Warning: Full spoilers follow for Deadpool & Wolverine.
Man, Deadpool & Wolverine sure gave us a bunch of Easter eggs and cameos that tie back to a variety of old Fox Marvel movies – and some non-Fox ones as well. But what the latest Marvel Studios film also manages to do is kind of make the Fox X-Men movie timeline even more confusing than it already was – and that’s saying something.
Still, perhaps what lies at the center of the new Ryan Reynolds/Hugh Jackman film is a bigger question about how much any of this continuity stuff really matters anyway.
So let’s steal a TVA thingamajig and dig into this further with a look at the confusing X-Men movie timeline, as well as the bigger Fox/Marvel-verse and beyond – and what lessons they might teach us about the future of the MCU!
In a world where you can have 100 Deadpools, or a new Logan – even after the so-called final film in the Wolverine franchise killed off the character – does continuity or canon really make a difference anymore? The Fox movie-verse is essentially part of the MCU now – a franchise that in part rose to Hollywood prominence because of its mastery of the concept of the shared universe. But it’s hard not to wonder how much longer viewers will remain invested in the House that Kevin Feige built when the New Marvel Normal tells us that, thanks to the multiverse, death and change are essentially meaningless now.
Ironically, the Fox Marvel movies kind of knew that continuity didn’t matter. And it turns out that may have been a feature, not a bug.
The Start of the X-Men Movie Timeline
When Fox finally released the first X-Men movie in 2000, it marked a step forward for superhero movies not just in its realistic depiction of a world where mutants exist – and are feared and hated by a world they have sworn to protect! – but also in the promise that the new film offered of a cogent universe where a sequel, and there was sure to be a sequel, would continue and broaden the characters’ world.
Alongside the Blade and Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies, which were also hitting theaters around this time, the X-Men films did indeed pay off on that promise. While the first film set up the basics of the concept and core characters like Wolverine, Professor X, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, Rogue, and Magneto, the first two sequels expanded the roster with the likes of Nightcrawler, Beast, Angel, Juggernaut, and many supporting and background players. The result was a world that felt lived-in, with a coherent past, present and future – but not a days of future past, not yet! – and one that made sense and was ripe for continued exploration and expansion.
But then they made X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
X-Men Origins: First Class
When Hugh Jackman was given a solo origin film in 2009, the X-Men’s continuity started to get a bit confusing. Victor Creed, a.k.a. Sabretooth, was revealed to be Wolverine’s half-brother, but he was so different not just in appearance but also character from the Sabretooth played by Tyler Mane in the first X-Men movie that it was disconcerting for fans. Meanwhile, some other characters’ presence here would prove more odd with the release of future films, like the bit part of Emma, who is clearly supposed to be the mutant psychic Emma Frost. In the next movie released, X-Men: First Class, Emma Frost is played by January Jones as a grown woman living in the 1960s, even though the Emma in X-Men Origins is a young adult in the 1970s.
There’s also Ryan Reynolds’ first, ahhhh, stab at playing Deadpool in X-Men Origins, a very, very different – and lamer – version of the character that simply can’t be connected to the one that Reynolds would revive starting with 2016’s Deadpool and in its sequels. Well, can’t be connected except by the Deadpool movies’ fourth-wall-breaking antics, that is.
And interestingly, X-Men Origins came out a year after the MCU debuted with Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk. The concept of the shared universe would soon become very, very fashionable in Hollywood, but the X-Men movies would have trouble figuring out how to make it work for them.
But back to First Class, which is a great movie that we love, there’s no denying that director Matthew Vaughn just didn’t care about continuity. Set in the 1960s, the film makes it very difficult to reconcile a lot of its story and characters with what we know from the first three X-Men movies, from, among other things, Xavier and Mystique’s previously unknown adopted siblings status, to the questions surrounding American CIA agent Moira MacTaggert, last seen in the not-too-distant future of X-Men: The Last Stand as a Scottish scientist, to young Xavier’s run-in with Wolverine, who the professor somehow doesn’t seem to know about by the time of the first X-Men movie, despite meeting him here.
