Logan is a very dark movie, probably the darkest comic book movie ever made. It really earns its R-rating, and it seems like the movie almost got even darker. If you haven't seen Logan, do not read the rest of this article as we're about to spoil one of the biggest plot points in the movie. Got it? Good.
The movie opens with Wolverine waking up in the back of his limo which is being stripped down for parts by some gangbangers. He gets out and tries to make them stop by simply talking to them, but after being shot in the chest, he gets up and cuts them up into bloody little pieces. The scene does a great job of establishing what kind of movie this is going to be and where Logan is at in his life, but the opening of the movie was almost something entirely different.
Charles Xavier is just as broken as Logan is. He's weak and he can't even control his powers which leads to numerous issues throughout the movie. At one point in the movie, it's heavily implied Charles killed all of the X-Men and most of the mutants because he lost control of his powers hence why he's locked away in a giant metal container. Turns out we almost got to see the scene of him killing all our favorite X-Men.
"The idea was — all (or most of) the X-Men were dead. And that Charles had accidentally killed them," director James Mangold revealed in an interview.
"I had an opening where Logan comes into [Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters] and finds that a tragedy has occurred. He would have found certain X-Men, and, Charles at the center of it."
Not only does that sound absolutely heartbreaking as it means Xavier would've had to slowly suck the life out of his entire family, but it sounds like an amazing story beat that fully demonstrates Xavier's abilities. Ultimately, Mangold scrapped it because he felt it took away from this personal story.
"The more I drilled into it, the more it turned into feeling like a standard X-Men movie," the director said. "The point here would be to say just enough to understand what the characters are feeling. But not enough that you open up the gates of the kind of expositional madness that is part of the comic book [movie] world."
Personally, I think this would've been an excellent scene that sets the stage for the dark tone of the movie, but it makes sense why Mangold chose to cut it.
Logan is in theaters now.
