48 Fun Facts About X-Men: Days of Future Past

Which fellow director did Bryan Singer consult about time travel before making X-Men: Days of Future Past?

James Cameron, the maker of The Terminator, spent two hours talking it through with him; Singer came away insisting on fixed rules, with Wolverine as the story's 'observer'.

Which Jim Croce song plays during Quicksilver's slow-motion showpiece in X-Men: Days of Future Past?

Time in a Bottle plays as he strolls round the walls, nudging guards and bullets aside; the sequence runs to only 29 shots, yet took a team of 70 artists seven months.

Who plays Bolivar Trask, the scientist behind the Sentinels, in X-Men: Days of Future Past?

Peter Dinklage said the part attracted him because it was 'not written to be a dwarf'; the writer credits his humanity with making audiences hope the villain would be spared.

In X-Men: Days of Future Past, whose power sends a person's consciousness into the past?

Kitty Pryde's phasing is stretched into a new power for the film: in the comic she makes the trip herself, but in 1973 the character would have been 'negative-20 years old', the writer said.

Why is Wolverine, not Professor X, sent back to 1973 in X-Men: Days of Future Past?

Only he can survive it: a trip that far back would kill anyone who cannot heal, and the writers liked that the ageless Hugh Jackman could plausibly play himself in both eras.

In X-Men: Days of Future Past, where do the future X-Men make their final stand against the Sentinels?

A remote Chinese temple, imagined by the designer as a monastery built so high that no road reaches it; a rushed schedule meant only part was built, and the rest is digital.

As an April Fools' joke, Bryan Singer announced which pop star's casting in X-Men: Days of Future Past?

Lady Gaga was to play the singing mutant Dazzler, the director tweeted; Variety reported it as real casting news and then had to pull its story.

In X-Men: Days of Future Past, what does Magneto secretly thread into Trask's prototype Sentinels so he can control them?

Steel, ripped from railway tracks while he rides the train carrying them, is laced through the machines; Trask had built them without metal precisely so that Magneto could not touch them.

Why has young Xavier lost his telepathy in X-Men: Days of Future Past?

A serum that lets him walk suppresses it: the writers called his arc 'accepting the chair', so they invented a cure for his legs that he must give up to get his powers back.

In X-Men: Days of Future Past, why is Magneto in prison when Logan arrives in 1973?

For assassinating John F. Kennedy, officially; he insists he was trying to save the president, a fellow mutant whose power, in the writer's unfilmed backstory, was persuasion.

Who plays Quicksilver in X-Men: Days of Future Past?

Evan Peters's speedster belongs to both the X-Men and the Avengers in the comics, which is why Marvel's own studio could put a separate Quicksilver, Aaron Taylor-Johnson's, into Age of Ultron.

In X-Men: Days of Future Past, where does Quicksilver's celebrated super-speed sequence take place?

The Pentagon kitchen: he is there to spring Magneto from his cell, and when guards open fire he saunters round the walls rearranging everyone, a scene shot at about 3,000 frames a second.

In X-Men: Days of Future Past, where does Mystique first try to kill Trask?

The Paris Peace Accords summit gives her a way in; the heroes stop her, but the fight spills into the square outside and shows mutants to the world's cameras.

Which US president authorises the Sentinel programme in X-Men: Days of Future Past?

Richard Nixon signs off after mutants are exposed on camera, and pays for it in the climax, when Magneto tears his bunker out through the front of the White House.

In X-Men: Days of Future Past, what does Magneto lift to barricade the White House?

RFK Stadium is torn from the ground and set down around the White House; the real thing was only photographed, and the scene was shot on a small baseball field with no stands at all.

In X-Men: Days of Future Past, how does Mystique subdue Magneto in the climax?

With a plastic gun, the one firearm he can neither stop nor turn aside; the same thinking is why Trask built his first Sentinels without metal.

In X-Men: Days of Future Past, what convinces Mystique to spare Trask?

Xavier's telepathic appeal works because it leaves the choice to her: the writers decided that physically stopping Mystique was not enough, since she could simply try again another day.

A teaser for X-Men: Days of Future Past ran in the credits of which rival studio's 2014 superhero film?

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 carried it free of charge: its director still owed Fox a film under an old contract, and Fox let him make Sony's sequel only in return for the plug.

Which two X-Men, killed off in the series' third film, are alive again when X-Men: Days of Future Past ends?

Jean Grey and Scott Summers were the writer's one firm demand: he had co-written the film that killed them and said he brought them back partly 'out of personal guilt'.

How is Logan pulled from the Potomac in X-Men: Days of Future Past?

Rescued by a shapeshifter posing as Stryker: the writer first had the real Stryker seize him, found that 'such a downer', and gave Mystique a disguise that mirrors her earlier rescue of mutant soldiers.

Who is seen building pyramids in the post-credits scene of X-Men: Days of Future Past?

En Sabah Nur is the name a kneeling crowd chants as a grey-skinned youth raises a pyramid by thought alone; the writer called it a signal to hardcore fans, and the part was recast afterwards.

Which comics creators wrote the 1981 'Days of Future Past' storyline?

Chris Claremont and John Byrne told it in just two issues of The Uncanny X-Men; in their version the killing that dooms the future is a senator's, Robert Kelly, not a Sentinel-maker's.

In the first draft of X-Men: Days of Future Past, which comics character sent Wolverine's mind back in time?

Rachel Summers, the daughter of two X-Men in the comics, had the job in the first draft; introducing her and her absent parents took so much explaining that the writer handed it to someone already on screen.

Matthew Vaughn said it would be fun to cast which actor as a young Wolverine in a 1970s-set X-Men film?

