Comic book movies have really leaned into the idea of multiverses and alternate timelines in recent years, with rebooted characters like Spider-Man and Batman meeting versions of themselves from previously unconnected film iterations. But there is typically no fully going back once a comic book movie series has been truly rebooted, save for cameos and one-off crossovers.
But Fox’s “X-Men” movies played by their own rules. After the original trilogy took a huge dip in quality with the messy, overstuffed “X-Men: The Last Stand,” a major franchise refresh was needed. Matthew Vaughn, director and co-writer of “X-Men: First Class,” said in an interview with Slash Film at the time, “We’re trying to reboot and start a whole new X-Men franchise.” Indeed, the movie went all the way back to the 1960s and told a new origin story of how Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) first formed the group of mutants that would come to be known as the X-Men.
But somewhere along the way, what was supposed to be a reboot retroactively became more of an alternate timeline prequel, as the follow-up, “Days of Future Past,” brought back characters and their original actors from the previous “X-Men” movies — making it a follow-up to both “First Class” and “The Last Stand” simultaneously. The next movie, “X-Men: Apocalypse,” featured Hugh Jackman in an uncredited cameo appearance as Weapon X, still keeping it tied to the original “X-Men” movie franchise rather than it being its own truly separate series as promised.