of favor since it's considered pejorative.
If we're going to be absolutely technically accurate, nothing has been "erased"; everything pre-DofP has simply been shifted into an alternate timeline.
Regarding the '90s Flash series, I personally believe that the producers' intent in including that image of JWS in costume is crystal clear, but others' mileage may vary.
Regarding the '90s Flash series, I personally believe that the producers' intent in including that image of JWS in costume is crystal clear, but others' mileage may vary.
This is from Wikipedia's article on the '90s series, regarding its connections to the current series:
So it seems that the '90s show is at least in the same multiverse as the Arrowverse and Supergirl, if nothing else. Man, now I'm trying to decide if I want to watch through all 22 episodes of that in addition to everything else.
I'm personally frustrated with Wikipedia because they refuse to acknowledge the confirmed fact that the characters of NBC's Constantine exist on Earth-1 of the Arrowverse, but they are at least recognizing the relationship that the 90s Flash series has to the Arrowverse and its place in the "Arrow-Derived Multiversal Reality Construct".
While it is more scientifically valid to view it as an alternate timeline, I do believe that in this case, unlike the Star Trek case, the narrative intent is that the old history was indeed erased. After all, different fictional universes follow different assumptions of time travel, so you have to judge each one on its own terms. And the two have different narrative and real-world goals. In the case of Bad Robot's Star Trek, the goal was to start fresh in a way that would not invalidate the continuity that fans had so much affection for. In the case of the X-Men movies, by contrast, the whole point was to invalidate the earlier movies that fans had so much contempt for. The new X-Men timeline is meant narratively as a replacement and correction for the old one in a way that the new Star Trek timeline is not.
You may well be right, and if so, we'll find out for sure when more evidence presents itself. But a single data point never proves anything beyond its own existence.
The pre-DofP films, by the producers' own admission, remain Canon, so it's not just 'scientifically accurate' to state that the pre-DofP movies have been shifted into an alternate timeline, it's also narratively accurate as well.
I agree with the intent of the multiverse images, and even wonder if Zoom could be the Barry clone, Pollux, from the 90s show.
What I'm saying with DofP, is that on top of X1 and X2 being rewritten in a new timeline, X3 and Wolverine Origins were stricken from the canon by the creators. They have elements that completely conflict what is being done now, that can not be fit into the timeline. I'll see if I can find the links.
That is completely contradicted by statements from Bryan Singer and Simon Kinberg, as well as other statements from Mrs. Shuler-Donner herself.
Furthermore, the validity of that article is itself suspect because it misgenders Mrs. Shuler-Donner as "he".
Furthermore, the validity of that article is itself suspect because it misgenders Mrs. Shuler-Donner as "he".
Canon is not about physical reality, it's about what counts as part of a fictional narrative. If a story asserts that a set of events happened in one version of history but was then "erased from existence" by time travel, then those events and their erasure are both part of the canon of the narrative. So it's got nothing to do with coexisting alternate timelines unless that particular work of fiction overtly defines it in those terms. Since the narrative of DOFP stated that the original timeline was being altered/replaced, then it is not narratively accurate to say it simply created an alternate timeline.
After all, a story spans time and depicts a series of changes. If a character dies or is revealed to be a hallucination halfway through the story, that doesn't mean they were never part of the story at all. Physical existence and narrative relevance are two separate issues. If a story is built around the premise that events can be erased from history, that doesn't mean they were erased from the story, because the fact of their existence and erasure is part of the story's sequence of events.
In a lot of time-travel stories, events can be "erased from history" yet still be remembered by the time travelers. They remain "real" because the viewpoint characters remember them, and because the audience remembers them and has seen how the events led to their own erasure. In this case, not only does Wolverine remember the original history, but the audience does as well and is aware how the events of that history led to the creation of an altered history that replaced -- rather than coexisting continuously alongside -- the original. That is the story, therefore that is the canon. Canon does not mean the reality inside the stories, it means the stories themselves, a collective body of fictional works.
I never said the old timeline was co-existing with the new timeline that Wolverine's actions in DoFP created.
The pre-DofP events still happened, but DoFP's events shifted them into an alternate timeline while leaving the 'future' wide open.
If you watch the X-films in the correct order (Origins: Wolverine, First Class, X1, X2, X3, The Wolverine, DofP, etc.), you start in the old timeline and then slowly work your way into the new as said new timeline is created.
It's the basic concept behind Star Trek '09 and its relationship to the older films, just applied differently.
Saying that the pre-DoFP events were "erased", at least in my mind, gives the impression that they never happened and DoFP rebooted the franchise, which is certainly not what occurred.
The pre-DofP events still happened, but DoFP's events shifted them into an alternate timeline while leaving the 'future' wide open.
If you watch the X-films in the correct order (Origins: Wolverine, First Class, X1, X2, X3, The Wolverine, DofP, etc.), you start in the old timeline and then slowly work your way into the new as said new timeline is created.
It's the basic concept behind Star Trek '09 and its relationship to the older films, just applied differently.
