Well, Im happy to see that theres finally something more controversial than the fate of Cyclops. Honestly, I understand your concern about the running time of the film. I always knew it would be shorter than X2, and I assumed it would be closer to X1 in length. Im not entirely sure of the final FINAL running time, but it will indeed be around the announced time.
There are a few things you should probably keep in mind, in terms of the film. One, we didnt need to do as much character set-up as X1. We made this movie primarily for the established fans, so we didnt spend a lot of time introducing core characters. As youll see, we just dive right into the film, thus saving a lot of time in Act One. Also, we really have a lot of character/dialogue scenes in the movie, which run faster than action (in terms of page-count-to-screen-time ratio).
What Brett said was right he did not cut any substantial scenes (I think he only cut one transitional scene). He edited the movie for a particular pace and energy, which he felt was right for this story. He wanted this war to feel like it was escalating and accelerating right into the final battle. As far as I know, he was not encouraged by the studio to cut down the film. I know Fox made FF and Elektra, but they also made Master and Commander (138 minutes), Kingdom of Heaven (145) and TITANIC (194). Revenge of the Sith was shorter than Attack of the Clones, and I think ROTS was significantly better.
Anyway, at the end of the day, youll be the judge of whether or not X3 is an epic enough climax to the trilogy. As writers, Zak and I had no control over the running time. That was entirely up to Brett and his editor Mark Helfrich. They paced the scenes the way they wanted, and all I hope is that its the best hour 45 you spend all summer
