DOFP Reaction Post!

[futurepast_mod]

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sentinel timeline

[tashana]

i didn't really follow any of the extra-film goodies (not sure of a better term, e.g. The Bent Bullet) that was released before DOFP nor did I watch either of the Wolverine movies (which I've seen someone comment as having affected the original timeline?). I've also only since DOFP once, so I'm gonna rely on all of you to fact-check.

Anyways, basically, I'm just trying to understand the basic timeline gist of the sentinels (not specific years or anything because, lol, good luck reconciling that).

XMFC
- existence of mutants may or may not be revealed to very specific people in the government after Cuba Missile Crisis

pre-DOFP
- Erik gets imprisoned in '63. Between then and '73, Trask successfully hunts down, experiments, and kills most of the Brotherhood+others. Did anyone see if there were any specific dates on those autopsy reports? Like, were all those captures an immediate thing? Something that happened later on?

- If Mystique gets her own movies, I swear to god, there better be at least a voiceover explaining what happened during those ten years better.

- Since Mystique seems to only discover Trask Industries' involvement in '73 after finding out where the Vietnam Mutant Taskforce was going to be shipped to, it seems a good guess that either (a) Trask was very good at capturing the Brotherhood mutants one-by-one or (b) someone/something else was doing the capturing and Trask was buying from them.

- Trask begins making Sentinels. At some point, he hears about Magneto (due to JFK assassination?) and makes them plastic.

DOFP, original timeline:
- US govt refuses Sentinel program.

- Mystique kills Trask. She gets captured by Stryker and is then experimented on by Stryker and/or US government.

- all governments want Sentinel program.

post-DOFP, original timeline:
- Mystique escapes after some X number of years.

- Magneto is released from prison, somehow, and Mystique rejoins Magneto. I feel like these two are related... Mystique is so traumatized/angry/full of rage that she's like, "WHO CAN HELP ME GET VENGEANCE?" and goes 'oh yeah, erik' and does Prison Break Version 1.0 <-- current headcanon (plz, quicksilver, not even a drop of blood while breaking him out? lemme show you sumthin).

- Mystique's blood is analyzed. and analyzed. and analyzed. Successful integration into Sentinels?

- 2000s: X1 (magneto imprisoned again), X2 (prison break version 2.0), X3 (charles dies)

- Magneto loses his powers. Mystique loses her powers. Charles returns by possessing his comatose brother's body (????).

post X3

- Governments finally decide to release Sentinel program against Mutant Menace

- Magneto regains powers. Mystique presumably dies (with/without regaining powers?)

- 2023: death, mayhem, and near-extinction

basically, i have no idea why sentinels were initially created in '70s and not heard of until post-2000s, especially since in the original timeline, they weren't shelved.

Re: sentinel timeline

[cesare]

I speculated about the Sentinel development timeline before the movie came out, and I think I'm sticking to that: Sentinels were a black budget project for a while, and it was about to be cancelled when in '73 the project got a big boost from Trask's death and Mystique's capture. Still, something as complicated as those 2023 Sentinels would've been beyond the tech of the '70s, particularly when the most famous dangerous mutant controls metal, so metal can't be used in the construction at all. (How Trask built robots without transistors or circuit boards, just "space age polymers," is an epic handwave.) At some point, Mystique must have escaped, so that would have been a setback for the Sentinel project.

After Nixon was impeached and resigned, the Sentinel program fell out of favor-- it didn't have Trask to champion it anymore, and in the absence of any further major threats from mutants, the motivation to pursue it died, plus in the wake of Vietnam public support for militarization was low, and at that time the intelligence communities were undergoing scrutiny for abuse of resources and power... so many reasons why the Sentinel project might have been back-burnered.

It probably hung in there by a thread during Carter's presidency, but then Reagan, who never met a Pentagon boondoggle he didn't like, increased its funding, spurring active Sentinel development again; but it was still beyond the current tech, plus it wasn't a priority compared to Reagan-favorite programs like Star Wars. Under Clinton, the program probably would've been downgraded again, stalling the project.

Then, in 2000, Magneto launches his plot to turn influential humans into mutants, and is eventually arrested and imprisoned. Anti-mutant paranoia resurges and the Sentinel program is revived, and now the technology exists to actually realize the Mystique-inspired Sentinels, so they're being designed, built and tested from 2000-2006, when the original X-Men trilogy happened. Shortly after the battle over the mutant cure, the first Sentinels were unleashed and the dystopia begins.

Re: sentinel timeline

[tashana]

(How Trask built robots without transistors or circuit boards, just "space age polymers," is an epic handwave.)

lol, now I'm imagining that the Sentinels' insides are literally just made of millions of tiny plastic gears in order to replace the circuit boards.