Shohreh Aghdashloo was originally going to play Dr. Cecilia Reyes in The Last Stand, a rival to Dr. Kavita Rao, but after Vaughn left the project, she was recast as Rao herself.
Lucas Til was told that his audition for X-Men: First Class served for both Havok and Beast.
Edi Gathegi auditioned for Agent Zero in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Banshee in First Class before being cast as Darwin.
Creator/Liev Schreiber was originally considered for the role of Colonel William Stryker in X-Men Origins: Wolverin, but he requested to take the role of Victor Creed, as he found that role more interesting.
Boyd Holbrook screen-tested for the part of Charles Xavier in First Class. He would eventually go on to to portray Donald Pierce in Logan.
Josh Helman was originally cast as a younger version of Juggernaut in X-Men: Days of Future Past before the role was replaced by Quicksilver. He was then cast as the young William Stryker to compensate for his role being cut.
Brad Pitt was offered the role of Cable in Deadpool 2. He would eventually go on to portray the Vanisher, an invisible character, who ends up being electrocuted by a telephone cable.
A review, this one appearing in the New Times Los Angeles, blasted the film for departing from the comic's signature yellow-and-blue costumes, and for giving Magneto, the "master of all evil", a sympathetic Holocaust-survivor Backstory. Which shows that he did actually read the comic... in the 1960s, and not once since.
Similarly, The New York Times had a piece on Valkyrie that erroneously claimed that Bryan Singer came up with the idea of Magneto's Holocaust backstory.
A negative review of in People Magazine, among other things, said, "Since when do superheroes have such traumatic backstories?" Oh, since about 1939?note 1938 if we count mass-extinction. Earlier still, if we count comic adaptations of pre-existing superheroes like The Shadow, Doc Savage, or The Phantom.
A Dutch magazine claimed the first X-Men movie was about Xavier having to stop his evil brother Magneto.
In a ridiculously inaccurate negative review by Stephen Hunter in The Washington Post, it quickly became clear that he either did not bother to watch the movie, or was distracted for most of its length. At one point, he said that Rogue had the power to reverse time, even going so far as to call her "the Mistress of Rewind". He was apparently confused by the scenes in which she extinguishes flames (using Pyro's power) and makes Wolverine's wounds reappear (he let her borrow his Healing Factor. His wounds reappearing is another problem) note The wounds reappearing, in fairness, may not have been strictly an ontological inertia problem even in non-mutants. For instance scurvy can cause the reopening of even extremely old wounds that have been long-healed. Wolverine may have been experiencing a similar effect with the loss of his healing factor.
A review in the Irish Times complained that Senator Robert Kelly (R-KS), who had been killed in the first film, was somehow alive in the second... except he wasn't: the Sen. Robert Kelly seen in X2 is actually just Mystique impersonating him. This was not only pointed out explicitly in the first film (for those viewers too sleepy to notice the characteristic flash of yellow eyes) but was a pivotal plot point in the second, which makes you wonder if the reviewer actually bothered to watch the film.
One TIME magazine profile of Alan Cumming described him as playing a "mutant villain". As in, Nightcrawler. It's possible someone just saw the first scene of him attacking the White House and missed the part about him being mind-controlled.
A review in The Straits Times for X-Men Origins: Wolverine states that Logan is American, when he is really Canadian. He even says so to another character at one point in the movie.
On the Mostly Nitpicking podcast episode onThe New Mutants, both the comic and film versions of Scottish Presbyterian mutant Rahne Sinclair are referred to by the hosts as an IrishCatholic (granted the film does appear to have changed Rahne to a Catholic).
Jennifer Lawrence has been very publicly displeased with having to be in blue body makeup for Mystique and admits to only do it (the makeup, not playing Mystique, as she has said in some interviews that she enjoyed playing the character) for the paycheck.
In 2022, James McAvoy admitted that he really doesn't miss playing Charles Xavier in this franchise when asked about it during an Instagram Live interview, and quashed any rumors of him returning to the role in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Bryan Singer has admitted at both the SDCC panel and the "X-Men Unguarded" group discussion on The Rogue Cut Blu-Ray/DVD that Professor X is his favourite X-Men character (he even got a Cerebro helmet tattoo with Patrick Stewart providing him moral support after this movie broke the $700 million mark), and this is why Singer gave the spotlight to the younger Charles in X-Men: Days of Future Past.
Singer even has a second favorite: Nightcrawler. He's been trying to find some way to bring the blue elf back since X2: X-Men United all the way back in 2003. He finally succeeded over a dozen years later in X-Men: Apocalypse.
In 2013, Hugh Jackman named Wolverine as his favourite role: "He's eternally fascinating to me. He's incredibly human, and a great sort of Anti-Hero and tragic figure."
Development Hell: The Gambit film lingered in development hell for quite some time before ultimately being cancelled when the entire series was ended after Disney's acquisition of Fox, and the subsequent Marvel Cinematic Universe reboot that will follow.
