James Mangold Reveals Alternate Opening for 'Logan' That Got Cut
Logan obviously borrowed more than a few ideas from the Old Man Logan comic. In the comic Wolverine kills all the X-Men although he was being mind-controlled by Mysterio. Mangold and his team of writers wanted this same scene but done with Professor X (Patrick Stewart).
In a earlier draft of the script, we were going to get to experience the Westchester incident. This was referred to a lot in Logan. Mangold explained to IGN why he decided against the opening grim scene.
"I literally had written an opening which started with that sequence. 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 show in the background for these characters"
It would've been crazy to see this action scene play out on the big screen, although it would've damaged some of the future X-Men films. And how Logan started was enjoyable. Logan really didn't even need this opening sequence. It was a good decision by Mangold to scrap the grim and bloody demise of the X-Men in a film called Logan.
Logan made sense starting in the future due to its plot. If it would've started in the past or even present time that would've confused the audience even more.
Source: Slashfilm
