Bryan Singer Doesn't Regret Leaving X-Men 3

[Fanghawk]

Bryan Singer Doesn't Regret Leaving X-Men 3

The original X-Men director may revise Last Stand's timeline, but that doesn't mean he's upset it ever happened.

Bryan Singer's return to the X-Men universe is certainly worth being optimistic about. The franchise's first director is <a href=<a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/120833-Ian-McKellan-and-Patrick-Stewart-Return-to-X-Men>putting the band back together for a First Class sequel promising to be the biggest X-Men movie yet. It's almost like Singer is making up for lost time after leaving X-Men: The Last Stand for Superman Returns, much to the dismay of fans and critics. Interestingly, Singer still doesn't regret the decision to step down from X-Men movies. With the benefit of hindsight, the director thinks Days of Future Past proves everything's turned out for the best, and the opportunity to correct Last Stand's missteps is simply icing on a tasty mutant cake.

"It would have been nice to have done the third one, but I really wanted to have the Superman [Returns] experience," Singer said. "So I made that move and it pissed off certain people ... But you know, maybe I wouldn't have ended up with X-Men: First Class and where I'm sitting today making this epic combination of casts. So in the end, I'm glad I had my Superman experience ... I don't have regrets because I'm sitting here doing this amazing hybrid, so maybe it was all meant to be."

Singer has previously stated <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/121757-Days-of-Future-Past-Connects-All-Previous-X-Men-Films>that he might include Last Stand's content in the First Class timeline, something that would usually lead to a director's Danger Room privileges being revoked. Nonetheless, Singer seems sincere in his desire to acknowledge all aspects of the X-Men film universe, and hopes to see it expand further. "I think that if you really examine the X-Men universe it's every bit as big as the Marvel universe," Singer continues. "I'm glad to return to it and I'd like to get more involved in it because it hasn't really been orchestrated - somewhat with the Wolverine pictures - but I think there is a lot more that one can do."

That doesn't mean there aren't things about The Last Stand Singer wouldn't change. "You mean, what you're politely saying is 'fix shit'," Singer corrected. "There's going to be a little of that, a few things I can repair."

Source: <a href=http://ca.ign.com/articles/2013/02/22/x-men-days-of-future-past-director-bryan-singer-says-he-will-be-repairing-things-that-went-wrong-in-the-brett-ratner-directed-x-men-last-stand>IGN

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[Evil Smurf]

I liked all the X-Men movies. X-3 could have had more character development, but it was okay.

 

[CJ1145]

As thoroughly okay-to-good as the movies were... I am just not excited about this. The X-Men, despite all expectations, just feel bland to me. They're like the Neopolitan to other superheroes' Black Raspberry Chocolate Chip. I mean, yeah in a pinch it's all right but JESUS CHRIST, these chocolate chips are the size of my thumb! They are chocolate BRICKS!

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I thought they got Singer because Ratner was a douche that has pissed off everyone, and everyone in turn hated Ratner.

 

[Nghtgnt]

Reminding me that he was responsible for Superman Returns doesn't exactly make me excited to see this movie.

 

[Callate]

That's a surprisingly forthright statement from someone who's spent any significant length of time in Hollywood. Good for him.

 

[BrotherRool]

I didn't know anything about the X-Men, so wasted potential didn't mean anything to me and I found the X-Men 3 was better than 1. X-men 1 just didn't age well, the effects didn't age well, the plot didn't age well. The relationship between Magneto and Professor X was fantastic, as it has been fantastic in every x-men film, but everything else was pretty cheesy and typical.

I really loved some of the small characters in 3, particularly the wall phaser and Rogue's storyline in general.

But for me, First Class is head and shoulders better, heck I'd put First Class really high on my list of alltime favourite superhero films and it might make it into my general favourite list.


The one thing though, was the metaphor for homosexuality. It was sort of neat, but being gay doesn't give you the ability to blow up street blocks

captcha: you don't say!

 

[Chester Rabbit]

Boy that's not what I read 4 years ago Bryan... still not sure what I want though. I mean I freaking love Superman Returns, that's a beautiful movie that actually converted me into a Superman fan.

Buuuuut then again looking at the block buster mindless mess that X-men 3 was...still would have preferred he had stayed with that. I mean seriously everything was just way to over the top in that movie, especially Wolverine and his healing factor rant rant about all the flaws and how inconsistent it is with the ending of the second movie blah blah.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Look, there's direct correlation between the comics and movies now... X-Men is notorious for retcons (sometimes I think the comic made retconning a standard in the industry) and a movie that is nothing but a retcon of previously bad plot choices isn't that big of a surprise.
In fact I was kind of expecting it to happen.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

As thoroughly okay-to-good as the movies were... I am just not excited about this. The X-Men, despite all expectations, just feel bland to me. They're like the Neopolitan to other superheroes' Black Raspberry Chocolate Chip. I mean, yeah in a pinch it's all right but JESUS CHRIST, these chocolate chips are the size of my thumb! They are chocolate BRICKS!

I sort of feel the same way, except for First Class. I do like the first two, but they never seemed to have as much character as other superhero films, and by god, I'd love to see what Marvel Studios could do with it.

 

[Mumorpuger]

What I don't know/understand is why, when they had a director knock it out of the park with First Class, would the give the movie to Singer instead of that guy.

