X-Men: Fear The Beast - 8 Biggest Takeaways From The Abandoned Movie Script

With the recent release of Dark Phoenix, we’ve now officially said goodbye to Fox’s onscreen X-Men, a franchise that has been in play for almost two decades. It hasn’t always been smooth sailing for the series, which has flitted from mediocrity (The Last Stand) to true greatness (Days Of Future Past), but on the whole, we’ve been lucky to get some really fantastic X-Men movies over the years.

And if the stars had aligned in the right way, we could’ve seen a couple more.

Fox’s list of unmade X-Men movies is quite extensive, with X-Men Origins: Magneto being abandoned in the late 2000s, and a Fantastic Four/X-Men/Daredevil mashup being considered at one point. On the downside, we don't really know much about any of these projects, but the exception in that regard is X-Men: Fear The Beast, a standalone Hank McCoy adventure whose script was recently published online.

It’s a fascinating read too, giving us an idea of exactly how a solo Beast film would work. But if you don’t have time to browse all 100 pages, you're in the right place! Let’s break down the script’s most interesting ideas, characters, and moments...

After a prologue set in a small snowy village, Fear The Beast cuts to the X-Men - Hank, Raven, Scott, Storm, Jubilee, Jean, and some other unnamed students - riding through Times Square in a school bus. The group is then attacked by The Friends of Humanity and four metal Attack-Bots, and an explosive battle soon breaks out.

Raven takes a bullet to the thigh, and takes cover behind a nearby van. But she isn't safe - an Attack-Bot takes aim at the van and blows it up, which kills her. The other X-Men then enter the fray, with Scott, Storm and Jubilee attempting to protect the bus and fight off the Attack-Bots.

Jubilee is the next to fall, after a laser blast "eviscerates" her and the surrounding area. Furious, Beast goes crazy on the other Bots and soldiers, failing to realise that Storm is in danger. Storm is then surrounded by soldiers and has multiple guns pointed at her, and just as they’re about to fire... everything freezes.

Because, of course, the X-Men haven’t actually been killed off - they’re just in the Danger Room, and this is all a simulation.

Big superhero blockbusters rarely kill off their biggest characters permanently, so when it comes to deaths, the best we can hope for is a fakeout, or a "they'll be back later!" situation, like we got at the end of Avengers: Infinity War.

These deaths are still shocking in the moment though, and Fear The Beast’s opening action sequence is certainly that. Watching the X-Men get absolutely battered would’ve been an intense, fitting way to open this movie, perfectly setting the stage for the darker story to come.