Bryan Singer Regrets Not Finishing What He Started & Directing ‘X-Men 3’

While the film may have featured a few cool elements here and there, X-Men: The Last Stand is widely considered one of the most disappointing entries in the X-Men franchise only ahead of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Initially, Bryan Singer was set to return for the third installment and finish the story that he had started. However, things changed and the director went off to make Superman Returns for Warner Bros. which led to the studio lining up Matthew Vaughn for the film before he walked away from the project and was replaced by Brett Ratner.

While speaking with Fandango, Singer commented on how he likes to see things to completion and that response to the film might be partially his fault due to not doing such this time around.

I like finishing things. I like finishing this particular iteration. I know X-Men 3 was quite rushed and I didn’t complete it, and I felt a little like it was probably my responsibility to do that as a filmmaker, and I didn’t.

Singer has revealed before that he would have done a more “faithful” adaptation of The Dark Phoenix storyline and it seems that X-Men: Apocalypse could be setting that one up for them to explore next. While he wasn’t able to travel back in time and fix the errors of The Last Stand, he was able to right some of the wrongs with 2014’s X-Men: Days Of Future Past. Singer added the following in regards to that matter.

I might not have killed all those characters. But that’s what was so fun about Days of Future Past. We had a joke on set: ‘Hey Brian, you’re not only directing Days of Future Past — you’re actually living it!’ I was going back and making changes in history. [With X-Men: The Last Stand], I don’t fault anyone, including myself. It was just that circumstances didn’t allow for it to happen.

I think we all can agree that the third X-Men film would have likely been much better with Singer in the the director’s chair. I’ll forever be curious regarding exactly what he had planned for the film though. Let us know what you think about the above comments in the section below.

Source: Fandango