James McAvoy Says ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ Kicked Off the Superhero Mashup Era

Long before multiverse crossovers became a staple of superhero cinema, Fox’s X-Men franchise tried something risky. ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’, directed by Bryan Singer, brought together the casts of the original trilogy and ‘X-Men: First Class’ in one time-bending story, and it remains one of the franchise’s most celebrated entries.

The film follows Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine as his consciousness is sent from a dystopian 2023 back to 1973 to prevent the assassination of Bolivar Trask, the event that set off the Sentinel program. There, he teams up with younger, fractured versions of Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr, played by James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender.

Now McAvoy is looking back at the film’s place in comic book movie history. Speaking with Josh Horowitz on ‘Happy Sad Confused’, he said ‘Days of Future Past’ was among the first films to mix casts and timelines. “It felt like it was right at the beginning of all these mashups and [they] really pulled it off brilliantly,” he said.

Surprisingly, McAvoy admits he had doubts going in. ‘First Class’ had taken the franchise in a fresh direction, and the sequel’s plan to reconnect with the original films worried him. “I was scared; I was scared going into that movie because we’d gone in such a different tangential direction with First Class,” McAvoy told Horowitz.

He described the decision to bring the story back toward what Singer had done with the earlier films as a creative pivot that initially felt off. “Ah… this feels like a misstep,” he remembered thinking. But time has changed his perspective entirely: “But I was wrong, because I think the film’s incredible.”

McAvoy’s point holds up when you look at what followed. Many fans and critics now see ‘Days of Future Past’ as an early model for the kind of large-scale, cast-blending events that later became common in superhero films.

The trailer for X-MEN DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (2014) is still a Masterpiece after all these years! https://t.co/Wsw3dMpAyJ

— ɌØɃɆɌŦ ȺNŦĦØNɎ (@robanthony90) April 20, 2026

Producer Simon Kinberg has said the time-travel premise let the film bridge both casts while allowing each to keep its own timeline. The approach paired Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen and Halle Berry in the future with McAvoy, Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence and Nicholas Hoult in the past.

Even so, the overlap on set was limited. McAvoy has previously said he worked with Stewart for only a single day, spending most of his shoot alongside Jackman and Hoult. The gamble paid off. ‘Days of Future Past’ grossed roughly $746 million to $748 million worldwide against a budget of about $205 million, and it became the highest-grossing X-Men film until ‘Deadpool’ arrived 2 years later.

Critics embraced it too, giving it a 90% Rotten Tomatoes score and a 75 on Metacritic, while audiences awarded it an A CinemaScore. The film also earned an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects, and an extended version, ‘The Rogue Cut’, later expanded Anna Paquin’s role.

McAvoy has called his favorite X-Men film a toss-up between this one and ‘First Class’. The later entries in his run, ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ and ‘Dark Phoenix’, saw steep drops in critical and box office performance.

McAvoy’s comments arrive as the X-Men prepare for a major return. Marvel has confirmed that Stewart, McKellen, James Marsden, Kelsey Grammer, Rebecca Romijn, Alan Cumming and Channing Tatum will appear in ‘Avengers: Doomsday’, which opens December 18.

McAvoy isn’t among the confirmed names. Some insiders have suggested the ‘First Class’ cast is unlikely to return, though that remains unverified. For now, McAvoy seems content to celebrate what he helped build. His wide-ranging conversation with Horowitz also touched on ‘California Schemin”, ‘Split’ and ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’, but his reflections on ‘Days of Future Past’ are the ones lighting up X-Men fandom.

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