phoenix_force
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not sure if thisa has been posted before.. Ralph winter interview
Okay, switching gears... Are you happy with how X-Men 3 turned out?
I am. We struggled with changing directors at the last minute, as you know. But I was thrilled with Hugh Jackman's performance, Famke Janssen's performance -- I think she turned in her best performance out of all three movies. Ian [McKellan] and Patrick [Stewart] are steady, in terms of what they deliver. And the story was a good climax to the three movies. I feel good about it. There are things we would have changed if we'd had more time or different resources. But yeah, I'm happy with it.
There's been talk of various spin-offs from the X-Men films. Are you involved with any of those?
We're talking about the Wolverine movie, which would be a prequel telling how he came to be at Alkalai Lake and all that stuff. Hugh Jackman is in Australia right now doing a big movie with Baz Luhrmann titled Australia, so he probably won't be available until later this year. So we may not know exactly what we're doing until summer or something like that.
But there's lots of talk. The X-Men world is rich with different characters, so there are lots of spin-offs that could happen. There's talk of a "young Magneto" movie, there's talk of "the young X-Men," and of course Wolverine. There's plenty of places you could go in that world. I think as long as we could continue to make interesting, compelling movies that people want to see, then it could play out for a long time.
Yeah, there's no shortage of characters in the X-Men universe.
And there are lots of new characters who we haven't even talked about, like Gambit, for example.
A major player in the comics right now is Emma Frost, and we've never seen her on film.
We haven't played her out yet, yeah. There's plenty of room to grow in those movies, and I think Fox is trying to be smart about making the most of this.
Okay, for all the X-Men fanboys out there, which I again count myself among -- sorry, Ralph -- I just have to ask. [Spoilers ahead for X-Men 3: The Last Stand.] The final, post-credits scene in the movie showed us that Xavier wasn't quite so dead after all. As much speculation about that among fans as there's been, there's been an equal amount that maybe Cyclops didn't really die, either, since we never actually saw his death on film. I'm not asking for an official word on that; I'm just curious what your personal feelings are. Could Cyclops still be alive?
In terms of the story, killing Cyclops was about demonstrating the enormous power that Jean Grey came back with, and this conflict that was raging inside her. I can't recall any discussion we've had about Cyclops coming back. But hey, it's science fiction, it's fantasy. Anything could happen.
Nobody ever stays dead in comics.
(Laughs.) Hey, nobody stays dead in the Star Trek movies I made! We were blasted with, "You can't kill Spock!" And we were sort of like, "Well, if you do it right, you can. Because then you can bring him back."
Were you witness to any major backlash about killing those two prominent characters in X-Men?
Not much, really. It was shocking, so we tried to keep it a secret so you wouldn't know about it before the movie came out, though a summary of the script was leaked online pretty early on.
But I'll tell you this about that final scene. We went around opening night and visited a bunch of theaters, and it was very interesting. We went to some of the suburban theaters, and there were ten or fifteen people who would stay until the final scene, and they were kind of laughing and scratching and poking each other, saying, "I told Harry he should have stayed! I knew there was more!" Then we went to Mann's Chinese Theater, which is sort of the height of fanboy geekdom. And that theater was packed at the end! They sat through every credit and they made everybody be quiet, and when that final scene came up, they were cheering.
Okay, switching gears... Are you happy with how X-Men 3 turned out?
There's been talk of various spin-offs from the X-Men films. Are you involved with any of those?
We're talking about the Wolverine movie, which would be a prequel telling how he came to be at Alkalai Lake and all that stuff. Hugh Jackman is in Australia right now doing a big movie with Baz Luhrmann titled Australia, so he probably won't be available until later this year. So we may not know exactly what we're doing until summer or something like that.
But there's lots of talk. The X-Men world is rich with different characters, so there are lots of spin-offs that could happen. There's talk of a "young Magneto" movie, there's talk of "the young X-Men," and of course Wolverine. There's plenty of places you could go in that world. I think as long as we could continue to make interesting, compelling movies that people want to see, then it could play out for a long time.
Yeah, there's no shortage of characters in the X-Men universe.
And there are lots of new characters who we haven't even talked about, like Gambit, for example.
A major player in the comics right now is Emma Frost, and we've never seen her on film.
We haven't played her out yet, yeah. There's plenty of room to grow in those movies, and I think Fox is trying to be smart about making the most of this.
Okay, for all the X-Men fanboys out there, which I again count myself among -- sorry, Ralph -- I just have to ask. [Spoilers ahead for X-Men 3: The Last Stand.] The final, post-credits scene in the movie showed us that Xavier wasn't quite so dead after all. As much speculation about that among fans as there's been, there's been an equal amount that maybe Cyclops didn't really die, either, since we never actually saw his death on film. I'm not asking for an official word on that; I'm just curious what your personal feelings are. Could Cyclops still be alive?
In terms of the story, killing Cyclops was about demonstrating the enormous power that Jean Grey came back with, and this conflict that was raging inside her. I can't recall any discussion we've had about Cyclops coming back. But hey, it's science fiction, it's fantasy. Anything could happen.
Nobody ever stays dead in comics.
(Laughs.) Hey, nobody stays dead in the Star Trek movies I made! We were blasted with, "You can't kill Spock!" And we were sort of like, "Well, if you do it right, you can. Because then you can bring him back."
Were you witness to any major backlash about killing those two prominent characters in X-Men?
Not much, really. It was shocking, so we tried to keep it a secret so you wouldn't know about it before the movie came out, though a summary of the script was leaked online pretty early on.
But I'll tell you this about that final scene. We went around opening night and visited a bunch of theaters, and it was very interesting. We went to some of the suburban theaters, and there were ten or fifteen people who would stay until the final scene, and they were kind of laughing and scratching and poking each other, saying, "I told Harry he should have stayed! I knew there was more!" Then we went to Mann's Chinese Theater, which is sort of the height of fanboy geekdom. And that theater was packed at the end! They sat through every credit and they made everybody be quiet, and when that final scene came up, they were cheering.
