10 Movies You Had No Idea Joss Whedon Worked On

The history of 2001's X-Men actually started in 1984 with the first screenplay. Perhaps too ahead of it's time, it wasn't before many years of trying that worked started more in earnest in 1994 when script writer Andrew Kevin Walker was brought on board.

Several failed attempts to complete the script later, Whedon was hired for his screen-writing magic and to re-work the third act. According to Entertainment Weekly, Whedon's changes to the script "were scrapped because his quick-witted pop culture referencing tone" didn't fit with director Bryan Singer's vision of X-Men. Whedon takes this a little more personally that that, particularly as he wasn't told that his script was being scrapped until the read-through. The problem with the third act, Whedon says in an interview with The AV Club, was with the first two acts.

Two lines of Whedon's dialogue did make it into the film however, not that he is particularly pleased at what was kept. Cyclops' quip to Wolverine, "You're a dick" was kept, and delivered close to the humor with which it was intended, but Storm's infamously bad line about toads being struck by lightning was definitely intended for a film with a very different tone.