Bryan Singer Talks the 'X-men: Days of Future Past' Timeline; Plus New Set Photo

For those who may not be quite as familiar with Marvel's band of mutants, Bryan Singer's X-men: Days of Future Past must seem really confusing. Drawing inspiration from arguably the most important comic book storyline, it involves the X-men looking to prevent an apocalyptic future by sending one of their own into the past to prevent a mutant-related disaster. Combining the casts of the earlier X-men trilogy plus X-men: First Class into one massive ensemble has only made it less clear where exactly the film fits into the continuity, but fortunately Singer wants to clear that up.

While talking with Empire, Singer revealed exactly where the 'Future Past' timeline fits in relation to 2006's X-men: The Last Stand and 2011's X-men: First Class, which took place some time earlier in the 1960s...

Singer:  “I’d say it’s not a sequel to one of the others. It’s an inbetwequel — that’s what I call it, for lack of a better word. It takes place about ten years, give or take, after X-Men 3; and in the past it takes place about ten years after First Class.”

Thanks to Singer's plethora of set images we knew the past segments would take place in the 1970s during the Nixon era, and as we learned from yesterday's viral promos, that's close to the time when Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) began development of the Sentinel program.

Along with dropping a new set image of Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) kicking some poor dude in the neck, Singer also gave a clue about where young Xavier (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) stand with one another, and it's not very good....

Singer:  “They’re in a radically different place. Charles is in a very dark hole when we meet him, and Erik has been gathering his power.”