Despite its critical reception, 2011’s X-Men: First Class did as much to muddy the waters of X-Men movie continuity than even the lamentable X-Men Origins: Wolverine and X-Men: Days Of Future Past continues the trend.
How can Emma Frost be a teen in the late-Seventies and an adult in the Sixties? How can Bolivar Trask be black in the Noughties and white in the Seventies? How come nobody mentions that Mystique is basically Xavier’s sister before? Why didn’t Sabretooth appear to recognise Wolverine when he came at him in the first film?
Speaking exclusively to SciFiNow for the massive behind the scenes in the new issue, Bryan Singer simply hopes you’ll forget about them and move on.
“Some things you let go,” Singer admits. “In X-Men 3 Bolivar Trask was an African-American guy, in X-Men 1 I personally wrote the line that of course I now regret: ‘When I was 17, I met a young man named Erik Lensherr’ and then in X-Men: First Class I changed that!” he laughs.
“Some of these I hope the audience will forget about but for the bulk of it I pay attention to the universe.
“Not just X-Men 1 and 2, but also X-Men 3 – I was thrilled to have [Kitty Pryde star] Ellen Page in the movie as character – and even The Wolverine, I try to look at all those.
“In fact [writer/producer] Simon Kinberg and I wrote a little scene for the end of Wolverine which James Mangold directed and put at the end of The Wolverine just to reintroduce Patrick Stewart into the universe, so there’s some benefit to it as well.”
X-Men: Days Of Future Past will be released on 22 May 2014. Read our massive behind the scenes special in the new issue of SciFiNow and find out more about the comics that inspired the film with our awesome new digital magazine Uncanny Comics.