X-Men 3: How Could It Be Better; Open Spoilers

Cafe Society
41

More than 2.5 is too many, usually. You can run a main plot, one or two sub (very-sub) plots, and after that things get complicated, movie-wise.

As for the rest, most of it gets cut because there has been no set-up. The Magneto story-line has to be finished, so there is the “A” plot. Bye-bye Apocalypse, Arch-Angel and all that. Ditto Rachel. As it was, they screwed the pooch by trying to wedge the Phoenix Force story into the movie. If they had just followed the cure story line, with character development and a decent director, they would have had a much better movie. Then have Jean show up at the end, right before “To be continued” rolls on the screen.

42

It seems like such a nit-picky point in a ridiculous movie like that, but I just can not stop hating the whole bridge thing.

How the hell does the bridge stay in place, after it’s moved. The cables and support towers are what keep it in the air, without them the road surface just crumbles. But no, it acts like a rigid surface just hanging there touching on two ends. Even if Magneto was supporting it at first, after he got stabbed the whole thing should have collapsed.

I simply will not suspend(hehe pun) my disbelief for something that over the top stupid.

43

Well, that… and the fact that’s broad daylight when Magneto’s moving the bridge, and then suddenly it’s the middle of the night.

44

Spiderman didn’t want to be a superhero, either, but they didn’t use that as an excuse to give us two hours of Peter Parker: Pizza Delivery Boy. Rogue pussed out, abandoned her friends, and ran away. She was, in X-Men 3, a coward. That’s a fundamental betrayal not just of the character established in the comic books, but of the character established in the first two movies.

Right. Which is why you have her fight Juggernaut. And not just fight him: have her kill him. Have her use her ability on him until he’s been sucked dry, and that’s when she finds out that using her power to that extent makes it permanent: from then on, she’s always super strong and super tough. She doesn’t have comic-book Rogue’s flight powers, but you’ve taken a long step into completing her transformation into the comic book character without having to introduce non-mutant superheroes into the movie continuity.

45

Peter Parker chose to the become a superhero for a reason: because he, and only he, could stop those villains. Rogue in X3 had no such motivation. At all. Period. Every last mutant at the school had more useful powers than she did. That’s life. There are ample mutant superheros. I’m not saying she wouldn’t use her power to help if she absolutely had to, but it screws her up in the head much mroe than the comics. She will not use it commonly.

So your solution is to have her become a murderer? She can control her power enoug to let go, definitely, and in plain fact she’s not a killer. Heck, she’s barely into her late teens. Rogue in the comics was at first a pretty callous person and paid the price for it, and became a hero to make up in part for her crimes. Rogue in the movie just wanted to be live a normal life, had an opportunity to that, and no reason not to do that.

So she did.

46

Except that all her friends might be dying. Including the guy she’s in love with. I’d call that a more than middling motivation.

She can incapacitate any mutant just by touching them, and then use those powers to her own ends. That sounds rather astoundingly useful to me.

Yes, that’s precisely my solution, although I’m not saying she should deliberatly kill him, or attack him without provocation. Say, instead, she shows up and finds Juggernaut standing over the battered body of Bobby Drake. She jumps on Juggernaut’s back and, for the first time, uses her power on somebody because she wants to hurt him. Except, she goes farther than she ever has before, and it ends up killing the guy, and permanently transfering his powers to her. She uses his strength to help turn the tide of the battle, but has to deal with the fact that she took someone’s life. Hell, maybe that’s when she takes the cure, if that’s really the ending you want for her character: but it’s motivated by guilt, not self-pity, and more importantly, it’s after the danger to everyone she cares about has passed. Either way, it gives her character a more interesting dramatic arc, it doesn’t undercut the central themes of both the specific property and the genre in general, and it gives another “Fuck yeah!” moment to a movie that was sorely lacking them.

47

All the complaints about the Jane Grey story sound like they coming from people who are familiar with the comic.

A WHOLE movie dedicated to that? Really?

I place less stock in the movie reviews of the comic book fans than I do in the reviews of people who have never heard of X-men in their life.

I loved X3. Probably my favorite one.

