Matthew Vaughn Says He Envisioned X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST As The Finale Of A FIRST CLASS Trilogy
Bryan Singer directed X-Men: Days of Future Past from a script co-written by Matthew Vaughn, but that doesn't mean that was the version the Kingsman: The Golden Circle helmer wanted to make...
Matthew Vaughn is out promoting Kingsman: The Golden Circle so it's a rare opportunity for the media to lob a ton of questions at the somewhat-reclusive director.
While we've previously heard what Vaughn would like to explore on a potential Man of Steel sequel, here's his thoughts on how he would have handled subsequent films after his soft reboot of the X-Men franchise in 2011's First Class. While beginning with the caveat that he simply doesn't like sequels on principle, Vaughn told Uproxx-
"The reason I haven’t done sequels in the past is they just weren’t exciting me. And on Days of Future Past, even though I co-wrote the bloody thing, the reason I bailed out of it is two things:
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First, I respect Bryan Singer hugely and X-Men is Bryan’s world and I feel he let me play in his sandbox. I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t my sandbox. I wanted my own sandbox.
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And, second, I didn’t want to do Days of Future Past next. I felt that one should be in a trilogy and Days of Future Past should be the finale of that story. I would have done a film in-between where you meet the young Wolverine and a new character, and then Days of Future Past became the young Wolverine and the old Wolverine and just really blow it out."
Do you like Vaughn's idea to have a film in between First Class and Days of Future Past (2014) that introduced a new, younger actor as Wolverine? That certainly would have answered Fox's present question of how best to continue on the character now that Hugh Jackman is retiring from the role.
It's hard to argue that Fox hasn't squandered the solid footing Vaughn gifted the studio in First Class with which they could have launched the X-Men franchise into a new direction. While he didn't direct Days of Future Past, it's clear that his and Jane Goldman's ideas were key to that film's success as only Simon Kinberg and Bryan Singer remained on board for X-Men: Apocalypse which proved to be the lowest-grossing film in the main X-Men film franchise (when adjusted for inflation).