It's no secret that disgraced filmmaker Bryan Singer banned comic books on the set of his first X-Men movie, so the franchise rarely embracing the source material isn't very surprising. This culminated with 2019's Dark Phoenix, 20th Century Fox's second and final attempt to adapt a beloved storyline, only to drop the ball and damn near kill the franchise before the rights reverted to Marvel Studios.
As great as Hugh Jackman was as Wolverine, the actor was quite a bit taller than the character's comic book counterpart. Ultimately, that's a change we could live with, but X-Men writer David Hayter has now revealed another major alteration the studio hoped to make way back in 2000.
"One of the proudest moments I had on the first film was when I was called into one of the producers' offices and they said to me, 'Hey, can we just find Wolverine in Alaska instead of Alberta and make him American?'" he recalled to Inverse. "I knew this was coming, but I was ready. I told them, 'Everybody knows that Wolverine is Canadian and the fans will kill you.'"
"I had no power in this situation, but I stood my ground and he stayed Canadian. I don't like to call myself a true Canadian hero, though," Hayter joked. "I'll leave that to others."
The writer, who might actually be best known for voicing Solid Snake in the Metal Gear video game franchise, would go on to pen the X-Men sequel and Zack Snyder's Watchmen. As for why his tenure with the X-Men ended there, he added that "we all got fired after X2 because [Fox] wanted to reach some arbitrary date." It was because of that Fox eventually released X-Men: The Last Stand.
As for Wolverine being a Canadian, that was, sadly, rarely referenced throughout the franchise.