‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ New Timeline Explained — Bryan Singer Hints Alien Tie-Ins To En Sabah Nur

X-Men: Apocalypse is up next in the 20th Century Fox comic book franchise, and now the timeline has been altered via Wolverine’s influence in X-Men: Days of Future Past. This resulted in an alternate timeline that wiped out the events that transpired in X-Men, X2, and X-Men: The Last Stand where Jean Grey and Scott Summers died. The end result there is that they were brought back into existence at the end of Days of Future Past.

There’s also hints regarding Apocalypse’s linkage to “other-worldly sources.” An Instagram piece of art posted looks to be an alien ship during the X-Men movie production. Singer mentions that the world’s oldest mutant is “imbued with certain unique powers. Some of them may or may not be from this Earth, we don’t know,” according to Screen Rant.

It’s the “not be from this Earth” part that raises eyebrows of an alien influence.

Bryan Singer directed X-Men and X2 and now continues his legacy in the reboots, this time in the X-Men: Apocalypse movie the mutants take on the world’s oldest mutant, Apocalypse, played by The Force Awakens’ Oscar Isaac. According to Collider, this movie’s time period starts in 1983. It’s as if they are re-writing history, possibly, and who knows if they will wind up where they all started in the modern days of the turn of the century X-Men with their older/mature counterparts.

X-Men: Apocalypse writer Simon Kinberg gave an explanation on how the events that transpired in Days of Future Past altered the first three movie stories. For a graphical explanation via a chalk board, one may recall Doc Brown in the Back to the Future 2 movie explaining the altered time where Marty McFly’s father was murdered by Biff and Emmet Brown was “committed” instead of “commended.”

https://youtu.be/uHiLxKwaug0

But Bryan Singer uses the “river metaphor” to explain how things got skewed via only a slight change in the past. That although the flow of the river can be disturbed with a rock falling in it, “but it eventually kind of coalesces.” So, outside the more simpler explanation of Doc Brown comes Singer’s means of explaining the altering of the time line via the “Tivo scene” in X-Men: Days of Future Past.

In this X-Men movie scene, this is where Hank/Beast is in a room full of old audio/video technology, CRT TV’s, and the like and explains this idea to Logan.

“I call it the Tivo scene. ‘I developed this piece of technology that records television;’ the point is time’s immutability. The idea that time is like a river. You can splash it and mess it up and throw rocks in it and shatter it but it eventually kind of coalesces and this is, again, quantum physics theory. It’s all based in quantum physics.”

The younger X-Men, according to Singer, can now can be written in any fashion due to the total erasure of what occurred in the first three movies. According to the director, he feels the audience can go watch the movie with the impression still that “anything can happen.” It can be questionable in the minds of the fans what can happen with these characters. Things like Jean Grey’s underlying Phoenix or Scott Summer’s issues with authority. And probably most significantly, will anything romantic happen with them?

“You don’t know, but we move in those directions character-wise but then we have the freedom story-wise to do whatever the f**k we want because we erased those three movies.”

That being said, that’s probably the beauty of rebooting the franchise.

This “beauty” of the X-Men movie time line is not entirely “definitive,” according to Bryan, as he cites again the river analogy. That there’s no certain end goal on how they will all wind up in the “New Future.” Singer mentioned that also whatever happens now is something that can’t be “set in stone.”

Singer remained nebulous in regards to him and Kinberg doing whatever they can please in X-Men: Apocalypse, and talks of X-Men: Days of Future Past where Wolverine wakes up and everything is rainbows and unicorns with the warm fuzzies. A rather happy ending. Although, it’s also possible this may not wind up as such, considering in X-Men: Days of Future Past, a movie started in a rather Apocalyptic setting where mutants become slaves to the Sentinels.

This is where Bryan Singer chooses naming conventions typically used with quantum physics for the subjects of which he speaks. Is there a thin line between a quantum physicist and an X-Men movie director when describing such a situation?

“When two things are happening simultaneously in quantum physics it’s what’s called the Super Position and when the Observer finally observes the outcome that’s called the ‘Collapsing of the Super Position’ which is what happened when Wolverine woke up and saw all the happiness.”

Do you think in place of Sentinels that Apocalypse might take their place in the end, enslaving mutants still, leaving it all back to square one again? Will it be Jean Grey and Logan that will become a happy couple in a new timeline? After all, there had always been an attraction between the two X-Men, and Scott/Cyclops would get quite jealous of of Logan eyeing his woman. Could this jealousy be a problem in another time line?

The X-Men: Apocalypse movie debuts May 27.

[Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP]