Posted in: Movies, san diego comic con | Tagged: bryan singer, entertainment, film, fox, marvel, Rogue Cut, sdcc, x-men days of future past

SDCC '15: I Saw The X-Men: Days of Future Past: The Rogue Cut And I Want to Tell You About It

by Jeremy Konrad

Saturday night I had the opportunity to attend a rare screening of the highly anticipated Rogue Cut edition of X-Men: Days of Future Past. Much has been made about the fact that director Bryan Singer decided rather late in the game to completely cut Rogue out of the film for its theatrical release last year, and the fan uproar was pretty deafening. So much so, that they announced that there was in fact a finished version of the film with her scenes still intact, and that it would in fact see the light of day. That time is now, and it is being released on blu-ray and digital next week.

Before the screening began, Singer himself showed up fresh from the Hall H panel he was at to talk about the next film in the series, Apocalypse. After a brief chat about how this cut came to be (it mostly seemed like he had an affection for it), we settled in to enjoy a pretty good X-Men film. I had quite a few questions going in: How much was Rogue really in it? Did anything she appeared in fundamentally change anything about the movie? Would James McAvoy still hilariously yell "I DON'T WANT YOUR FUTURE!"? Would Quicksilver still be as cool after now seeing Avengers? The answers in order:

Not a terrible amount.

In one instance yes.

Haha, most definitely

Yes and no.

SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT.

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SERIOUSLY, I AM GOING TO TALK ABOUT THINGS AND STUFF.

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To be honest, Rogue really is not in the film all that much for it being a "Rogue Cut". The film is well through its runtime before she is even mentioned at all, with her name not appearing until after the scene where Magneto refurbishes the sentinels with metal from the train tracks. Turns out, according to Bobby Drake, Rogue is being held in cerebro in the old Xavier School building and being experimented on like Mystique in the past. Xavier, Magneto, and Bobby all go there to try and rescue her and really the best scene involving Rogue is here and it has nothing to do with her. We see Ian McKellan and Michael Fassbender mimicking each other in both past and present incarnations of Magneto, with older Mags breaking out Rogue while his younger self retrieves his helmet before lifting the football stadium. This really worked for me, showing that Erik, while working with the X-Men now, still has his ruthless tendencies and actually wish this bit had stayed in the theatrical version. They then rescue Rogue, with Bobby sacrificing himself in the process. Their plane is attacked by a sentinel and its hand is cut off and left stuck on the wing of the ship.

This is the biggest way Rogue changes the film, because of that hand, that becomes how the sentinels find their base of operations and send out the fleet to find them. Right before that, Rogue zaps the power from a weakened Kitty and takes over keeping Wolverine in the past to finish the job. They even hilariously have Wolverine wake up in bed in the past and just say her name.

That's about it. She has about 4 lines of dialogue in the whole thing, and most of the bonus Rogue time is her standing there in the background holding Wolverines head instead of Kitty. After all is said and done and the past is changed, when Wolverine sits up in bed and walks through the school, Bobby is now with Rogue and Kitty is now with Colossus, which was cool to see as I am a huge Kitty Pryde fan and I loved seeing them together. Singer even added a nice after credits stinger with Trask being held in the same cell Magneto was in with an epic beard and mustache combo.

All and all, if you liked the film to begin with, see this and marvel at what is essentially the same film with not much being all that different. take Rogue out of any of her scenes and it matters very little, hence why they did it in the first place. None of her scenes were missed, and frankly I spent so long waiting for her to pop up on screen that i found it annoying when she was finally there.

"I DON"T WANT YOUR FUTURE!"

Gets me every time.

X-Men: Days of Future Past: The Rogue Cut is available July 14 on Blu-Ray and Digital release.

Jeremy Konrad is the Senior Star Wars Correspondent for Bleeding Cool. This is actually his favorite X-Men movie, what is yours? Tell him on Twitter @jeremyohio

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