James Mangold Details Original 'Logan' Opening Featuring Death Of The X-Men, Talks Cut Jean Grey Reference

Hugh Jackman‘s last stand as Wolverine in “Logan” is now on pretty much every format you could want, and the team is doing one last press spin before moving on. Director James Mangold has revealed some interesting nuggets about the elements that didn’t make it into the movie.

In “Logan,” an event that is only known as the “Westchester incident” hangs heavy over the aging Charles Xavier, who was responsible for the accidental slaughtering of X-Men. In the final film, the Westchester incident is mentioned only in passing, but Mangold reveals that an early draft of the script included the harrowing moment.

“I literally had written an opening which started with that sequence,” he told IGN. “And so it was quite literal, who was dead. But the reason we didn’t do it wasn’t to spare other films, it was that it redefined the movie. It made the movie about the X-Men, instead of being about Logan and Charles. And irrevocably, when you read the script opening that way, it became about this other tragedy, as opposed to that tragedy being something hovering like a shadow in the background for these characters.”

In the deleted scenes of the film, it’s mentioned that Logan was once married to his longtime flame Jean Grey, but she was accidentally killed by the increasingly unstable Xavier. And again, Mangold decided this was best left out of the final cut.

“I felt it really brought the emotion down and dark in a moment when things were feeling very hopeful at this house,” he told THR. “This was something we had written only a part of and then improvised. I like the moment in isolation a lot, but when cut into the movie it had a powerful effect of damping that moment and kind of making the Munson family seem a little strange for keeping them there.”

Fascinating stuff, and it’s clear that with each choice, Mangold wanted the story to focus as much as possible on Logan, and not bring in associations from the rest of the X-Men franchise.

“Logan” is now available on home video. Below, check out the Honest Trailer for the movie, featuring a special appearance by Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool.