ntcrawler said:
If they signed Singer on to do the third movie instead of dragging their asses, none of this would have happened. As I understand it, they didn't want Singer to direct it, and they didn't want Marsden to be in it. Big surprise that they both then left. What makes me wonder is, what convinced them to bring back Marsden, if even for a ridiculous little token role when they simply could have declared that "Cyke died in a terrible car accident last month"?
Actually, they DID say in that same discussion and mention over on X-Verse that Fox initially ordered them that Cyclops was not to be included in the movie whatsoever. They fought to have him actually on-screen, insisting that he was too important to just leave out completely. Once they won the fight, they were given strict controls on how many MINUTES and SCENES he could appear in - amazing but true. That level of pickiness really blew my mind. After he said that on XVerse, though, he quickly said he wasn't going to talk about the decisions regarding Cyclops anymore.
So I guess that's as much as we're gonna get on the how and why.
I can't help but wonder if maybe not including him would've been better, though... ?
Any more details on what these ideas were? I hope they didn't approach the level of... artistic freedom as seen with that alternate Superman script... [shudders]
The only other thing was that the executives were the ones who insisted that if Cyclops WAS going to be in the movie, he shouldn't be mentioned much after he's out of the picture. Penn said they lost the fight in regards to the funeral scene - they wanted a "tandem funeral" for Xavier and Scott, but Fox overruled them and said Scott had to be ignored. Penn called this "just bad storytelling."
He also mentioned that he was very proud of the line "You killed the man you loved!" because her reaction implies that, despite the studio's desires to the contrary, Jean really did love Scott.
Beyond that... well, Zak Penn's posts on the X-Verse board after opening weekend did reveal a few other things that were, at some point and for some reason, changed. He has no idea when and why these things happened, but after seeing the theatrical release he told us a few things that were surprising to him.
We can't know whether to blame Ratner or the executives for some of these things, but...
- The last time he saw/heard, Jean still "flamed up" and even made a giant Phoenix bird appear at one point. He was surprised that she never once issues forth any flames or Phoenix imagery in the final film.
- He never knew they even shot a "Beast joining the UN" ending, so that was a surprise to him. As far as he was aware, Beast joined the school as a teacher at the end, at least in the last script he and Kinberg touched.
- Penn said that the last script draft he saw had Angel suiting up in costume (with holes he cuts through the back for his wings, naturally) and participating in the final battle. He found the sudden arrival of Angel to catch his dad "rather confusing."
- He also mentioned that, towards the end of production, a bunch of new mutants were tossed in and various mutants' names were changed. He pointed out that neither Psylocke nor any other "stealth mutant" showed up in the final draft that he and Kinberg say during shooting. Also, the Porcupine-mutant was never named "Kid Omega" in the shooting script, but somehow acquired that name afterwards.
In spite of this list of specific gripes, he still went on record repeatedly as saying that he was proud of his work and felt they made a really good movie, particularly considering how fast they had to write and how many constraints were put on them.
