Logan Was Originally Going To Open With The Westchester Incident

Most fans and critics agree that James Mangold’s Logan was a pretty damn special film, but if one thing emerged as a somewhat divisive aspect, it was the decision not to show what happened to Wolverine’s X-Men teammates back in Westchester and instead keep the details of what occurred deliberately vague. Though the movie does provide us with enough information to piece things together, it turns out that we were originally going to get to witness the horrific events of the incident in gory detail.

While speaking with IGN, Mangold revealed that he had written the scene into an early draft of the script and Logan was at one point going to open with Charles having the devastating psychic fit which ended up inadvertently killing seven of his students:

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 shadow in the background for these characters.

Though some were disappointed that the death of the X-Men wasn’t shown, there’s no arguing with Mangold’s logic here. Plus, not specifying exactly which characters met their end preserves some much-needed ambiguity.

That’s just our opinion, though. What do you think? Should they have shown the incident at the start of the film? Let us know below and be sure to enter our contest for a chance to win Logan on Blu-ray!