It seems unfair, to me, especially considering that I enjoyed First Class more than any of the Bryan Singer movies.

 

[Woodsey]

Last Stand was bad, but there was nothing particularly interesting about the first two either.

First Class, however, was a genuinely good film. They should be getting Vaughn again.

 

[Therumancer]

As thoroughly okay-to-good as the movies were... I am just not excited about this. The X-Men, despite all expectations, just feel bland to me. They're like the Neopolitan to other superheroes' Black Raspberry Chocolate Chip. I mean, yeah in a pinch it's all right but JESUS CHRIST, these chocolate chips are the size of my thumb! They are chocolate BRICKS!

Well the thing to understand is thst the popularity of the X-men was largely a 90s phenomena, that made it even bigger than it was before (where as a book it's performance was so-so), and what would happen later a shadow of it's former prosperity. Despite the "X" having nothing to do with "Generation X" it very much spoke to my generation on a lot of levels, and also got some very talented and creative people involved. As it became increasingly a business though a lot of the creavity went out the window and it started to recycle itself to the point where you wound up with a lot of angst aimed at a generation that doesn't understand genuine angst, combined with a retarded rehashing of the whole "We fight to protect a world that hates us" to an audience that doesn't really empathize with those sentiments on a differant, but fundementally similar level. Not to mention that the X-men decided to try and re-do itself for a "new audience" so many times that it really started to lose a lot of it's coherant narrative to the point where that concept actually started to make progressive less sense as things were continually strained to produce events and keep things moving on.

To me while the X-men movies were okay, I think they kind of missed what made the X-men popular, while recycling a bunch of talking points that convinced the producers that they were what made the comics popular. An example would be Jean Gray's love life. A simple love triangle does not even remotely begin to cover it in the comics, which is why it became so popular. For a long time part of what carried the X-men was sheer creativity and how F@cked up things could get. You can't cover this aspect of Jean and why it got so much attention without getting into concepts like Madeline Pryor, which started with cloning, and wound up her basically being the vengeful queen of limbo (I think it was) as "Madeline Pryor: The Goblin Queen" and all kinds of stuff. Not to mention that Jean's arch enemy/rival doesn't even show up, The Scarlet Witch, who is cool in her own right and drifts between being hero, villain, anti-hero, and totally insane for a reason. If you never noticed as Jean got more powerful (Pheonix) so did Wanda (reality warping probability manipulation on a cosmic scale) even when they weren't directly at odds. That's one of the classic match ups that kind of carried the franchise going waaaay back.

Jean is just one small aspect of it. The point is the sheer insanity of The X-men at the time. I mean we had demons attack entire cities (Inferno storyline), the X-men to to Asgard, and one lengthy plotline where they decapitate Cameron Hodge, only to have his severed head re-animated and made immortal by Mephisto, and then grafted to a robot body with intangibility powers, before setting himself up as the king of Genosha. It was absolutly frakking insane, and that's the point, especially seeing as it was well written enough to almost sell you on it not being that crazy. Today X-men writing is more like "Hey Zombies are popular, so let's bring back The Black Queen yet again, and have her animate a bunch of zombie mutants... Genosha is still iconic, so we'll put the X-men there, and call the entire story arc "Necrosha" people will love it...", pure marketing, or cases of simply trying to hard.


The point of all this rambling is that I get where your coming from, the X-men did get kind of bland, and even the wierd stuff comes accross as kind of "meh" and dialing it in. The still clever moments are kind of buried among the mediocrity. The movies being based on the mediocrity were okay, but kind of seemed to miss that the fairly straightforward portryal of the situation and complete mutant-centric focus wasn't what got the popularity to the point where a movie was viable. This is why I think a new movie might sell well, but it won't be the blockbuster that really "nails" what made the X-men mega-popular. To be honest I don't think you CAN do it with a movie, since the essence of it is just so much wierder than even comics. I mean it's not really X-men until we not only have a transdimensional Madeline Pryor love child show up as a regular character, but until we also see his evil equally transdimensional brother show up so they can fight and Daddy and pseudo-mommy (Jean) can get involved (X-cutioners Song), leading you to wonder "WTF am I reading, and what's scary is I can actually follow this and think it makes perfect sense...".

 

[Rad Party God]

*sigh* It saddens me when I read that people even remotely "liked" Last Stand. Having grown up watching both the X-Men and Spiderman 90's cartoons, there's so many things wrong with Last Stand (and Spiderman 3), X-Men 2 was simply and utterly awesome, it got almost everything right, but Last Stand... it makes me cringe.

I can't see how can they possibly "fix" Last Stand, although I'm very curious to see how can they pull this off.

 

[Casual Shinji]

The only thing I liked about First Class was every scene between Xavier and Magneto. Everything else was really quite... bad.

 

[-Ezio-]

well all i know is i regret watching it.

 

[Warachia]

"I think that if you really examine the X-Men universe it's every bit as big as the Marvel universe"
Considering that the X-Men are A PART of the Marvel Universe, I'd say it's significantly smaller.

 

[snekadid]

Wait... I'm confused.... People are ashamed of X3 and don't want it part of the cannon.... but the wolverine movie that created a fuckton of plot holes and really screwed with the deadpool character they then wanted to make a movie of is remaining valid?