There are three things in life you can always count on: life, death and directors leaving a movie over creative differences but rarely is the public given an explanation over what those “creative differences” were. During New York Comic Con, during a panel to celebrate his extensive career, he revealed the real reason why he left X-Men: The Last Stand, the heartbreak that involved, Halle Berry, a fake script and shattered dreams.
The year was 2006 and Vaughn was courted to replace Bryan Singer as the director of 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand, which served as the third film in the storyline led by Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine.
“One of the main reasons I quit X-Men 3, and this is a true story,” Vaughn said. “Hollywood is really political and odd. I went to an executive’s office, and I saw an X3 script. It was a lot fatter. I asked, ‘What is this draft?’ They were like, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ So, I grabbed it, and opened the first page, and it said, ‘Africa. Kids dying from no water, and Storm creates a thunderstorm to save all these children.’”
“I thought it was a pretty cool idea. I said, ‘What is this?’ They said, ‘This is the Halle Berry script because she hasn’t signed on yet. This is what she wants it to be. And once she signs on, we’ll throw it in the bin.’ I thought, if you’re going to do that to an Oscar-winning actress who plays Storm, I quit. I thought I’m mincemeat.”
Berry returned as Storm in X-Men: The Last Stand, which was directed by Brett Ratner, but the film did not include any scenes set in Africa as the ‘fake’ script Vaughn read included. The Last Stand did, however, give Storm a more prominent role as the character takes over as the head of Charles Xavier’s school for mutants after his death.
In 2011, Vaughn returned to the Marvel Comics world to direct X-Men: First Class, a reboot of the franchise that was ultimately retconned to serve as a prequel to the previous X-Men films. It starred James McAvoy as Charles Xavier, Michael Fassbender as Magneto and Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique.
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