Director Bryan Singer Says James Cameron Saved ‘X-Men: Days Of Future Past’ From Dismal End
James Cameron says he played a powerful role in shaping the ending of X-Men: Days of Future Past. In fact, it seems that his advice may have saved the film from a dismal end.
According to an exclusive interview with Days of Future Past Director Bryan Singer on Comingsoon.net, Singer felt he needed a little advice on how the film would end. Naturally, he turned to a big time sci-fi director James Cameron, whose film, Avatar, held the top spot in the box office for six years before it was knocked down by Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Singer felt that Cameron could offer excellent advice since he is credited for directing Terminator, which deals with time travel. For those who might not remember, Days of Future Past involves a unique time-travel situation in which Wolverine must go back in time to stop giant Sentinels, a man-made force against mutants, from destroying the mutant race. The end of the film shows Wolverine’s return to the present with an alternate timeline in which both Jean Grey and Cyclops are still alive, and the anti-mutant regime is toned down to a manageable level.
“When Wolverine is walking around [in the final scene] he’s seeing things in kind of a blurriness,” Singer explained to ComingSoon, describing the way he originally filmed the ending. “So I sent that to Jim (Cameron) and Jim called me up and 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 a lie and it had failed and it would all be dark, and then suddenly it was okay.'”
In fact, the original ending seemed to actually imply that Wolverine’s trip to the past did nothing to stop mutant extinction. That wasn’t Singer’s intention.
“So I pulled the effect, and it was the only note Jim gave me. He gave me no other note. [Cameron] said, ‘Oh, I love the movie. It’s going to be great, but ‘Let the audience enjoy the fact that it all turned out okay… in that future,'” said Singer. “So I pulled the effect off and my editor was like ‘Oh I like it, it’s so cool and weird!’ and I’m like ‘Shut up, it’s coming off.'”
The original cut also didn’t include the three appearances of Famke Janssen (Jean Grey), James Marsden (Cyclops), and Anna Paquin (Rogue) which we see in the final cut. Once Cameron learned that the film didn’t include those cameos, even though they were meant to be in there, Cameron demanded the return of the characters.
The plot of this film once again has the X-Men fighting to save their kind from extinction from what is supposed to be the world’s first mutant apocalypse. In just a few months, we’ll see if Singer has learned his lesson from James Cameron, or if he’ll need to rely on his expertise once again.
[Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images]
