i agree i rather go X4..... x titled film set after X3 then doing a prequel film. Cause it would really shoehorn what they can do. Also what possible villains could they use. Then it is nice singer is going back to xmen, i still say he should have never left xmen in the first place. So i may have hated what he did with superman, so hopefully he will do well with xmen again.
Believe it or not, there are more options with a prequel than a sequel.
X-Men: The Last Stand killed off Cyclops, Xavier, and Jean Grey, and cured Rogue, Mystique, and Magneto. Essentially the entire main core of characters has been made useless in one way or another, thus limiting what can be done.
Jean Grey is a moral, her powers a part of her mutation, not from being an immortal cosmic goddess. It doesn't work for her to return.
Cyclops is dead, his death only made as "uncertain" as it was for elements of suspense and surprise, when Jean's true capabilities are revealed later in the film. He's not laying around blind at Alkali Lake somewhere, taken in by Mr. Sinister who just happened to randomly be lurking in the nearby woods. The psychic connection to Cyclops was destroyed, and caused Xavier to short circuit the mansion.
Rogue, Magneto, and Mystique are cured. There may have been a "shock value" suggestion that the cure wasn't permanent, but trust me, undoing everything about
X-Men: The Last Stand is actually just poor storytelling.
With a possible
X-Men 4, you are minus Cyclops, Jean, Xavier, Magneto, Rogue, and Mystique. Sure, the story can go in pretty much any direction, but you're going to be missing the characters that make the X-Men memorable. Trust me, a core team of Iceman, Colossus, and Kitty Pryde does not make the X-Men so special.
With a prequel, you are minus characters like Iceman, Rogue, Nightcrawler, Angel, Colossus, Kitty Pryde - characters who were nice additions in their own way to the movies, but not part of the core. You also don't have Wolverine, who is getting his own series of movies, and who people feel is overexposed anyways. You allow for an expansion of development for Cyclops and Storm, something that everyone has been crying for. And while you are a bit more limited in what stories you can tell, you can tell better QUALITY stories by having the actual characters that matter.
These prequel movies can't get
TOO big in scope, because mutants are widely unknown in
X-Men, or are a new, arising issue of debate. So you can't really have the X-Men out destroying Sentinels in the middle of New York or something. BUT, you can have Mr. Sinister. Xavier even mentioned in
X-Men that experimentation on mutants to that point was not unheard of. Gavin Hood also made a comment during the
X-Men Origins: Wolverine commentary that Cyclops' glasses were developed by a doctor whom Scott was seeing for his headaches, a doctor who secretly knew that Scott was a mutant. That to me sounds like a good way to introduce Mr. Sinister, connect him to Cyclops (and Jean even), and not have him randomly lurking in the woods at Alkali Lake.
You also still COULD do Sentinels - just not big mutant vs. robot battles in the middle of a city. You could have Sentinels being secretly developed, Xavier learns about it, and the X-Men must stop it. They do stop the Sentinels before they are completed. Perhaps have a secluded battle against Sentinels in a development factory somewhere. This could also explain where they got Sentinels for training in the Danger Room.
I think that
X-Men: First Class - a prequel series - is the best way to continue the
X-Men franchise. I feel it's a lot more wide open to options doing it this way, than by making a sequel to a movie that essentially brick walled the franchise (and this coming from someone who likes
X-Men: The Last Stand).
And given the nature of the movie - needs continuity with
X-Men and
X2, and can't be TOO huge in scope, I think that Bryan Singer is the perfect choice for this. He
can do action - he's got quite a few nice sequences in his 2 films.
I was really ready for the
X-Men franchise to just kind of end - not because I am disappointed and want reboots - I love all 4 of the
X-Men movies and feel that they were handled the way they should have been, save for a few exceptions. But now, I am excited, because Bryan Singer is the one who started all of it, and I think he can best finish all of it. I now think that
X-Men: First Class can be an amazing addition to the
X-Men franchise.
