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One scene in X-Men: Days of Future Past could have changed Wolverine’s cinematic history. Here’s how.
X-Men: Days of Future Past allowed Fox to give the characters from the original X-Men movies a better send-off than the much-derided X-Men: The Last Stand while paving the way for the franchise’s future. This mainly involved the X-Men preventing the movie’s titular dystopian timeline, but it didn’t end there. The prevention of mutant annihilation at the hands of the Sentinels gave Wolverine, and the audience, a chance to see the classic cinematic X-Men one more time. While it served to give that era of X-Men the send-off they were denied in X-Men: The Last Stand, Days of Future Past also worked in a retcon that should have been game-changing for Wolverine.
After being impaled by rebar and thrown into the Potomac River by Magneto during Days of Future Past‘s climactic battle, Wolverine is rescued by Mystique. The shapeshifter posed as Major William Stryker, the man who recruited Wolverine for the Weapon X program. After Wolverine left the team, Stryker manipulated him into returning, grafting adamantium onto his skeleton in the process.
Mystique rescuing Wolverine teases that his history could be seriously altered in the new X-Men continuity that began with X-Men: Apocalypse. Instead of winding up in Stryker’s clutches, Wolverine could have been free to choose his own path. That could involve a partnership with Mystique, which would have created a reason for Wolverine to join the X-Men in the new timeline.
With the new, younger generation of X-Men introduced in X-Men: Apocalypse, the Wolverine of this timeline could serve a mentor role similar to the one he played in the X-Men: Evolution animated series. His ties to Mystique create tension between Wolverine and Mystique’s on-again, off-again love interest, Beast.
A partnership between Wolverine and Mystique could have led to a spinoff movie that took cues from their history in the comics. Jason Aaron and Ron Garney’s Wolverine: Get Mystique featured flashbacks to the duo’s romantic and criminal past as the X-Men’s version of Bonnie and Clyde. While it couldn’t be a straight adaptation, it offered the bones of a team-up movie with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine and Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique as outlaws instead of superheroes.
A new status quo for Wolverine that didn’t involve Weapon X does present one glaring problem for the mutant’s most iconic feature; his adamantium-covered claws. Without Stryker’s manipulation, Wolverine wouldn’t have been convinced to undergo the process of having adamantium bonded to his skeleton to give him an edge in his battle against Sabretooth.
Bryan Singer, writer/producer Simon Kinberg and the rest of the creators behind Apocalypse eschewed a radical deviation from Wolverine’s established history with his appearance in the film. When Jackman makes his uncredited appearance in Apocalypse, he’s once again under Stryker’s thumb. Jean Grey, Cyclops and Nightcrawler find a feral Wolverine in gear straight out of Barry Windsor-Smith’s classic “Weapon X” serial in Marvel Comics Presents.
Wolverine’s ensuing rampage, if derivative of the one in the X-Mansion in X2, is exhilarating. Although it can be considered fan service, its horror-tinged framing adds flavor to a movie that often lacks it. It also gives Wolverine a moment with Sophie Turner’s Jean Grey when she helps him recover some of his memories, which is a nice nod to the longstanding connection between the characters in comics and film.
As much as long-time comic fans might get a kick out of a Wolverine berserker rage, and the visual nod to a classic comic, it remains disappointing that Fox didn’t do more with their opportunity to take Wolverine in a new direction following Days of Future Past. To truly take advantage of those possibilities would have taken a movie that afforded Wolverine more of the spotlight than Apocalypse. Unfortunately for fans who would have wanted to see how he would fit into the X-Men’s new continuity, that wasn’t to be.
The next Wolverine solo movie, Logan, was also the last. It refused to be tied to any X-Men movie’s continuity. In the end, fans got an unforgettable send-off for the iconic X-Man. Given the possibilities Days of Future Past created, some might still wonder what might have been if Wolverine remained a part of Fox’s X-Men universe until it ended.
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