John Ottman - X-Men: Days of Future Past - Rogue Cut [Extended Version] (2015)

Wait a minute, why are you reviewing the score you reviewed last year you might ask. Well, turns out, this is a new expanded 2CD version called The Rogue Cut released by Sony. So what is The Rogue Cut? Well it’s a new version with 10 additional minutes of film. Well, the 10 additional minutes of film apparently warranted a new expanded score and that to me is a complete and utterly positive surprise. Usually we’ll have to wait years before some expanded version might arrive, but someone thought differently and that person is now my hero. More of this please! It so happens I quite liked the original score which was quite lengthy in itself at 69 minutes. The Rogue Cut expands on that by 42 minutes, which is no small feat. So what is different? Well, some cues are split up. For example, ‘The Future – Main Titles’ from the original score is now split in two so you can hear both cues separately. I love it! There are some brand new cues like ‘Xavier’s Plan’, ‘Trask Hearing / A New Era’, ‘Clothes Off / Goodbye Peter’ and a bunch of others. So this is exciting! Let’s see what The Rogue Cut has in store for us.

It opens up with the magnificent ‘Main Theme’ which is heroic and bold and of course contains the main theme created by Ottman in X2 which is short but sweet. The best cue on the original score was ‘Hope (Xavier’s Theme)’ and it probably still is the best one on The Rogue Cut. It is such a beautiful cue. It’s one of those slow building cues with a super theme and lots of ostinatos. Think Hans Zimmer’s “Time” and a lot of others. It’s one of my favourite types of cues and Ottman really brings the awesome with it. Again, I love how they split up ‘The Future / Main Titles’ into separate cues, if only to have the great main title on it’s own. ‘The Future’ is not bad either, a sort of ambient heroic theme. I completely forgot, but this score has some very nice choral music as well. Maybe not as much as Powell’s X-Men but still, it’s dark and delicious. So some new stuff with ‘Xavier’s Plan’ which is an interesting “investigative” cue. Ok, so it’s not super exciting, but it’s still good.

There’s one thing though, one thing I didn’t expect and that is the fact the I liked it a lot more last year than I do now for some reason. Even the cues I rated 5 stars like ‘Paris Pandemonium’ feels more like a 4 star cue now. Furthermore, the new material isn’t helping much except for few standouts like ‘We Need You’ and ‘Charles n Charles’, but there’s one cue in particular which is quite fantastic and that’s the 5 minute long ‘Saving The Future’. That one deserved to be on the original score. It’s a great action cue, energetic and fun. The other great Rogue Cut only cue is ‘You’re Here!’ which is basically a more developed version of ‘Hope (Xavier’s Theme)’ for the first half. They’ve somehow managed to remove one of the better cues of the original, ‘Time’s Up (Film Version)’ which is a shame. The good thing is that they have wisely removes the two songs that was present in the original album and focused on score only.

Should you get this expanded edition? If you loved the original, then yes, you probably should. I loved the original album but found out that I didn’t quite feel the same for some cues, but most were right on the money. As for the new cues, there was ‘Saving The Future’ and ‘You’re Here!’ that was more than good enough to be on the original album. It’s still a really good score, one of the best in the X-Men series, and that’s why I recommend you check out The Rogue Cut.

Tracklist:
CD 1
01. Main Theme
02. Hope (Xavier's Theme)
03. The Future
04. Time's Up
05. I Found Them
06. Xavier's Plan
07. Rules of Time
08. Trask Hearing - A New Era
09. Saigon - Logan Arrives
10. He Lost Everything
11. Pentagon Plan - Sneaky Mystique
12. Springing Erik
13. Clothes Off - Goodbye Peter
14. You Abandoned us All! - Yes, she Does
15. How Was She?
16. Paris Pandemonium
17. Whitehouse Meeting
18. Are you Mystique?
19. We Need You
20. All Those Voices
21. Charles n Charles
22. Off the Tracks
23. There's Someone Else
24. Contacting Raven
25. Letting Raven In

CD 2
01. Finding Rogue
02. Costly Escape
03. Cutting Ties
04. Ripples in Time
05. Raising RFK - Here they Come
06. Raising RFK - Magneto Descends
07. The Attack Begins
08. Saving the Future
09. Join Me
10. They Found Us - Remember the Xmen
11. I Have Faith in You - Goodbyes
12. You're Here!
13. Welcome Back - End Titles
14. En Sabah Nur