Bryan Singer Regrets Not Making X-Men: The Last Stand

Director calls the threequel his unfinished business.

XMen The Last Stand
Fox

Anyone who has seen X-Men: Apocalypse will have noticed that Bryan Singer continues to play God with the X-Men timeline, conveniently airbrushing out the sequences he didn't like in the films he didn't make. He's redone Wolverine's origin, he's redone Alkali Lake generally and he basically pilfered X-Men Origins: Wolverine's plot for Magneto's story.

It's not really all that surprising then that the director has now openly admitted that he regrets not making X-Men:The Last Stand as he originally intended. Speaking to Fandango, Singer spoke about dropping out of the franchise to make Superman Returns (good move):

"I like finishing things. I like finishing this particular iteration. I know X-Men 3 was quite rushed and I didn't complete it, and I felt a little like it was probably my responsibility to do that as a filmmaker, and I didn't."

He had actually created a treatment for what would have become his Last Stand, which would have focused more on Jean Grey's resurrection and on the Dark Phoenix story-line. Ultimately he left, Matthew Vaughn signed on briefly and then Brett Ratner was tasked with rushing it out for a tight release date.

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To be honest, the film doesn't suck anything like as badly as the critics would have you believe. It's solid, entertaining in parts and has some brilliant stand-out moments. But Singer's would have been different, and it's a shame he didn't get to complete his trilogy. He suggested that he wouldn't have had as much of a bloodlust in his version:

"I might not have killed all those characters, but that's what was so fun about Days of Future Past. We had a joke on set: 'Hey Brian, you're not only directing Days of Future Past -- you're actually living it!' I was going back and making changes in history. , I don't fault anyone, including myself. It was just that circumstances didn't allow for it to happen."

Would you have liked to have seen Singer's The Last Stand? Share your reactions below in the comments thread.

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