Fans continue to wonder achingly what a Joss Whedon X-Men movie would look like.
I wrote an X-Men movie. I wrote a huge overhaul of the first one. It was based on their structure. It was not used.
It was the same thing: They brought me in for the third act. I said, “The problem starts on page one. Let’s talk about the whole movie.” While adhering to the structure they had. That’s the fun of being a script doctor. And it’s actually what prepares you for being an executive producer in terms of script. You’re constantly re-writing. It’s like, “What does this mean? How does it come together? What’s it all about?”
My frustration over “X-Men,” which I think I was a little ungentlemanly about, came as much in the process of my not being informed that my rewrite had been thrown out as it was about the movie itself.
But, basically, I think I had gone a little bit more towards the comic. I had the Danger Room, which was, “Very nice. Lovely. Can’t afford it.” The Danger Room played a big part in it. And it also ended with Jean Grey sort of holding back and holding back and then doing something extraordinarily powerful, and in the last scene she was dressed like Phoenix. It was fun to do, and I was disappointed that it wasn’t used. And the first movie had a lot going for it. It had a lot of integrity, and a lot of love and a lot of cool stuff but I was disheartened.
Look, I’m going to have trouble watching “Batman Begins” because I pitched a Batman movie to them that I fell so in love with that I couldn’t get it out of my head. And, no matter what, I’m just going to be going, “Oh, that one scene. Oh, I just wish … Oh!” Even if I love every frame, you just don’t get over stuff like that.
I don’t recall ever hearing about you pitching a Batman movie.
It was right when they first starting talking about making another “Batman” movie, and there was no director attached. And I can tell you exactly when I pitched it because – funny little story – my agent said, “You know, I wouldn’t call you. I know you don’t want to do other people’s stuff, but it’s Batman, and I figured I’d mention it. They want to do something.” I’m like, “Well, I guess you’d have to ‘Year-One’ it because, I mean, you can’t go any further in the direction they’ve gone.” He’s like, “Well, y’know, whatever.” I’m like, “Y’know, I’m not going to think about it.” And then I talked to my wife, and she’s like, “Dude.” And she doesn’t even like comic books. She was like, “No. Are you kidding? It’s Batman!”
And, you know, I started to think about it and I did come up with an origin movie and I just got completely overwhelmed by how much I loved the idea. I was just like, “Oh my God! This is really … I’m going in to pitch! What the hell!” And I was clearly not on the same wavelength as the people I was pitching to. I was talking about personal epiphanies and they were talking about an ’05 slot. So the meeting was just kind of a non-starter. I was talking about a smaller film, they were really looking for a big franchise thing. So I got in my car and headed back to the office and I literally said to myself, “How many more times do I need to be told that the machine doesn’t care. The machine is not aware of what is in your heart as a storyteller.” I got back to the office and they cancelled “Firefly.” So I was like, “Oh! So, uh, just once more. OK!” That was not a happy day.
But, again, I don’t want to be speaking ill of the X-Men people or of Warner Bros., because they had a perfectly valid agenda that I just wasn’t really aware of.
Lauren [Shuler Donner, who produces the “X-Men” movies] has always been a big supporter, and so has Avi [Arad, CEO of Marvel Studios], and we talked about “X3” but the schedule totally didn’t work out. But had I done an X-Men movie – and obviously it would have been “X3,” the first one I that I could have done – I just feel like I would have pared it down character-wise. They were talking about all the new characters they were going to bring out, and I was like, “I think you have all these great actors in your movie already. [laughs] Why don’t we, y’know, stick with them?’”
But “X3” was definitely a Phoenix story because I think Famke Janssen is really underrated as an actress anyway, and because it’s Phoenix, for Christ’s sake.
Have you used anything in Astonishing X-Men [the best-selling Marvel comic book Whedon has been writing] that you had originally been thinking about for the first “X-Men” movie?
Nothing from the movie script is even remotely connected to the comic book. I can’t really do that. I can’t really take something and then stick it somewhere else. If I could it would probably make life easier, cause I often think up chunks of stuff that I then can’t use. But the fact is you have to come at everything as if there had been nothing before and there will be nothing after.
I mean, if I’d had a great idea that was a great idea for a comic book for the X-Men as they were when Grant Morrison left them [Morrison was writing the comic-book adventures of Cyclops and Wolverine immediately prior to Whedon’s run] that happened to have been something I wrote for the movie that had been taken out, I might have considered it. But that wasn’t the case.
You’ve been critical of the first “X-Men” feature’s script. What did you perceive as its chief deficiencies?
Eh, I don’t feel like ragging on somebody else’s work. In private I’m just as catty as anybody, but that’s not something I would really do in an interview. The movie is never going to be satisfying to somebody who wrote a script that wasn’t used. Whether or not the script was better or worse, that person is always going to have a skewed perception of the movie.
Were you surprised at how well the first “X-Men” film was received?
I think I was a little surprised. But, like I said, it had an integrity to it, and it had some moments and it had a feel that was a little bit fresh. And superhero movies were notoriously bad, and it sort of stuck its head above the pack a bit.