48

You can have as many as you want, so long as you realize that eventually, what you get is *Short Cuts * or *Magnolia * or Love Actually, only with mutants.

Which now that I think of it, doesn’t sound that bad at all.

49

Heh, well, that’s certainly true, but I saw it (in my head at least) as being more streamlined.

Scene 1: Large screen plasma TV in the background has a commercial on for Mutant BeGone Serum, buy one get one special. Warren Worthington asks his secretary about some new account that his firm was trying to land, only to be told that they decided to go with someone else. He asks why, she says, timidly “Well… I think it was, ya know… the wings.”
Warren sighs.

Scene 2: Cut to Warren in a Rolls driving down the highway, radio is on and talking about Mutant BeGone Serum. A look of intense frustration crosses his face and he swerves to the off ramp, other cars honking at him as he nearly causes an accident.

Scene 3: Warren walks down a very sterile looking hospital corridor while a nurse gets his vital statistics. He does not see, but the audience sees several mutants held down on operating tables with large metal restraints. Warren is taken to an operating room, put on the table and told to relax and that a doctor will be with him soon. The metal restraints pin him to the table and he starts to get agitated, demanding to know what’s going on. A voice from the corner of the room (which has been in shadow) says “You are going to become Death, destroyer or worlds, and one of the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse!” Apocalypse steps into view, looking suitably evil. Warren screams as he’s injected with some glowing green liquid in a syringe.

Cut to opening credits: “We are mutants. I used to play Captain Picard. I had a phaser then. But now I can kill you with the power of my mind. I still don’t have any hair though.”

Scene 4: Shot of ‘time portal’ opening up and Rachel Summers stepping out dazed and shaken, she walks to a nearby bus stop and looks at the map, tracing her finger along a route that terminates near the X-Mansion. She turns and starts walking up the road before glancing back at the plastic bus route map, and ripping it off the post via telekinesis.

Scene 5: X-Mansion, RS shows up, X-Men are suspicious, Xavier confirms that she is who she says she is, is from the future, and is Scott’s daughter. Scott is blown away when she tells him that Jean is still alive. While he’s still digesting that new tidbit, the Four Horsemen attack the X-Mansion and attempt to capture several mutants. Big fight. Rogue kills Ms Marvel, gets super powers. Kicks ass. Horsemen run away, maybe carrying a few X-Brats.

Scene 6: Text on screen = “deep in NORAD”. Stuff shirts mull over video footage of X-Mansion attack, video taken from an agent who got into the Mutant BeGone Serum facility and got a bit of footage of their experiments before being killed, maybe the last bit of film has Apocalypse crush the guy’s head, or something. Stuffed shirts talk about “mutant civil war”, decision is made to “activate Project Sentinel”.
Cut to view of giant underground warehouse and pair after pair of giant glowing eyes lighting up.

Scene 7: Montage, Apocalypse’s forces capturing/killing mutants. Sentinels capturing/killing mutants. President demanding that the Sentinels be reigned in, smooshed mutant children on the six o’clock news are bad for his reelection campaign. Stuffed shirt tells the prez "The Sentinels were designed with a heuristic algorithm that is inherently self augmenting. Erm, that is Mr. President, they can learn and make tactical and strategic decisions on their own and it seems that they’re no longer accepting any alterations to their mission parameters.

Go from there. Whee.
Giant robots, Apocalypse, mutants.
Happy, happy Finn.

50

Great Finn - except that you couldn’t really tie that off in one film and the people behind the movie wanted to make the third the end of a trilogy.

Saying that what we got as the end of that trilogy wasn’t any more satisfying. Don’t get me wrong, I would have loved to have seen Apocalypse (I’m not a fan of the comics but I did watch the cartoon so know a lot of the story lines that were in them) but him plus sentinels plus Rachel Summers is too much in one film. For a start you wouldn’t get a chance to even explore what Apocalypse was and why he was doing any of this. Yes it would make for some great kick assery but not much for story/plot development.

51

That’s true. Then again, if I ruled the world, it wouldn’t have ended at being a trilogy.

