From ew, And now for some news that will make you drop your coffee mug to the floor in slow motion: Bryan Singer is returning to X-Men! According to the Hollywood Reporter, Fox has confirmed that the The Usual Suspects director will be back to take on the next installment in the blockbuster series.
This is a smart move. The first two X-Men movies, helmed by Singer, adhered to the golden rule of superhero franchises, namely that the second film will be better than the first. Cleverly, Singer hoped to avoid the other golden rule, that the third film will suck eggs, by hop-skipping from Marvel to DC and making Superman Returns. (But he forgot something key: Returns is meant to follow Richard Donner’s Superman II , a superior super-sequel, making it technically the third film in that series. Nobody but nobody escapes the curse.)
Like someone who just went through a bad breakup and is willing to hook up with anyone with a pulse, Fox hired Brett Ratner to do the X-Men: The Last Stand, which many fans believe ended up blowing more than one of Storm’s hurricanes. So, both humbled and willing to give the relationship one more shot, Fox and Singer are back together to work on a prequel titled X-Men: First Class that will follow the lives of the mutants as teenagers. Which means we might be seeing an awkward Wolverine at prom, Mystique’s poorly attended Sweet 16, and Toad frantically applying Clearasil to his first wart. Honestly, I’m interested as long as they hire new, younger actors and stay away from that creepy anti-aging CGI used to make Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen look like evil CPR dummies.
I actually believe that bringing Singer back to create a whole new storyline within the same universe is a good way to mix the new with the proven, and it might go far in helping this series rise like a Phoenix Saga from the cold, wet ashes Ratner left behind. My only suggestion: Somehow use the theme music from the animated series. That stuff is amazing.
9 comments:
This is bullshit. They're just trying to do Star Trek again. Everybody's going to try to repeat that shit, but nobody will be able to, because there's only one J. J. Abrams and there's only one Star Trek.
Totally agree, sounds like a crap fest.
Furthermore I've never liked Bryan Singer; he's overrated. And I totally hated The Usual Suspects.
(ducks to avoid thrown objects)
And what's all this about the third X-Men movie sucking? I'm no Brett Ratner fan, but I really enjoyed The Last Stand. At least enough that I won't cringe as much if I hear he's doing something with a franchise I like.
Maybe it didn't make enough money. Let's check Wikipedia... "Its opening-day gross of $45.5 million is the fourth-highest on record while its opening weekend gross of $103 million is the fifth highest ever."
Nope, that's not it.
You're lucky you ducked Jordan that tomato was really ripe.
As long as we're all in Heresy Mode, I've only seen it one time, but I was honestly not personally offended (as the rest of the world seems to be) by Spiderman 3.
* sounds of blog gang-tackle *
In fact, most of the collective wrath towards Part Threes seems unwarranted. It's sort of like, in any hierarchy of three things, you're going to have a Good, Better, Best, or a gold, silver, bronze, or a Good, Bad, & Ugly.
Witness:
Superman III (the 80s one, but brilliant point about Singer's being the REAL III, and that you can't escape the curse): sure, you had Richard Pryor, and Robert Vaughn not even filling Gene Hackman's socks, let alone shoes, but you did have synthesized Kryptonite (secret ingredient: Tar!) that, instead of weakening and killing Supes, just turned him into an asshole. The scene of him sitting at the bar, getting Super Wasted, and flicking peanuts at supersonic speeds at the mirror remains burned in my memory, and I haven't seen it since 1983. Plus there was that brilliant idea of a program that shaves off the unused fractions of a cent, and deposits them into an account. Used to hilarious effect (and referenced) by Office Space.
Matrix Revolutions: arguably the worst offender of the "Part Threes Always Suck Theory." As Octo mentioned in his Haiku Hump Day devoted to The Matrix, he liked the film, as do I, but I will argue that people were collectively pissed because what you really wanted to see, as a viewer, was the Machines destroyed, the cycle of the One (the inherent systemic anomaly - whew) broken, humanity reclaim its place in the sun, and Trinity end up Not Dead. Instead, she gets skewered, blind Neo gets robo-crucified, and we're left with a meandering vague conversation in Virtual Central Park. Plus, a "truce" between Machine and Man? Yikes. Still, the strength of the first two does in no way detract from me being able to watch and, yes, even enjoy the third.
Speaking of "meandering, vague" conversations, I'll stop myself here before I begin to defend Spidey 3 or X-Men III, or launch an essay on ROTJ, Return Of The King and Rocky III as excellent examples of How Not To Suck In Part Three. (Yes, even with Ewoks.)
I thought X-Men 3 was entirely adequate. The only thing that really bothered me was Nightcrawler's noticeable absence. Still fuming about that actually. X-Men 2 is probably my favorite super hero movie (yes that includes Dark Knight and Superman 2.) The opening Nightcrawler scene captured the feeling of reading the old X-Men comics back when I was as a wee boy. *looking back fondly*
I read that make-upping the blue people took so much time that they could only manage 2 of them, with Mystique and the addition of Beast that meant Nightcrawler got the axe. I missed him too.
Blue people are expensive -- ask James Cameron. Thy should have stuck with green people, like Star Trek; much cheaper.
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