In Days of Future Past, did the past and present occur in real time?

In Days of Future Past, did the past and present occur in real time? - Young beloved Hispanic couple with red rose resting in park

I'm a little confused with Logan going back in time. I'm kind of applying Back to the Future time travel rules, where Doc said the future would change all around Jennifer and Einstein and they wouldn't be the wiser.

If he went back in time to try to change things, wouldn't the present change instantaneously? I assume the final battle was added for dramatic effect but I'd think unless events occurred in real time in both timelines, he should just get sent back. If he succeeded, then the ending is as it was in the movie with the room being empty and intact and no one dying. If he didn't succeed, then he'd wake up and they'd all die?



Best Answer

The fact that the whole time travel is based on some arbitrary magic mutant power allows them to solve this potentially pradoxical issue in a rather convenient way, which is that Logan's changes to the timeline don't take effect on the future until he wakes up from Kitty's grasp.

This is explained by Kitty before she sends him back:

Basically, your body will go to sleep while your mind travels back in time. As long as you're back there, past and present will continue to coexist. But once you wake up whatever you've done will take hold and become history. And for the rest of us, it will be the only history that we know. It will be like the last 50 years never happened. And this world, and this war, the only person who will remember it is you.

This is also later referenced by Xavier when Bobby wants to wake up Logan because Kitty is injured:

Bobby: She's lost too much blood. She can't keep going like this.
Erik: We have no choice, Bobby.
Bobby: We can wake him up.
Xavier: No! They need more time. I had a glimpse into the past. If we wake Logan now we may set our fate on an even darker course. They need more time.

This even suggests, that they don't have another chance to change things after waking up Logan. So their current timeline will actually vanish in favour of the new timeline once he wakes up and won't just go on in parallel to it.

So until Logan wakes up, none of the stuff he does in the past has any influence on the future. But at the very point where he ends his time travel it basically introduces an explicit synchronization point and the new timeline he set in motion will take effect, with the original timeline vanishing.




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Do the past and the future exist?

The past and future do not exist and are only concepts used to describe the real, isolated, and changing present. This conventional model presents a number of difficult philosophical problems, and seems difficult to reconcile with currently accepted scientific theories such as the theory of relativity.

Is the past present and future an illusion?

But that part of our lives hasn't yet been written. Except it might've. The future might already exist and those three ways we separate time \u2014 past, present, and future \u2014 are nothing more than an illusion created by our minds. This is the picture of the universe that emerged from Einstein's theory of relativity.

Does all time exist at once?

We can measure that it's changing around us all over the place \u2013 satellites, particle accelerators, anything going fast. And it may be that space and time are the same thing all wrapped up together and it all exists all at once.

How past present and future are connected?

The past, present and future are linked by a continuous chain of events. Your sense of the present is just reflecting where in the block universe you are at that instance. The past is just a slice of the universe at an earlier location while the future is at a later location.



Do the Past and Future Exist?




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