7 Incidents That Prove The X-Men Franchise Is Cursed

5. Bryan Singer Drops Out To Direct Superman Returns/Matthew Vaughn Drops Out Over Scheduling Conflicts - X-Men: The Last Stand

After the critical and commercial success of both X-Men and X-Men 2, Bryan Singer begin to gear up for the third movie in the franchise - though with little vision for the narrative and plot, he was pursued to move over to Warner Bros. to begin production on a new Superman movie instead. Of course, with Singer gone, Fox were in a bit of a quandary: who could they find to replace the man who had gifted them with two great movies? After considering Zack Snyder, Joss Whedon, Alex Proyas and Darren Aronofsky, the studio hired Matthew Vaughn. As you're probably well-aware, Vaughn didn't get around to directing X-Men: The Last Stand thanks to another little hiccup. After casting Kelsey Grammer as Beast, Dania Ramirez as Callisto, and Vinnie Jones as Juggernaut, he fled the production, citing personal reasons. Later, Vaughn would explain how the deadlines imposed by Fox had put him off somewhat, claiming he "didn't have the time to make the movie that wanted to make." Vaughn later returned to the franchise for X-Men: First Class, but Fox still needed a director for X3. Enter Brett Ratner. Best known at the time for his actually pretty good Rush Hour movies (though it's fair to say their success primarily came down to the talents of Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan), he stepped in as a replacement when the studio presumably failed to find literally anyone else to do the job. Admitting that he was not all that familiar with the X-Men, Ratner delivered a messy, less polished and relatively underwhelming third chapter. Still, for what it's worth, one could argue he did the best he could as a replacement replacement.