RATNER PREPS X3 SE
September 15, 2006 - Brett Ratner, director of X-Men: The Last Stand, told IGN that he is working on a Special Edition DVD to follow the initial release of the film on October 3. "Well, there's almost an hour-long making-of, my personal making of the movie, my experiences making the movie," Ratner said during a phone interview. "There's special features which include, you know, just basically the creation of the movie - I mean, how we did it in the storyboards and original animatics."
The Last Stand was originally released in theaters in May 2006 to enormous commercial success. Ratner said that the forthcoming Special Edition, which has not yet been officially announced, will serve the fans better than the comparatively bare-bones edition due out next week. "This has basically the deleted scenes and some features, but the Special Edition, I think, is the real disc for the true X-Men fan," Ratner said. "It's like the definitive kind of experience that I had personally making this film, when I went into it, from every department's perspective, really."
Ratner also said that he has no plans to recut the movie in the future, and considers the theatrical version to be his 'director's cut'. "That is my cut," he insisted. "I mean, look, do I like the scenes that are deleted? I like them, but do they drive the movie forward? No. That's the beauty of DVD - the filmmakers don't have to fall in love with their scenes, because [they] can exist in another format that people can see forever. If you love the scene, you can see it, so you don't have to put scenes in movies that you love but don't necessarily drive the plot forward."
"Everything that I shot on film for this movie will be on these DVDs, you know?" Ratner said. "The making-of, the deleted scenes, the scenes that I considered, the alternate endings, the stuff that I thought, okay, maybe Rogue shouldn't get cured. But I was really passionate about getting her cured because I think a movie about choice needs to show both sides. But I did shoot another version because I wanted to make that decision in editorial when I watched the whole movie."
