The original, unmade version of State Of The Union was more of a buddy comedy between Vin Diesel’s Xander Cage and Ice Cube’s Darius Stone. The goal with the 2002 movie was for Sony to build itself a James Bond-style spy series for the 21st century. Instead of a suave, martini-sipping British spy, it focused on Vin Diesel’s Cage, an extreme sports addict with a healthy disregard for authority. The movie was a success, but Diesel got cold feet about the direction State Of The Union was taking and left the movie.

The Xander Cage series nearly took a more anthology approach from that point, with the plan being that each film would feature a new agent in the lead. Ice Cube was thus cast as Darius Stone, a former Navy SEAL who is reluctantly recruited by Samuel L. Jackson’s Gibbons to stop an attempted Washington coup. In contrast to the first film, State Of The Union was a box-office dud upon arrival and was lambasted for lazy writing, bad CGI and – the biggest crime of all – just not being much fun.

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The paranoid conspiracy thriller angle helped set State Of The Union apart from the first movie, but it quickly became clear a third entry wasn’t happening. While State of the Union was being developed, there were two screenplays being worked on; one saw Xander Cage fighting modern-day pirates, while the other found him mixed up in the coup of the final movie. In the documentary “From Convict to Hero: The Making of State of the Union,” screenwriter Simon Kinberg revealed his original directive when penning the script was to make more of a thriller than an action film, and his version saw Vin Diesel’s Cage working with Cube’s Darius Stone.

Of course, this original version of State Of The Union was heavily rewritten after Vin Diesel left. Director Lee Tamahori stated around 70% of the original screenplay was tossed out when Diesel left, with Stone originally being a friend and ally to the character. Stone was described by Tamahori as having a major supporting role and appeared to function in the story in a similiar way to Xhibit’s Zeke. If the Vin Diesel – whose Cage was “killed” offscreen in the sequel – version of State Of The Union had reached screens, it’s also unknown if Ice Cube would have been signed to play Darius Stone either.

That said, having Xander Cage and Darius Stone teaming up for State Of The Union, and having those two characters bounce off one another, sounds like it might have made for a more enjoyable sequel. Fans of the Xander Cage series got a tease of that buddy movie energy between Vin Diesel and Ice Cube when they briefly shared the screen in 2017’s The Return Of Xander Cage, but time will tell if they appear in the next entry together.

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About The Author


Padraig Cotter
(3499 Articles Published)

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It’s pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that’s out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he’d like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site.

A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU – where Hawkeye is clearly the best character – to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle.

He’s super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.

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