X-Men: Days of Future Past was a box-office success immediately upon release last year and, at 131 minutes long, it was already lengthy enough.
But ever since word got out about cut scenes featuring Anna Paquin as Rogue, fans have been impatiently waiting to see what they consider to be the true, finished product.
The timing is a bit strange – perhaps it would’ve been better to have either released this alongside the original cut last year or to have waited until the arrival of sequel X-Men: Apocalypse in cinemas next year.
Regardless, it’s here now. So is this new edition worth buying? I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this then you’ve already seen the original cut. So let’s get talking about The Rogue Cut.
The new scenes come in around 70 minutes into the film and it all kicks off somewhere between past and future Xaviers communicating, then tracking Mystique down at the airport.
In the future, Rogue has been trapped inside of Cerebro back at the X-Mansion – though it’s never really explained who is experimenting on her or why. Still, there’s a pretty neat, action-packed set scene where Magneto and Iceman (an unlikely duo) rescue her. Considering this release is named after her, Rogue is actually fairly redundant in that scene; Iceman and Magneto battle the sentinels whilst Rogue just screams a little.
The majority of the other new scenes take place in 1973 and show Mystique sneaking back into the X-Mansion. The romance between her and Nicholas Hoult’s Beast that started in 2011’s X-Men: First Class is picked up again in these moments. It’s nice to have some continuity with that aspect of the story, but it’s not necessarily essential to the plot.
None of the new scenes come anywhere near the brilliance of Quicksilver’s show-stealing turn, but they’re much better than typical extended editions where you usually end up agreeing with the makers’ original decision to ditch the material.
This release also comes with the original theatrical cut, making this the definitive release of this movie for fans.
Extras: The original release was quite short on special features, but The Rogue Cut more than makes up for that. There’s a fantastic in-depth nine-part documentary called ‘Mutant vs. Machine’ that documents all aspects of the film’s creation. It’s essential viewing for any die-hard fans of the X-Men franchise and is a lot more insightful than most behind-the-scenes fluff.
The disc also features ‘X-Men: Unguarded’, a fascinating roundtable discussion with the director and a collection of the cast from both the past and future. There’s also a sneak peek at the new Fantastic Four movie, though it doesn’t seem to be anything that isn’t in the trailers we’ve already seen.
Released on Blu-ray™ and DVD on Monday 13 July 2015.
> Buy The Rogue Cut on Blu-ray on Amazon.
What did you think of the new cut? Let us know below…