I'm sorry, but this thing looks more and more retarded with each and every moment that passes.
To add some clarity: I come from a comic book family. Rather, I've grown up like my dad; and in the end, if he were to ever pass any of his possessions onto me, I may be most honored to actually accept his ridiculously full amount of comic books, which currently sit in the basement of our house. We're talking thousands upon thousands of comics, from GI Joe to X-Men (including #1), what I'm pretty sure is every single Daredevil comic printed from the start of the run in the late 60's through a couple years past Frank Miller's run. On top of this, ever since the original X-Men movie in 2000, my father and I have taken as many chances as we can to see the movies based on these comics. From Spider-Man to Daredevil to Hulk, continuing on through even V For Vendetta, it's a family affair. My dad and mom went to see X-Men 2 together after it came out.
In addition, I grew up reading these comics and comic strips like Peanuts and Calvin & Hobbes, discovering long-lost comics like Krazy Kat... I've grown up appreciating the graphic-based stories as much as the text-based ones. I had a very easy acceptance of manga at a younger age (14 or so -- 1999, before the explosion). So I take my comics quite seriously. I'm close to Matt Murdock, Peter Parker, Kal-El, and so on. They're my Holden, my Frodo, my Harry Potter. They're my Dr. Gonzo, my Raoul Duke (actually, I was much more familiar with Duke from Doonesbury well before I was aware of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson). The end of Calvin & Hobbes is one of the sadder memories I had before I turned 10.
And at the same time, I'm interested in the other visual storytelling fixture: the motion picture. It started with October Sky -- so I have an absolute bias towards Jake Gyllenhaal and Chris Cooper -- and only grew as I began to snake backwards through the hundred-year history of the art form. I've explained this before, and it becomes very obvious how much I love film from the moment one talks to me face-to-face.
But everything started with X-Men, if you want to be told the truth. I figure if there was any movie that really expanded my horizons, it started with that, a little over a year following my sudden introduction into "yes, motion pictures are made by people." For many people, The Lord of The Rings will be their inspiration for film-making; but I think mine will end up being X-Men, if I ever do make a large-scale action picture. My template will be the second one, of course -- a movie made with the least amount of interference from the studio.
We're a little more than a week from the release of X-Men 3. And there's more than a few problems I've seen with the picture.
This film entered production on August 2nd, with Brett Ratner at the helm. It's suffered a lot of what the first one suffered -- there was a budget cut three-fourths of the way into the production, as well as a moved-up end date.
First problem: Brett Ratner. How this man has been shuffled among so many high-profile, big-name franchises is astounding. He made two movies that made money almost ten years ago, and since then, has been put at the helm of a Hannibal Lecter movie (that managed to waste Edward Norton and effectively kill public interest in the Hannibal Lecter character), made a very bad Pierce Brosnan movie (After The Sunset), and did the pilot for "Prison Break". Yet his name was attached to Superman for a long while, he was considered for the original X-Men back in 2000, and New Line is throwing more money at a Rush Hour 3 then any company reasonably should. This is a man who you could kindly call a "studio sucker". He obeys the will of the executives at the helm without a fight -- and judging from the shots of Colossus and the general effects in the trailers and whatnot, he also can't shoot effects-heavy movies.
Second thing: you can point out that Spielberg shot Munich from June 30th and got it out for a December 23rd release date -- just under five months -- but the post-production on Munich was light at best. Spielberg also did the smart thing (which he also did in the just-under-a-year production cycle of War of The Worlds), shooting effects shots first, and then getting to the meat of the film afterwards, so there would be maximum time spent on digital effects and minitaures and wiping out stunt rigs. Needless to say, reports have pointed out that Ratner didn't really do that. And with Fox cutting the budget, the effects teams have been fucked over. Little money and little time equal bad effects.
Third: the actors really don't seem to have their heart in it, Hugh especially. We've seen him go balls-out into a character, what with The Boy From Oz and the first two X-Men films. But from what I've seen, he's not exactly pushing himself to do the best he can.
Fourth: They severely fucked with the Dark Phoenix Saga. When Singer and Dougherty and Harris were all on the project, they were considering letting the Saga build over the third film, eventually being the centerpiece of a fourth film that would be closer in design to the original story arc. They appear to have tossed that out in order to kill the franchise and remove the lingering plot threads. "We'll have her join Magneto and be a bad person"(which oddly sounds like the storyline to Morrisson's "Here Comes Tomorrow" arc, except you replace a bacterial-being controlled Beast with Magneto). Sure, it'll finally give Famke some big moments, but really, fucking the character like this is really quite sad.
That said, Ian McKellen is always badass, Kelsey Grammar will probably handle himself well, and -- who knows? -- maybe, just maybe, the film will somehow surprise me beyond all belief and be somewhat good.
But something tells me... that won't be possible.
I can't believe I typed that much about a friggin' movie I probably won't like.
But, like I said... comics are part of my life.
I just wish they didn't get fucked over in other art forms.