10 Ways The X-Men Films Nearly Turned Out Very Differently

James Mangold's 2017 Logan was inspired by the storyline, Old Man Logan, which centres around an elderly Wolverine surviving in the future after the world has descended into an apocalyptic wasteland. Because the director wanted to keep the story grounded in reality, he excluded the more fantastical parts of the comic like the scene where Wolverine fights a Venomized T-Rex... which probably would've jarred with the story's tone.

Another element that was removed was Mister Sinister, who was intended as the film's central villain. Even though he doesn't play a role in the Old Man Logan comic, Bryan Singer emphasised that he would appear in the final entry in the Wolverine trilogy. (Fans suspected the malevolent geneticist would make an appearance since the post-credits scene in X-Men: Apocalypse showed Wolverine's blood being kept in a briefcase labelled "ESSEX", which is Sinister's real name.)

Even though Singer pushed for the character to be implemented into Logan, Mangold refused, saying the character's "operatic" and "stroboscopic villainy" wouldn't work in his down-to-earth story. As a result, the character was replaced with the more grounded adversary, Dr. Zander Rice.