Well, there could have been a line or two in there like: “Apocalypse is the very embodyment of ancient evil, he was the first mutant and came of age during an epoch where mankind was at its most brutal. His only goal is to dominate and destroy, in the future that I come from, he is the God Emperor of Earth, and we are his slaves.”

But yeah, to be honest, no real character studies. No analysis of the human/mutant condition. No “have you tried not being [del]gay[/del] a mutant?”
Just, pure action porn.
It would have been glorious. :smiley:

52

FinnAgain That sounds good, but as a new trilogy maybe. Scenes 1-3 as the first film, with more about the cure and Apocalypse as the cliffhanger. Scenes 4-6 as film 2, with more about Apocalypse, the big fight at the end, with a brief mention of “Project Sentinel” as the cliffhanger. Then have scene 7 in the last film, along with some bits to wrap up the story. This would then leave the last film of the first trilogy to concentrate on the Pheonix story. Of course this is coming from someone who only watched the cartoons so feel free to ignore me.

53

Perhaps. Were I to direct it though, scenes 1-4 would take maybe 20 minutes, tops. Think Star Wars (the original, not the travesty) style soundbyte scenes.
Scenes 5-7 would correspond (roughly) to the second and third acts.
Say, scenes 8-10 (or 8-12) would be Magneto and the Hellfire club knocking on the Mansion’s door, offering an alliance. Then maybe some footage of the two groups using the Danger Room to train together for a mission as Rachel helps guide them to Apocalypse’s vulnerabilities. Maybe they decide to attack NORAD first in order to disable the Sentinel production facilities and give themselves some breathing room. That’d even give the filmmakers a chance to set up a US Army vs. mutants battle. Mega cool. Rogue would get to kick some more ass, too.
Then a major battle royale against Apocalypse and his forces, that gets crashed by a squad of Sentinels. Mega CGI explosion fest with bodies and debris flying all over the place. And laser beams.
And did I mention the giant killer robots?

Well… I’d do the Dark Phoenyx saga as its own movie, focusing only on that (although involving the Shi’ar, at least). Could even end it with a climactic showdown between Rachel and Jean.
Not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with the way you have it laid out… just that doing it that way would leave all sorts of room that they’d have to fill with plot and dialog and soul searching and intense, pained facial expressions.

I’d rather skip to the mutant/giant killer robot/evil overlord battles :smiley:

54

So, the first movie is about Warren Worthington checking into a medical clinic? Seems a bit dry.

Nah, it should definitly be a trilogy, but in the LotR style, where so much stuff is set up in the first movie that you need two more films to resolve it all.

55

Back to the Rogue/Juggernaut idea. I have to ask. Can Rogue absorb his power? It’s not a mutant power, it’s mystically endowed. Can she absorb magic?

56

Depends. Ultimate Juggernaut was actually a mutant. They never really said which version they were using for the film.

57

Rogue’s powers aren’t restricted to mutants.

In the movie she zapped more than one ordinary human - no powers from that, of course, but there’s no reason to believe that the life absorbing and power absorbing aren’t two different facets of the same power.

And in the comics, she spent more than a decade (real time) with Ms Marvel’s powers, which were given her by alien technology, and she absorbed a Skrull at one point, too, and apparently got a touch of the Phoenix Force after coming in contact with Jean at one point.

58

In the movies, he’s a mutant, as evidenced by the way Leech’s power affected him.

59

There would have to be a very odd setup for her to even be there. Frankly, the X-Men wouldnt want her on the field as she’s dangerous. If she gets hurt, it’s difficult if not impossible to help her.

Nearly every other mutant in the series can kill her or escape and fight her in their preferred manner at leisure. Any mutant with ranged powers, any mutant with combat skill, any mutant with evasive skill all win. Heck, I could take out Rogue with a baseball bat.

Except Rogue would still want to get rid of her powers even given that. She’s much rather be able to touch people than hurt them. This version of Rogue was just not a fighter, whereas the comic Rogue was a scrapper from the beginning. And killing off Juggernaut for Rogue is not a good trade. Moreover, this is a major plot issue and needs to be explored in depth.

Aside from which, I think that the Iceman was rather too young to have been in X3 as an X-Man anyway. That bothered me. A lot.