World X-MEN: Safe Haven for Those Who Demand More

[Herr Logan]

I'm usually reluctant to add more to the pile, but are you still planning on introducing the Morlocks? It'd be the perfect time to do so with Storm in charge.

I am now that you said:

Definatley set up the Morlocks and give Storm her personality change. It's a good moment for Storm and she needs her due.

Sounds good so far, no fish scales and a rag tag group anti-social mutants. However, I will advise against backstories to some degree. Mystique's backstory is fine, and it would be great to show the escape of the Blob, but I think by the fourth film, that the use backstories should be trimmed down. Essentially, the audience knows they are going to get an origin story in the first film. But they tend to want to just get the story rolling in the sequels. I have noticed that a lot of your backstories have been nicely intermixed throughout the films and don't really prevent any action, but it's still food for thought.

I think St. John Allardyce' backstory should be mentioned by the X-Men, his professional career fleshed out by Kitty for some mythos, but Avalache and Spiral don't. I want some kind of word about Destiny, though, but that shouldn't be hard (once I find out what the hell it is).

Is it wrong to make Destiny an extremely hot 50-55 year-old instead of older than that? Makes a better picture when she shares a couple smooches with Mystique, you know? And yes, she gets a costume and a wrist-mounted crossbow, just like in the comics. Maybe some other weaponry as well. I think she could look really cool.

This is fine, not much to say about it. I would like to throw in my two cents and say that I'd prefer a better looking Robert Kelly than the one they cast in the current franchise (even though he was a great actor). Isn't Kelly supposed to be somewhat of a reference to JFK or Bobby Kennedy? If so, I think it makes sense that the actor cast reflect that slightly.

Not sure how I feel about that. I definitely want him middle-aged and looking like he's been around a while. He can still be handsome, though. I want him to be essentially a good man (like in the comics), but going against even his own ethics because of a truly terrifying threat. I think perhaps it wouldn't hurt to have him have lost a wife to a mutant violence incident, but I still want it to be only the last straw for him, not make him like William Stryker.

One thing I'd definitely change is that he wouldn't be nearly as smarmy as Movie!Kelly, or rude in debates. I'd have him be respectful to Professor X in televised debates, as well as Henry McCoy, who would be blue and furry at this point, and known to the world as a former X-Man (but somehow not accountable for the damages... I don't know how). Kelly doesn't even hesitate to shake his hand, though it is furry, clawed and enormous, because he knows Henry to be a good man and worthy of respect. I'd want the three of them, and maybe another person (Graydon Creed, maybe? Or Larry Trask?) to all be in a TV debate. It would be dramatic and also funny, especially if Creed were there.
Kelly would be talking about national security as a policy-maker and presidential candidate. Xavier would be there as a renowned expert on genetics and post-human mutancy and social psychologist, arguing against mutant registration. McCoy would be there also as a genetics expert, philosopher and mutant's-eye-view commentator and give his reasons against mutant registration. Creed is there as an intolerant anti-mutant pundit, sanctioning registration and generally depriving mutants of human civil rights overall.
Creed would be throwing out racist messages, and Hank would be bouncing witty rejoinders off his head that even he doesn't get sometimes. Kelly would be arguing civilly, but passionately. Xavier would get a bit heated at times, but would be respectful (even to Creed, mostly) and would stick to the issues rather than go off on idealistic tirades.

I'm considering having Kelly taken away in the X-Men's Blackbird, having the X-Men behave as usual, mostly, and having Kelly get a look at them for the normal people that they are (meaning seeing mutant superheroes act normal, not just mutants). By "behave as usual," I mean specifically having Storm rebuke Kitty for being wreckless (i.e., heroic) back in the fight and a scene with Wolverine I thought of recently.

WOLVERINE: Prof, you or the Senator here want a sammich?
​

The Senator meekly shakes his head and the Professor declines as well.

PROFESSOR X: Just don't get anything on the carpet.

WOLVERINE: No problem there... unless someone feels like doing some childish, spontaneous barrel rolls again!

NIGHTCRAWLER (at the pilot seat): Suck it up, Canucklehead!
​

This type of thing, and the fact that Xavier is trusting him with his secret (that he bankrolls and instructs the X-Men), makes him reconsider his position.