And yet here’s the thing: The X-Men movies really needed a shot in the arm when First Class hit in 2011, having been preceded by the weak installments The Last Stand and X-Men Origins. So did it matter that the continuity was breaking a bit? After all, we were getting a fresh spin on the characters. Young Magneto as a James Bond-like Nazi assassin? A dashing Xavier forming his first team? The friendship of the two forming… and then tragically fracturing? This was good stuff. So what if it didn’t all line up with the other movies? And if it bothered you that much, you could just chalk First Class up to being set in an alternate timeline.
The X-Men vs. Superman and Batman
Let’s take a quick step back here and look at the earliest quote/unquote modern superhero movies, where there wasn’t a ton of focus on maintaining continuity between the films. The Christopher Reeve Superman series set up General Zod and his pals in the first film, sure, only to pay them off in the second, but that was also in part because the producers were trying to pull a fast one and shoot part one and two back to back. Otherwise, the events of one movie weren’t necessarily acknowledged in the next, like the whole Superman turning human thing to live his life with Lois, a life-altering and ultimately tragic turn in Superman II that is basically ignored in the sequels.
Of course, back then the thinking behind a lot of blockbuster sequels was very different than it is today. Rather than expanding on a universe, it was all about riding the initial wave with steadily cheaper sequels and diminishing returns until things gave out, a la the disastrous Superman IV or Jaws 4.
Then you have the Batman movies that began in 1989, featuring three different Bruce Waynes in four movies who seem like increasingly different characters as each film progressed, and a Gotham City that went through some serious urban development in a short time. Superman and Batman were the highest-profile superhero movies to happen before Marvel truly got in on the act in the late ’90s, but the continuity between sequels was light, and there was no real attempt to connect to other franchises. Keep in mind that Superman IV came out only two years before 1989’s Batman. If that was the case today, you could almost guarantee a World’s Finest team-up eventually.
So even while the X-Men continuity got increasingly screwy, it never abandoned characters or their arcs in the way that those earlier films tended to do.
Days of Future Blast From the Past
The second solo Logan movie, The Wolverine, was another strong outing for the franchise. And it pretty much stayed within established canon as well! But a year later, in 2014, the series found a way to combine First Class and the original trilogy with X-Men: Days of Future Past, which brought back Patrick Stewart, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen and more some eight years after their last appearance. That the film was an adaptation of the classic time-travel tale from the comics only seemed to shore up the idea that any inconsistencies within the series would be resolved with this story.
Interestingly, it was director Bryan Singer, who had helmed the first two X-movies and came back for this one, who was seeking to clear up the continuity mess. He had previously left the X-Men series to make Superman Returns, which in fact was a spiritual sequel to the Christopher Reeve-led Superman II. Returns even revealed that Lois and Clark had conceived a child back in that movie. In, uh, this Kryptonian bed, I guess.
Anyway, Days of Future Past depicts Xavier, Magneto, Wolverine, Storm and the rest in a dystopian future where they’re losing the war against the mutant-hunting Sentinels. Logan travels back in time to the 1970s to change the past, and man, does he succeed. So much so that when he gets back to the future, a.k.a. his proper present, everything is actually pretty great, and some old friends have even come back to life, righting some of the wrongs of previous films!
It was terrific stuff, and the film seemed to resolve some major continuity issues, even if there were some dangling questions like its completely different version of the villainous character Trask.
But then the sequels X-Men: Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix happened, and everything started to feel off again. Focused increasingly on younger versions of Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm and others, with the First Class trio of James McAvoy’s Xavier, Michael Fassbender’s Magneto, and Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique serving as the elder statesmen now, certain issues arose simply from the fact that each film was set a decade apart. So by the time of Dark Phoenix, our three leads are supposed to be 30 years older than they were in First Class. We can give it to the shapeshifting Mystique, but man, do Xavier and Magneto look great for their age!