Exiled from Continuity: Thanks to a bizarre rights snafu, when they were separate studios, both 20th Century Fox and Marvel Studios had the film rights to Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, but with a caveat. The X-Men movies could not reference their involvement with The Avengers or their love interests like The Vision and Crystal, while the Marvel movies couldn't reference Magneto, the X-Men, the Brotherhood, or refer to the twins as mutants. While Fox took advantage of this to use Quicksilver in Days of Future Past, Apocalypse, and Dark Phoenix, they never ended up using the Scarlet Witch save for briefly mentioning that Peter has a sister in DOFP. Marvel Studios, meanwhile, used both of the twins, although they killed off their Quicksilver pretty soon after his introduction, and the Scarlet Witch ended up becoming a major part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With Disney's acquisition of Fox, all aspects of the characters can be used unrestricted, which in turn led to this series being ended outright in favor of a MCU Continuity Reboot. Amusingly, they would eventually end up using Evan Peters, who played the X-Men version of Quicksilver, on WandaVision, though this turned out to be a Casting Gag rather than an actual crossover.
Fake Nationality: Fake Canadian (Hugh Jackman, Australian), Fake German-Polish (Ian McKellen, English; played with in Michael Fassbender's case because he's German-Irish; Nightcrawler has been played by a Scotsman and an Australian), Fake African (Halle Berry, American; a specific Fake Egyptian case is Apocalypse played by a Guatemalan while the ancient Horsemen are Canadian). Exceptions are Mystique and Cyclops (although the younger version in X-Men Origins: Wolverine is Australian).
There was an attempt by Fox at multiple annual X-Men releases, but only 2016 saw more than one entry (Deadpool and X-Men: Apocalypse). Deadpool 2, The New Mutants, and Dark Phoenix were all originally slated to be released in 2018, although the latter two ended up getting pushed back due to the Disney buyout, to the point where Dark Phoenix was the sole release of 2019, and The New Mutants was the sole — and final — release of 2020.
It's probably not a coincidence that Fox decided to branch out into television formats after Marvel did the same thing, though Legion (2017) and The Gifted (2017) ended up as loosely connected to the film series as the NetflixDefenders shows were to the MCU.
Franchise Ownership Acquisition: The rights to the X-Men films were originally bought out by Fox back in the 1990s when Marvel was facing the fear of bankruptcy, and it wasn't until Disney bought Fox itself that the rights to the live-action X-Men films returned to Marvel some 20 years later; ironically, since Marvel was bought by Disney back in 2009, this technically makes the X-Men films a Disney property, meaning the franchise changed hands twice.
Long-Runners: The X-Men film series had been active since 2000 and totaled 13 films, making it the longest-running superhero movie franchise without huge Sequel Gaps. It finally ended in 2020 with the release of The New Mutants; in 2018, the series was confirmed to be ending following the planned buyout of Fox by Disney, making room for the Continuity Reboot into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (New Mutants and Dark Phoenix were already a good ways into production and couldn't be canceled, and so were released after the March 2019 buyout). Still, 20 years is a very long run; it's the longest running superhero series in a single continuity, having eight years (though fewer films) over the MCU.
Bryan Singer brings along cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel, writer Michael Dougherty, costume designer Louise Mingenbach, and for X2: X-Men United, editor-composer John Ottman, who was busy on other project during X-Men... and removes them from the third installment by dragging them along for Superman Returns. Everyone but Dougherty is in X-Men: Days of Future Past as well, although he does return for X-Men: Apocalypse.
In turn, Brett Ratner, Matthew Vaughn and James Mangold bring their own posses for their films.
Saved from Development Hell: A comic book-accurate adaptation of Deadpool lingered in movie limbo for years despite Ryan Reynolds' dedication to get it done. It all changed when producer Tom Rothman (who always opposed the project) left Fox and when a CGI test footage was leaked to outstanding reception, leading to the movie finally being made.
Trope Codifier: As the X-Men film series is generally regarded as the beginning of the modern superhero boom in film, its fingerprints are all over the conventions and tropes of the genre.
Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen were given ageing make-up because their characters are roughly fifteen years older than they are.
The viral website states the events of X-Men: The Last Stand occurred in 2006 when Kitty Pryde appeared to be, at the most, in her mid-teens. The Bad Future is said to occur in or very close to 2023, putting Kitty in her early 30s even though the films were released just 8 years apart and Elliot Page was 26 during filming.
During filming, James McAvoy and Rose Byrne were 36 years old while Michael Fassbender was 38, but their characters are in their late forties/early fifties in 1983.
Nicholas Hoult was 25 years old during principal photography, but if we assume that his character was around 20 in 1962, then in 1983 Beast is pushing 40.
Lucas Till is 8 months younger than Hoult, and Havok is only a couple of years younger than Beast. Alex Summers is roughly two decades older than his brother Scott, but Tye Sheridan is just 6 years Till's junior.