X-Men Continuity Problem

X-Men: Days of Future Past involves Wolverine time-traveling back to 1973 to change history. However, if you look at the previous six X-Men-related movies, you’ll see that the directors and writers have been messing with history all along — though not necessarily on purpose. After rewatching all seven films, we found six major incongruities that just don’t jibe — and you can’t blame Wolverine for these. (Spoilers follow for those who haven’t seen DOFP.)

When did Professor X and Magneto meet?In the original movie, Charles Xavier (played by Patrick Stewart) tells Wolverine, “When I was 17, I met a young man named Erik Lehnsherr,” aka Magneto (Ian McKellen). But in First Class, Charles (then played by James McAvoy) is seen as a child in 1944, and he meets Erik (Michael Fassbender) 18 years later in 1962. Director Bryan Singer takes the blame for that error, telling SciFiNow that he now regrets writing that line in the first script
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When did Professor X and Magneto become enemies?First Class ends in 1962 with Charles and Erik having fought and split apart over their philosophical differences of whether humans and mutants can coexist.  But in the flashback to 1986 at the beginning of X-Men: The Last Stand, the two are apparently still friends, and they go together to recruit Jean Grey to enroll in Xavier’s school. And that’s not the only continuity problem with that scene…

When was Professor X paralyzed?In the climax of First Class, Magneto deflects a bullet that hits Xavier in the spine, causing him to lose the use of his legs. Days of Future Pastsees Charles in 1973 taking a drug that allows him to walk again but at the cost of his mutant powers; he eventually gives it up and returns to the wheelchair. However, in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (set in the late ’70s) and the mid-’80s flashback in Last Stand, Professor X can walk and use his psychic abilities.

How is Professor X alive (and still looking like himself)?Jean Grey disintegrates Xavier in the middle of The Last Stand, but it is set up that he can input his consciousness into another body, which he does during the post-credits scene. And while you don’t see the face of the vegetative coma patient he takes over, how it is that when he wakes up he still looks just like Professor X? Last Stand director Brett Ratner said in the DVD commentary that the man in the coma is Xavier’s twin brother, but Charles never mentions having a sibling in any movie. And even if he did, is his brother also confined to a wheelchair? Did he take a bullet for Magneto’s twin?

When did Professor X start his school?According to the official X-Men website 25moments.com, Xavier started his school for mutants in 1963. But in the first movie, the Professor says that Cyclops and Jean Grey “were some of my first students.” The timelines just don’t match up, with Prof. X first encountering Cyclops in the late ’70s in X-Men Origins, and subsequently recruiting Jean in the mid-’80s.

How are there two versions of some people?Moira MacTaggert, as played by Rose Byrne, is a young American CIA agent in the early ’60s in First Class. Moira MacTaggert as played by Olivia Williams is a not-much older Scottish geneticist in the modern day scenes of The Last Stand. Also, Emma Frost was a teenager in the ’70s in 2009’s Origins: Wolverine, but she was also an adult in 1962 in First Class (and — SPOILER — Magneto says she was killed sometime before 1973 in Days of Future Past). Plus, the hulking, mute Sabretooth of 2000’s X-Men is nothing like the verbose and clever Victor Creed (played by Liev Schrieber) in 2009’s Wolverine.

There are plenty of other smaller incongruities between the films. Xavier says he and Magneto built Cerebro in the first movie, but it was Hank “Beast” McCoy’s creation in First Class. Xavier doesn’t understand how Magneto’s helmet blocks his psychic powers in the 2000 original, but he does in the prequel. Little goofs like that get into the realm of nitpicking. Meanwhile, Bryan Singer says the next film, X-Men: Apocalypse, will be set in the 1980s, so who know how that will further scramble up the timeline. Maybe it will answer the biggest question of all: After 200 years, why hasn’t Wolverine ever tried a different hairstyle?

Love in Disguise (Marvel)

“Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.”

In this fan-favorite line from last summer’s mega-blockbuster The Avengers, Tony Stark describes how he is much more than just a man in a metal suit. Yet while Robert Downey Jr.’s delivery of the line demonstrates the character’s smartass charm, those qualities were originally written with a negative connotation for the character’s first comic-book appearance.

In the early 1960s, Stan Lee burst into the comic-book industry by creating superheroes out of everyday people with everyday problems. While Lee wrote complex stories about comic-book staples like soldiers and scientists, he also created dynamic heroes out of doctors, high schoolers and even warmongering industrialists. Basing Tony Stark on the erratic billionaire Howard Hughes, Lee -- along with his brother, writer Larry Lieber, and artists Don Heck and Jack Kirby -- introduced Iron Man in the 39th issue of Tales Of Suspense in 1963.

Stan Lee recalls in an interview for the first Iron Man film:

“I think I gave myself a dare. It was the height of the Cold War. The readers, the young readers, if there was one thing they hated, it was war, it was the military. So I got a hero who represented that to the hundredth degree. He was a weapons manufacturer, he was providing weapons for the Army, he was rich, he was an industrialist. I thought it would be fun to take the kind of character that nobody would like, none of our readers would like, and shove him down their throats and make them like him ... And he became very popular.”

In the years following his debut, Iron Man fought against the tyranny of communism, corporate crime, terrorism and alcoholism as a “second-tier” Marvel hero, despite always being a popular character amongst readers. However, in the 2006 crossover series Civil War, Marvel’s writers once more exhibited Tony’s conniving and abusive qualities, and the character’s veneration took a very big hit. It wasn’t until Downey's memorable portrayal of Tony Stark two years later in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that the character became both a household name and likable again.

While there are many interesting stories behind the creation of some of Marvel’s best-known characters, Stan Lee’s gamble of creating a character nobody should like is by far the most remarkable, and it paid off quite well in the end.

Leaked!!! The Expendables 3 betrayed

The Lions Gate Film Inc. unit of the Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. (NYSE:LGF) filed a lawsuit against BitTorrent protocol sites that leaked online an advance copy of “The Expendables 3,” whose release is scheduled for Aug. 15. In a filing with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Lions Gate said it learned of the leak July 24. The movie has already been downloaded more than a million times since then, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The lawsuit names as defendants John Does 1-10, who are the operators of billionuploads.com, dotsemper.com, hulkfile.eu, limetorrents.com, played.to and swankshare.com.

“By downloading one of these ‘torrent’ files associated with the Stolen Film from [one of the defendants], users join a ‘swarm’ where they download parts of the Stolen Film from many different users and also upload to other users parts of the Stolen Film they have already received, until eventually they have reproduced the entire Stolen Film on their own hard drives and in most cases have also uploaded all or a substantial part of the Stolen Film to others,” the lawsuit states. The Hollywood Reporter is hosting a copy of the filing on its site.

Lions Gate is requesting in its suit that “the Court enter a temporary restraining order, a preliminary injunction and a permanent injunction ... prohibiting Defendants [and others] from ... hosting, linking to, distributing, reproducing, performing, selling, offering for sale, making available for download, streaming or making any other use of any copy or copies of the Stolen Film or any portion thereof in any form.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, apparently began investigating the case after Lions Gate sought the aid of law-enforcement agencies in locating the film’s pirates, Deadlinereported. It quoted an ICE public-affairs officer as saying Friday, “It is our policy to neither confirm or deny that an investigation is under way, unless or until it results in some type of public enforcement action.”

The all-star cast of “The Expendables 3” includes Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford, Wesley Snipes, Dolph Lundgren and Antonio Banderas, among others.