Saying that the pre-DoFP events were "erased", at least in my mind, gives the impression that they never happened and DoFP rebooted the franchise, which is certainly not what occurred.
But that's what "alternate timeline" means -- a timeline that coexists in parallel with another timeline, as opposed to being replaced by it.
This is saying that they coexist. You're contradicting yourself.
Yes, obviously, which is my point -- that they form a continuous narrative sequence that includes the history being changed by time travel.
No, it's the opposite concept, as I explained. Metatextually, ST '09's goal was to leave the original history undisturbed, while DoFP's goal was to repudiate and replace the original history. The mechanics of it are similar, but the conceptual purpose of it couldn't be more different.
Obviously the movies still exist and are part of the narrative whole. That goes without saying. But it's a totally different matter from the issue of whether those events are still "real" in-universe. The explicit intent of the time travel in DoFP was to prevent the Sentinel apocalypse -- not merely to create a parallel branch where it didn't happen, but to erase it entirely from reality. Come on, this is elementary. It's how the vast majority of time-travel stories work -- "This future is horrible, so you must go back in time and prevent it from ever happening." Of course the horrible future is part of the narrative, or the story wouldn't happen, but the whole point is that it's erased as far as the characters in the story are concerned. The time travelers themselves remember the old history, but they've replaced it with a new one. The parallel-timelines model doesn't even make sense in DoFP, because the whole point of the story is to prevent/unmake the horrible future. That's completely different from the Star Trek case, where the Abrams timeline does not replace or overwrite the Prime timeline, but merely splits off in a separate branch that allows the original to continue unchanged.
Both Star Trek '09 and DoFP are built on the same basic conceptual idea: to facilitate a way in which their respective creators can honor what came before whilst also allowing themselves the ability to tell stories that aren't ENCUMBERED by what came before.
The only difference is the way in which they go about accomplishing that basic conceptual goal. With DoFP and the future X-Men films, Singer, Kinberg, and Co. took the approach of creating an alternate timeline in the truest sense of the word, which is to change history so that what was destined to happen before is no longer destined to happen, leaving the future completely 'open'; it's the "Back to the Future"/"The Flash"/"Legends of Tomorrow" approach to time travel and timelines.
This viewpoint on what DoFP actually did is supported by statements from both Bryan Singer and Simon Kinberg, BTW, so it's not just something I made up.
In a nutshell, what I'm arguing against is the idea that the events of the pre-DoFP films don't "count" any more, which goes against everything that both Bryan Singer and Simon Kinberg have said regarding the franchise and why they chose to do what they did with DoFP.
The only difference is the way in which they go about accomplishing that basic conceptual goal. With DoFP and the future X-Men films, Singer, Kinberg, and Co. took the approach of creating an alternate timeline in the truest sense of the word, which is to change history so that what was destined to happen before is no longer destined to happen, leaving the future completely 'open'; it's the "Back to the Future"/"The Flash"/"Legends of Tomorrow" approach to time travel and timelines.
This viewpoint on what DoFP actually did is supported by statements from both Bryan Singer and Simon Kinberg, BTW, so it's not just something I made up.
In a nutshell, what I'm arguing against is the idea that the events of the pre-DoFP films don't "count" any more, which goes against everything that both Bryan Singer and Simon Kinberg have said regarding the franchise and why they chose to do what they did with DoFP.
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The original conceit with ST09 was to replace what came before, but after the backlash, they changed it to a parallel rather then a rewrite.
What I'm saying, and what has been written about in multiple articles since DoFP came out, is that the events of X3 and W-O can not be explained via time travel, to match the new reality, for probably a dozen characters who don't line up with what we've seen in First Class, DoFP and the upcoming Apocolypse, including Emma Frost, Sabretooth, Cyclops, Deadpool, Angel, and Trask. There is no way that time travel can be used to explain the changes, much like some o the arguments dealing with ST'09. Those 2 movies and their narrative completely contradict the series they are writing now, and their events are completely ignored by the current cannon, however X1, X2 and Wolverine 2 still fit. This was discussed at length when DofP came out.....some of the pre DoFP films still count and are altered by time travel, but some could have never happened at all.
What I'm saying, and what has been written about in multiple articles since DoFP came out, is that the events of X3 and W-O can not be explained via time travel, to match the new reality, for probably a dozen characters who don't line up with what we've seen in First Class, DoFP and the upcoming Apocolypse, including Emma Frost, Sabretooth, Cyclops, Deadpool, Angel, and Trask. There is no way that time travel can be used to explain the changes, much like some o the arguments dealing with ST'09. Those 2 movies and their narrative completely contradict the series they are writing now, and their events are completely ignored by the current cannon, however X1, X2 and Wolverine 2 still fit. This was discussed at length when DofP came out.....some of the pre DoFP films still count and are altered by time travel, but some could have never happened at all.
Origins takes place in the 80s, and is the source of almost all the conflict in dates and times in this series. It would be taking place well after First Class, and contradicts events we see in the other movies, including X2 and First Class.
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