The ending of X-Men: Days of Future Past saw Wolverine waking up in a future of his own creation. He stopped Bolivar Trask’s Sentinels from one day wiping out most of the mutant race, and now his family has come back from the dead. An earlier cut of the film was slightly different, but more "unsatisfying," according to James Cameron. Wanting to get the mechanics of his time travel scenario in check, Bryan Singer reached out to the Terminator director, who provided some much needed advice on the ending.
Sitting in his trailer on the Montreal set after the 56th day of shooting on X-Men: Apocalypse, Singer said,
I sent a cut of the movie, Days of Future Past, to James Cameron, almost finished, rough, but almost done, because I value his advice, and I pitched my time travel concept to him when I was at a party at Peter Jackson’s.
James Cameron, who Bryan Singer said hadn’t talked about time travel with since his days working on Terminator (not Genisys, don’t blame that one on him), was eager to talk about such things as "collapsing the super position" and "how it would work in quantum physics." After this conversation, when Singer had a cut of the film ready, he said he sent it to Cameron.
So I send the film to Jim, and at the end the movie, when Wolverine woke up, originally my editor was obsessed with this visual blurriness, so when Wolverine is walking around, he’s seeing things in a blurriness, so I sent that to Jim and Jim called me, and so he called up and Jim goes, Bryan, that blurry thing made me think that the wool was going to be pulled out from under me and I was not satisfied. I thought it was going to be, it was a lie, and it failed, it would all be dark, something, and then suddenly it was ok, and I, so I pulled the effect and it was the only note Jim gave me that, he gave me. He gave me no other note. He said, "I love the movie, it’s going to be great, but please let the audience enjoy the fact that it all turned out ok in that future," and so I pulled the effect off.
Bryan Singer said the concept for Days of Future Past was decided over sushi at an L.A. restaurant. While Simon Kinberg asked how they could incorporate both casts of the original films and First Class into one film, and Singer said time travel, citing the comic book story line.
X-Men: Apocalypse hits theaters on May 27. Find out more about Quicksilver’s next big scene, the new timeline, Apocalypse’s powers, and more from our set coverage.
