More From Simon Kinberg On Anna Paquin's Role As 'Rogue' In X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST
Following reports that Anna Paquin had been cut entirely from X-Men: Days of Future Past, it was then revealed that she would have a much smaller role in the movie. Now, Simon Kinberg goes into further detail about the reason behind her role being shortened, what we'll see of her and more.
In an interview with Crave Online, X-Men: Days of Future Past writer and producer Simon Kinberg was asked to clear things up in regards to Anna Paquin's role in the "inbetweenquel". Fans were disappointed to learn that the actress had been cut from the movie, although the backlash seemingly led to at least a small part of what was once a significant chunk of screentime being restored. "I just wanted to see Ian [McKellan] and Patrick [Stewart] on a mission together. So I took them away from the main plot of the movie so that they could go off and do something, and [Rogue] was the MacGuffin of that mission. It was a perfectly fine 10 minutes of the film that didn’t fit the film. So we pulled her out of the movie and pulled that plot out of the film. I can’t speak to any other rumors about any other way she could appear in the film, but I can tell you that the main plot that we shot with her, we pulled out of the movie." So, perhaps we won't see her? We'll just have to wait and see.
As for whether or not Rogue's inclusion was a way of making up for her being "cured" of her mutant powers in X-Men: The Last Stand, Kinberg added: "No, I have plenty of residual guilt from The Last Stand and this movie in many ways was like my chance to tell a better X-Men story. Though I’m very proud of what we did with X-Men: First Class but the two biggest stories for me growing up were Dark Phoenix and Days of Future Past. Those were the ones that I loved, so what I wanted to do with Dark Phoenix is different [than] what the movie ended up being. That’s a whole other interview and conversation, but on this one we had a lot more creative freedom and more encouragement to be loyal to the original books. At any rate, it wasn’t that." Finally, the writer was then quizzed about his original vision for "Dark Pheonix", revealing again that it could and should have been a much different movie. "It was just much more the Dark Phoenix story. What happened when we were developing X3 was it began as the Dark Phoenix story and then it evolved into combining also the cure plot. At a certain point in the development process or pre-production process, the cure plot took precedence over the Dark Phoenix plot. So what should have been Dark Phoenix A story, cure plot B story started to invert, I think partly because the other actors like Ian and Patrick were more related to that other story." What do you guys think about these comments?