By Love it or hate it, last year’s X-Men: Days of Future Past was notable if only for the fact that it found a way to take six films’ worth of tangled, messy continuity and streamline it. The movie featured appearances from a lot of characters from across the X-Men franchise, but there was one who was notably absent.
Anna Paquin’s Rogue, a major player in the first three films in the franchise, was heavily promoted as appearing in the lead-up to the movie’s original release, but she only appeared in a brief cameo. Not long after the movie’s release, director Bryan Singer revealed that Paquin’s role was originally much larger, but most of her scenes were cut. Enter X-Men: Days of Future Past – The Rogue Cut, a new version of the movie that restores those scenes. In the leadup to the new cut’s direct-to-video release, 20th Century Fox have released new images from the film featuring Paquin, confirming that, yeah, Rogue plays a big role in a movie called The Rogue Cut. You can peek the images below.
Basically, at one point in Days of Future Past, the time-displaced Wolverine goes into a mild fit of berserker rage and injures Kitty Pride, the mutant responsible for sending and keeping his consciousness in the 1970s. In the theatrical cut, this is used primarily as a source of tension in the future scenes, leaving the audience to wonder whether Kitty will be able to fight through the pain long enough for Wolverine to finish his mission. The Rogue Cut plays things a little differently – Kitty’s injury spurs Iceman, Magneto and Professor X to mount a prison break to spring Rogue, who can use her power-absorbing abilities to play pinch-hitter for Kitty. As alluded to above, those scenes were ultimately trimmed for length and pacing. The theatrical cut was just over two hours long (131 minutes), while The Rogue Cut ends up being closer to two-and-a-half (148 minutes).
The images are a small offering to whet the appetites of fans who are eager for a new version of one of the franchise’s best movies. One image appears to feature Rogue in a lab in whatever futuristic hell-prison she’s trapped in, while another depicts Rogue and Magneto apparently in the midst of the prison break. That second image does allude to some potentially interesting scenes, though – those two characters have a long history in the X-Men movies; the entire plot of the first film focused on the X-Men fighting to protect Rogue from Magneto’s Brotherhood. X-Men: Days of Future Past – The Rogue Cut drops on July 14, just a couple of weeks from now.