I may discard that completely, since it's a stupid risk to take and a stretch to believe Kelly would keep quiet about it. Tell me how you feel about it.

Definatley set up the Morlocks and give Storm her personality change. It's a good moment for Storm and she needs her due.

Btw, feel better

You got it, and thanks a lot.

 

[Zev]

Is it wrong to make Destiny an extremely hot 50-55 year-old instead of older than that? Makes a better picture when she shares a couple smooches with Mystique, you know?

If that's wrong, I don't want to be right.

 

[Herr Logan]

If that's wrong, I don't want to be right.

Then it's decided.


Just so we know she's supposed to be pretty old and she looks like one of those slowly aging classic movie stars (hey, she could be one!), it's fine. If Magneto can be a Holocaust survivor who looks like one of those strapping sixty year-olds who run five miles both ways every morning, then Destiny can look like one of those grandmothers (GMILFs, specifically) that do those exercise machine infomercials. In both cases, we lay it off on their mutancy. The Professor, Ph.D. genetics, can explain: with great power, comes long-lasting youth and hotness.

Destiny is on the left in the Brotherhood pic. I say if a villainess has her thighs showing in her costume, her movie counterpart gets to be hot.

 

[Herr Logan]

Copied from the Safe Haven for Those Who Demand More (Temporary Shelter)

Just wanted to record a very small snippet of dialogue from 'Uncanny X-Men 4' for transfer to the regular X-Men Safe Haven before I forget it.


WOLVERINE: Sweetheart, in what bizzaro dimension are you a match for me in a scrap?

MYSTIQUE: In what bizarro dimension is that the deciding factor?


Yes, that's right, Mystique has never been a physical match for Wolverine, and Singer's X-Men film failed to acknowledge that. Mystique vs. Gambit (who doesn't appear until 'Uncanny X-Men 5', and will have superhuman agility as one of his powers, but Mystique probably won't be there) is probably a decent match. She's definitely a match for Cyclops, hand-to-hand (Cyclops is a damn good fighter, and so is she) but Wolverine? What a pathetic joke that was. Wolverine is the fighter of the X-Men. He should have been fighting Toad, not Mystique.

Also, Mystique isn't hired muscle. She's an organizer, a planner and a mastermind. In short, she's the leader, with her own Brotherhood of Mutants, and she's in fact a better leader than Magneto was of his own Brotherhood. She doesn't have the muscle Magneto had (i.e., his mutant powers) and didn't use fear and beligerence to keep her people in line. She reasoned with them.

That doesn't mean I want to make Magneto look like a blustering fool in 'Uncanny X-Men,' without the ability to lead. However, I do want him to behave in an overly arrogant fashion when mutants like Mastermind don't behave themselves. I'm not entirely sure how he should react to Quicksilver. I want him to like Pietro, even though Pietro hates Magneto and doesn't show him any respect. Quicksilver is there to protect his sister, the Scarlet Witch (both from Magneto's enemies and from his own followers, like the lecherous sleaze-ball Mastermind and the creepy Toad), and will fight for Magneto on the front lines of his war in order to keep Wanda in a more peripheral role in the Brotherhood, or at least to make sure he's there if she's in trouble. The Scarlet Witch, on the other hand, actually believes in Magneto. She is grateful for him having saved her life (when Pietro wasn't there... this is why Pietro is now pretty much always near her, so he'll never let her down again), but rather than simply obey him due to a debt, I want her to actually think he's not such a bad guy, and having been on the receiving end of mob persecution, she understands Magneto's arguments and agrees with most of them. She's not a violent person, but she accepts that sacrifices have to be made and violence is always present in revolutionary movements.


One of the things I haven't decided is if Magneto and his Brotherhood will be stationed on Asteroid M in the first movie. Kame-sennin responded to an earlier appeal for ideas that I shouldn't send the X-Men to Stephen Lang's Sentinel-infested moon base for the beginning of the Phoenix story arc at the end of the second movie ('Giant Size X-Men'), or at least picked a different option over it, so if I follow that decision, it won't be repetitive, having the X-Men go into space at the end of two movies in a row.
I'm thinking of having Magneto kidnap the Angel, bring him to the Asteroid and try to turn him to their side, like in the comics. One problem this causes the story is that there is most likely less space for fighting in Magneto's base, and power players like Cyclops will have to hold back to keep from killing everyone by puncturing the outer walls or destroying life support machinery or something.

