Considering Professor X's telepathic powers, you'd think he might have seen this one coming.

"Inception," which has been the number-one film at the box office for the past three weeks, has had an uncanny effect on moviegoers across the world, almost demanding repeat business to unlock its mysteries. But "Inception" has also had an unlikely effect on a certain uncanny superhero franchise: Marvel Comics' X-Men. According to "X-Men: First Class" director Matthew Vaughn, a recent viewing of the blockbuster Christopher Nolan film forced him to change his own movie because of similarities to "Inception's" surreal, zero-gravity, rotating-room fight scenes.

Vaughn explained his changes to the L.A. Times: "I saw 'Inception,' which I loved, but my heart sank when I saw that a few of the ideas we had were up [on the screen]. So it's either leave it in and look as if you're copying or change things. We completely ripped out about 12 pages of the script and the storyboards."

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Vaughn admitted that he had also envisioned rotating rooms in his new film, but now that's too closely associated with "Inception's" signature scene, one that featured a real-life, 120-foot-long, 30-foot-wide spinning corridor and precise choreography.

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It's commendable that Vaughn doesn't want to create the impression that he borrowed an idea from an already-popular source, avoiding the inevitable backlash that would occur once the similarities were discovered. Nolan, however, might not be so fortunate now that "Inception's" uncanny -- if coincidental -- resemblance to a previous work is surfacing: this Scrooge McDuck comic in which thieves invade the avaricious waterfowl's dreams to steal the combinations to his vault. Luckily for Nolan, his movie's already got a three-week, $200 million head start on any potential controversy.