There’s also just no way that these younger mutants can become the versions we know from the original trilogy, which perhaps can be attributed to the time travel of Days of Future Past altering the timeline of the future, but also of the past… although that seems like a stretch. Or maybe once again it’s simply that the First Class movies just exist in a different timeline altogether. But hey, at least that means we got two versions of the Dark Phoenix story!
Third time’s a charm though. Hear that, MCU?
Flame On!
Meanwhile, Fox and other studios who had the film rights to Marvel characters during this period were churning out movies, but they all kept to themselves. There was Blade and the Raimi Spider-Mans, but there was also the Ben Affleck Daredevil, and its spinoff, Jennifer Garner’s Elektra. The Punisher was shooting away over at Artisan and Lionsgate for a couple of movies, Columbia had Ghost Rider, and then of course there was the Fantastic Four.
Between 2005 and 2015, Fox made three Fantastic Four movies, including a misbegotten reboot, and yet there was never any real attempt to link the characters to the X-Men, even though they were operating under the same studio. Deadpool & Wolverine finally made this idea a reality by giving us a hilarious turn from Chris Evans not as Captain America but instead as his original Marvel character, the Human Torch, but the fact that Fox never did something similar speaks to the mindset of the studio as compared to how Kevin Feige’s Marvel Studios saw things playing out.
Dead-Logan
So even while the core X-Men movies were offering diminishing returns, both in terms of quality and continuity, Ryan Reynolds’ return as Deadpool in 2016 and Hugh Jackman’s then-swan song Logan in 2017 proved once again that throwing the canon out the window could actually be the best thing for a franchise. Neither film seems to be set in the X-Men worlds previously established in the movies. And in fact, Deadpool even made a point of including a SHIELD helicarrier, blurring the line between that universe and the MCU.
Despite what Deadpool & Wolverine would have us believe, it’s difficult to accept that Logan and the first two Deadpool movies are set in the same world. Deadpool, in all his fourth-wall-breaking antics, seems to squarely exist in our modern day, whereas Logan is said to be set in 2029, in a not particularly nice future world from what we see of it. So how is it that Deadpool knows that Logan died if didn’t happen yet?
It’s easy to chalk it up to Deadpool just knowing everything we know, since his true superpower is his ability to step outside of his movies’ reality, but perhaps the real answer is that the makers of Deadpool & Wolverine don’t care that much about how the Fox Marvel movie continuity works, or doesn’t work. It often didn’t make sense when the movies were being released, and most viewers aren’t going to fixate on or even be aware of such details. And again, it doesn’t really matter anyway as long as the movie is good. So if they needed to use Logan the movie as a hook to launch the plot of their film, they just went for it.
Of course, ultimately Deadpool & Wolverine does very little to set up the future of the MCU beyond telling us that, hey, there’s a Deadpool and a Wolverine hanging around out there just waiting to join the Avengers, or a new version of the X-Men, or who knows what. But it also reminds us that if a Wolverine dies, you can just go get another one, and another one, and another one. Same would go for a Deadpool, it seems. Or a Human Torch. Or maybe even an Iron Man?
It’s funny though, because as screwy as the X-Men movie continuity was, and as hit and miss as the series was over its 20 years, the big swings that Fox took that were often the most effective were also the least concerned with canon rules, be it First Class, the Deadpools, or Logan. Even The New Mutants, technically the last of the series and released in 2020, was essentially a standalone horror-thriller with mutants, and it was pretty good!
Who knows? Maybe the MCU can learn a thing or two from old Fox after all.
But what do you think? Is sticking to shared universe continuity the way to go, or should Marvel Studios take a page from the Fox book and play things a little more loosely? Let’s discuss in the comments!
Talk to Scott Collura on Twitter at @ScottCollura, or listen to his Star Trek podcast, Transporter Room 3. Or do both!
