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Not that it's titled that but it's the best way to describe it. He's all giddy over X3 that he's talked about directing Wolveine and now this. Hope this wasn't posted already. 
Rattner rides high with "The Last Stand"
By TERRY LAWSON
DETROIT FREE PRESS
Twentieth Century Fox
Director Brett Ratner reviews a scene with Patrick Stewart on the set of X-Men: The Last Stand.
While "The Last Stand" marks the end of the X-Men trilogy some beloved characters meet their demise in the battle against evil director Brett Ratner says a new series spotlighting a different set of mutants is on the boards.
"And if they want me involved somehow, I'm there. This movie was like my dream come true."
That's what happens when your movie sells $122,861,157 worth of tickets in its first weekend.
It wasn't an easy trip, stepping into the universe brought to life by Bryan Singer in 2000's "X-Men" and 2003's sequel "X2: X-Men United," two of the best comic-book-to-movie adaptations of all time.
"Bryan actually just called to congratulate me on getting the job, and to assure me he thought I was the right guy for the job," says Ratner.
"But when I did ask him if there was anything specific he might tell me that would help me do the job, he gave the best advice I could've gotten. He said, 'Stay off the Internet."'
Since Ratner obeyed, he remained fairly oblivious to a rash of flaming worthy of the fire-hurling X-Man known as Pyro.
One disgruntled Internet-poster compared the hiring of Ratner whose credits include the "Rush Hour" action comedies and the Hannibal Lecter thriller "Red Dragon" to putting the captain of the Exxon Valdez behind the wheel of a new luxury liner.
According to Hugh Jackman, who plays fan favorite Wolverine, he and his costars did not panic when they heard the news that Singer had defected to direct "Superman Returns."
"Obviously, Bryan is a talented fella," says Jackman. "But as things preceded in the sort of lumbering way these things seem to do, I think everyone felt fairly sure we could make a good movie without Bryan. He had left us with a pretty good legacy, you know.
Ratner describes himself as "a total comics freak" though he admits he never read the "X-Men" comics but was a fan of the TV cartoon series. He had been considered to direct the first "X-Men" movie, but was immersed in another much-anticipated comic-book project: the revival of the Superman franchise.
He left that project because the studio would not allow him to cast an unknown actor as the Man of Steel although, just to complicate the irony, Singer would cast a relative unknown named Brandon Routh.
Various names were considered before the producers settled on Matthew Vaughn, director of the little-seen, but much-acclaimed 2004 crime thriller "Layer Cake." For reasons that remain murky, Vaughn dropped out or was pushed, and Ratner got the call.
But not, hints Jackman, before the senior cast members including himself, Halle Berry, Patrick Stewart, who plays leader Professor Xavier, and Ian McKellen, who plays nemesis Magneto were consulted.
"I think we all just wanted to be assured that this movie would remain rooted in the real world, or at least the world we had created in the first two movies," Jackman says.
"The general concern was that when you have all these colorful characters, considered by some people to be freaks, is that it could just turn into a sideshow. You know, 'Here's the hairy man, here's the lizard boy, here's the girl who reads minds!'
"The beauty of these stories is the way they accommodate all our fears and prejudices about the world. They're allegories. Allegories with some very cool action."
Ratner says he was always on the same page with his cast
"I was really, really bummed out when I couldn't do the first movie, and then when the Superman thing fell apart, I started to worry that I would never get the opportunity to make my big comic-book movie," he says.
"Bryan took over Superman, Christopher Nolan had Batman. I mean what was I going to make, 'Ant-Man'?" (Actually, a film based on Ant Man, an original Marvel Comics character, is in the works.)
"So I just considered myself really, really lucky when I got the job. And I just wanted to do the script justice, because it had so much resonance."
In "The Last Stand," each mutant has to search his heart when the government announces that a cure has been found that would suppress the "X" gene responsible for his power.
The anti-X-men brotherhood, headed by Magneto, a Holocaust survivor who has always been convinced that humanity's real agenda is eradication of the mutants, believes the cure is a political ruse that could mean the end of their kind.
"It's such a great metaphor," says Ratner, "because it strikes at the core of who we are, of what makes us. If you were African-American and could take a pill that would turn you white, would you?
"If you were a parent and you were afraid your little kid was going to be gay, and you would be saving them from being ostracized, or even getting AIDS, by getting them injected, would you do that?"
As philosophical as the "X-Men" comics have always been Ratner remembers the "cure" plotline being part of the animated TV series "The Last Stand" is hardly short on action and special effects. He says his biggest contribution to the film's shape was moving an extended battle sequence on the San Francisco Bay Bridge from the middle of the movie to its climax.
Ratner is returning to par three of his "Rush Hour" series with Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, and he has a 208 project on the boards with Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock.
And though the X-men franchise ends here, Jackman says that writer David Benioff ("The 25th Hour") is at work on a third draft of "Wolverine," which could be in theaters in 2008. There is also talk of a Magneto movie that would be a prequel.
i dont remember was it used in the animated series? i cant recall.