Tom Hardy 'or someone' was his idea for a middle chapter, with Days of Future Past saved for the finale; Fox read his script, said it was 'too good' to wait for, and skipped straight to it.

Which spy film did Matthew Vaughn direct next after stepping down from X-Men: Days of Future Past?

Kingsman: The Secret Service came first for him: he hoped another director would make the next X-Men film while he was away and that he would return for this one, but Fox would not wait.

Where was X-Men: Days of Future Past principally shot?

Montreal stood in for almost everywhere: its streets became a European capital with digital rooftops added, and the scenes set in Washington were filmed there too.

In X-Men: Days of Future Past, how does the young Xavier get to speak with his older self?

Through Logan's mind: reading the time traveller's memories, the young Xavier finds his older self there, who urges him to hope again; only then does he go back to Cerebro to track Mystique down.

Who makes an uncredited cameo as the future Beast in X-Men: Days of Future Past?

Kelsey Grammer was flown in on 'the tiniest jet' to keep it quiet; the cameo was added late because the writers wanted audiences to know the 'sweet, young' Beast of 1973 survives.

Who both edited and scored X-Men: Days of Future Past?

John Ottman returned to the series after more than a decade away, brought back his own X2 title theme and even toyed with the Fox fanfare; he has cut and scored nearly all of the director's films since The Usual Suspects.

In X-Men: Days of Future Past, whose role was cut to a cameo in cinemas, then restored in a later home version?

Anna Paquin's Rogue was the goal of a rescue subplot the writer decided did 'not service the main story'; 17 minutes went back in for 2015's Rogue Cut.

At the end of X-Men: Days of Future Past, Logan wakes to learn he is due to teach which subject?

History, of all subjects: having just rewritten it, he asks the Professor for help with 'pretty much everything after 1973', which tells Xavier this is the Logan who came back to save them.

On which wrestling show did Hugh Jackman floor a wrestler dressed as Magneto to promote X-Men: Days of Future Past?

WWE Raw, a month before release, had Damien Sandow stride out in a comically ill-fitting Magneto suit; Jackman answered with a hip toss.

X-Men: Days of Future Past was the series' biggest earner until which spin-off overtook it?

Deadpool, an R-rated spin-off made for $58 million, took about $783 million two years later, beating the $746 million of a film that had cost more than three times as much.

Which Academy Award nomination did X-Men: Days of Future Past receive?

Best Visual Effects was its one nomination, shared by four supervisors; one, the Adelaide artist behind the Quicksilver scene, said he was shocked to be named, and Interstellar took the prize.

Who plays Bishop in X-Men: Days of Future Past?

Omar Sy, the French star of The Intouchables, plays the energy-absorbing Bishop; the writer said he loved the actor but 'just had no time to give him a story'.

Which character was Josh Helman first cast to play in X-Men: Days of Future Past, before the part was written out?

A young Juggernaut was the part he signed for; when the character was written out, the Australian actor was kept on and given the young William Stryker instead.

In X-Men: Days of Future Past, where do the Sentinels first attack the surviving X-Men?

Moscow, half destroyed, is where the last survivors are cut down one by one, only for the whole scene to be undone: a warning sent back through time means the attack never happens.

Which two earlier films is Days of Future Past a direct sequel to?

The Last Stand and First Class each supply a cast, and the writer, who had worked on the former, used the time-travel plot to cancel the parts of it he regretted.

In X-Men: Days of Future Past, what is Trask finally arrested for?

Selling military secrets to foreign governments: he is seen early on pitching his Sentinels to Communist officers, and the writers wanted him punished without Mystique having to kill him.

Which film was the 2016 sequel to X-Men: Days of Future Past?

X-Men: Apocalypse followed, set a decade on in 1983 with the younger cast; its writer pitched it as a disaster movie where Days of Future Past had been a time-travel film.

In X-Men: Days of Future Past, Logan wakes in 1973 to 'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face', sung by whom?

Roberta Flack's ballad plays as he comes round on a waterbed, staring at a lava lamp, a gag that one critic said 'lightens the mood at just the right moment'.

In X-Men: Days of Future Past, what covers the bodies of the future Sentinels, echoing the Mystique DNA behind them?

Shifting mechanical scales ripple as the machines adapt to each mutant; the effects team built them with software written for hair and fur, treating every scale as a 'follicle'.

In X-Men: Days of Future Past, the closing narration calls each choice 'a ripple' in what?

The river of time is Xavier's closing image, and the writer used it for the plot's rules too: the current keeps flowing the same way, but drop in a pebble and you can shift it a little.

In X-Men: Days of Future Past, why has Xavier's school been closed for years when Logan arrives in 1973?

The Vietnam War emptied the school, Hank explains, and took Charles's sense of purpose with it: he has spent the years since shut up in the mansion with Hank as his only company.

Which Chinese actress plays the portal-making mutant Blink in X-Men: Days of Future Past?

Fan Bingbing signed on after a 20-minute meeting with the director, having asked why he wanted an Asian actress for the role; she said her deal covered four more films.

Days of Future Past's writer likened a cut final mission for the older Xavier and Magneto to which Western?

Unforgiven, with Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman as 'two last gunslingers', was his model, added 'just for a lark'; he later admitted the mission did 'not service the main story'.

For X-Men: Days of Future Past, how was Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique make-up changed to spare her skin?

A bodysuit from the neck down replaced the full body paint that had blistered her skin on the previous film, cutting her time in the make-up chair from seven or eight hours to three or four.

Which actor, who played Stryker in X2, appears in Days of Future Past only through archive footage?

Brian Cox flashes up in Logan's memories of what is still to come: meeting the young Stryker, played here by Josh Helman, sets off a panic that briefly shakes his hold on 1973.