10 Movies That Changed Other Movies

Christopher Nolan and his damn good ideas strike again, this time causing an entire planned sequence from X-Men: First Class to be scrapped.

The original script for the superhero prequel featured a cerebral action sequence in which Professor X (James McAvoy) battled several mutants, with the set-piece involving "spinning rooms and other physics-bending imagery."

But less than a month before First Class began shooting, director Matthew Vaughn saw Inception and decided that the sequence had to go, for fear of being accused of ripping off the rotating hallway and physics-defying action from Nolan's sci-fi epic. In an interview with the LA Times, Vaughn said:

"I saw Inception, which I loved... But my heart sank when I saw that a few of the ideas we had were up [on the screen]. So it's either leave it in and look as if you're copying or change things. We completely ripped out about 12 pages of the script and the storyboards."

Vaughn got very lucky: First Class was shot on an incredibly tight timeframe, with principal photography beginning less than nine months before the film's premiere.

Had the film shot a month or two sooner, it likely would've been too late for Vaughn to make any changes to this sequence beyond simply cutting it during editing and wasting a considerable amount of money.