As long as they don't borrow Mark Millar's horrible, awful dialogue.

wheee! I'm so fucking excited.
*runs off to watch it again!*

X3 is the last in the franchise, at least from FOX. Ratner's brought it up as being so, and FOX had the license for three movies -- and they won't be renewing the license afterwards, as far as is known. Why? Tom Rothman hates X-Men, and he hates it passionately. I don't quite know why -- but he does. I imagine it was an earlier acquisition that he wasn't too happy with? He fucked around the first one quite a bit -- Singer barely got any input into the story, and Rothman cut the budget as well as cut down post-production time in order to shove the movie out and get it out of the way.

Unfortunately, the plan backfired, and X-Men became a success. Enough to have Marvel asking for a sequel. And enough to allow Singer to assume more creative control over the project, which led to X2's sudden jump in confident filmmaking and the blowaway success it had. Rothman didn't immediately sign Singer to a third one, though -- nor did he sign Mike Dougherty or Dan Harris, X2's writers, to a contract for a third one.

Now, on the set of X2, Richard Donner's original Superman was quite the popular movie. And as Bryan and Mike and Dan were tossing around ideas for X3, figuring out their update of Logan's Run, and other projects that have been lined up, Bryan and the boys became aware that Superman had just lost Ratner, the latest in what I believe was a 15-person long list of directors. The three of them cooked up an idea for a Superman movie -- which would become the soon-coming Superman Returns -- and pitched it to Warner Bros. This got rid of Jon Peters (who had basically been the man who had been dragging Superman through the mud at WB since 1989 -- his mark on it is in name only, with Gilbert Adler and Bryan having done the real legwork on the movie), and suddenly, Bryan Singer was no longer available to do a third X-Men movie in a time that FOX could feel was fast enough to be still in the public consciousness. So they said he couldn't come back to the project, and they brought on Matthew Vaughn (director of Layer Cake), who kicked out a script in a week with Zak Penn and Simon Kinberg. This is, roughly, the script the movie is based on. A script written in a week, which wasn't quite finalized as the movie was nearly halfway through production. Vaughn left the project before it started -- due to a family death -- and FOX nabbed Ratner as he was coming off a couple music video shoots (Jessica Simpson's "These Boots Were Made For Walkin'" and a Mariah Carey video), and since then, Rothman has mysteriously decided to fuck around with the budget and slimmed down on both pre and post-production time. The movie, before production, already had a release date in mind -- but unlike, say Terminator 2 or War of The Worlds (which started production almost exactly one year to the day of their release), production only began about eight months ago, and there were additions and subtractions to the script as production went on. Complete sequences were cut and added, shortened and expanded. What does this mean? Well, it signals that the effects aren't going to be as up to snuff as they could and should be, for the third part in a popular series (watch Juggernaut break through that wall. Look closely at the breaking portion). And when you're adding and subtracting to the script, expect more plot holes. And when you give Halle Berry her way (she's bitched about Storm being more of a supporting character since the original X-Men -- she feels that, as an Oscar-winning actress, she should have at least the second-most screentime of any actor in the movie... even though she hates the X-Men franchise), expect more shitty presentation of Storm as a character. Expect more badly acted lines.

I've written a hell of a lot -- but that is the storied production of X3 up to this point. And mostly why I'm not looking forward to it as much as, say, Superman Returns or Spider-Man 3 or even Ghost Rider.

Anyway, if we ever see another X-Men movie, it'll most likely be from Paramount. They have a distribution/production deal with Marvel that basically is for all rights that Marvel has to charfacters -- meaning when the production/distribution rights for X-Men return to Marvel after this, Paramount gets first dibs, if Marvel doesn't make the movie themselves (which, apparently, is the plan for most of their comics that are not currently sitting in another company's hands).

Now, how much does this trailer reveal? (Do NOT click on the spoiler link if you don't want to find out some of the major reveals of the movie.)

If anyone read all of that, congratulations.

The story about there being a cure for mutancy was the beginning of the latest Astonishing X-Men story written by Joss Whedon.

btw, if they were smart they would have had Joss write the script.

He helped write the script for the first one. And we ended up with the EVER-SO-CLASSIC "do you know what happens to a toad when it's struck by lightning?" line because of it.

Although he did also write "How do we know it's you?"
"You're a dick."
"... Okay."

Dr. Rao is also somewhere in the movie, apparently.

Bravo to William_Miller for that astute and accurate rundown.

FYI

James Marsden (Cyclops) almost walked due to Superman conflicts and a strong dislike of ratner. But was contractually obligated.

Alan Cummings (Nighcrawler) walked because he hated 6hrs of make-up almost as much as he hated Ratner.

Halle Berry shoulda never had the role. Angela Basset (Strange Days) shoulda got the part.

Luckilly Vaughn, Penn and Kinberg may have had enough of a hand in pre-production to pitch the ball half way.

But alas Ratner will definetly screw it up, more than Rothman ever could dreamed.

Ok. All geek'd out now.

Even though he only had one line in the last one it pissed me off to no end that he sounded like a fucking farmboy. He's Russian you douchebags!

/nerd

max_traffic said:
Halle Berry shoulda never had the role. Angela Basset (Strange Days) shoulda got the part.
QUOTE]

word.

Hell yea! There's also an African model, whose name escapes me that me and my friends thought would have been awesome with the role.

The Last Stand... does this mean the franchise will end now. I wasn't impressed with 2 (please don't hate me for my opinion )



And I would have chosen Iman as Storm. The woman is supposed to be Egyptian, not a high profile celebrity.

I'm also sore that they never introduced Gambit. Most wanted to see him, we never got him (though props for bringing Beast since he is important to the political intrigue and Grammar should do a fine job).

A well-cut trailer to what's sure to be a stinking pile of rushed and forgettable filmmaking.

Hooray!

The two major strong points that Angela Basset would have brought to the role:
1) She can act
2) She's jacked, and has the super-heroine physique.

Damn right. She exudes strength and femininity. Probably would've helped Cyclops be less of a pussy too (though to his credit, alot of his story got excised for Wolvie screen time)

i am creaming my jeans. oh god. x men.