If not Asteroid M, I'll probably have the final battle occur on that un-sunken island in the Bermuda Triangle. If I do that, then Magneto's biggest scheme of the movie will be threatening the entire world via projected hologram that he'll destroy major targets in various countries if they don't each disarm their nuclear weapons and cede him complete political control within a week. He'll be using a super-weapon that beefs up his own powers to carry out his threats, and he'll give a demonstration that costs no casualties, just to show he can. Someone's military will pin down his location and send an aircraft or a submarine over to the island, and Magneto will destroy it.
The biggest differences between what happened in the comics and what happens here is that Magneto will have his original Brotherhood with him (so there's the obligatory battle royale), Cyclops will still be full-time X-Man and leader, the X-Men's powers will not be negated by an inhibiting field, and it can't have the same ending since there's no Kitty Pryde in the X-Men yet.

Towards the end of the first movie, or possibly at the very end, we'll see government officials discussing an operation called Project: Wideawake, which will authorize the construction, programming and eventual deployment of giant, heavily-armed automatons that can detect mutant power signatures and possibly mutant DNA. Sentinels! The robotics will be overseen by Stephen Lang of DARPA, with Donald Pierce, cybernetics expert, as a major contributor. An expert anthropologist with a specialty in mutation, Bolivar Trask, will be charged with helping to program the Sentinels with everything he knows about mutants and calibrating the mutant sensory equipment. The Sentinels will show up toward the end of 'Giant Size X-Men.'


The Sentinels will be built with nuclear power cores. During the battle royale with Cyclops, Marvel Girl and the new X-Men (Storm, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Colossus and Banshee, with Sunfire having quit and Thunderbird dying about 2/3 of the way through this particularly long, Giant-Sized movie), one of the Sentinels' power core will become unstable (in the middle of New York City) and Marvel Girl attempts to muffle the explosion with her telekinesis (which she in no way is supposed to be able to do). By containing the nuclear explosion, she ends up absorbing all the radiation into herself, leaving everyone else safe. She falls into a coma. Moira McTaggert is called in from Scotland, Hank McCoy is called in from wherever he's been since 1/3 of the way through the movie when he quit the team, and they watch over the comatose Jean. This is how the second film ends.

'Uncanny X-Men 3' has everything having to do with the Hellfire Club from the Phoenix Saga.

 

[Herr Logan]

More on 'The Uncanny X-Men':

One main reason Magneto takes a shine to Quicksilver is that he reminds him of himself. He looks just like a young Magneto, with the white hair and everything. The casting should be such that people who've never heard of the X-Men (you know, cave-dwellers and the like) would watch the movie and ask "are those two father and son?" It won't be brought up in the movie, but it'll be heavily implied, although not suggesting that Magneto knows for sure that he's got a son.

Quicksilver and his sister, the Scarlet Witch, have a loving but strained relationship. Pietro is guilt-ridden for not being there to save Wanda from the attacking mob in Europe, especially since a terrorist like Magneto did come to the rescue and now holds Wanda in the thrall of his charisma. Again, Magneto is charismatic, and much of his control comes from that, but he will use blatant fear tactics against his followers to keep them in line if he has to. Wanda appreciates Pietro staying on to look after her, but does not want him to throw away his life working for a cause he doesn't believe in. Pietro feels he has only one cause: keep Wanda safe.

I haven't given too much deep thought into the Toad and his behavior, but I know it will be extremely creepy and off-putting, even more so than Mastermind, since he comes off as slightly inhuman.

Angelo Unuscione-- Unus the Untouchable-- is there pretty much only for the money, mild revenge, and for something to do, now that he can't get more work as a professional wrestler under his own name. He got thrown out of wrestling when they found out he was a mutant, so he's a bit pissed about that, and has pretty much nothing better to do. He's a bad guy, sure, but next to sleazeballs like Mastermind, creeps like the Toad, and globally feared terrorists like Magneto, he's a pretty average guy. He doesn't have big agendas like Magneto or Mastermind, and he probably won't return after the first movie.

 

[Herr Logan]

ANNOUNCEMENT:

I've got about three days left where I know I'll have easy access to the Internet for a little while. I'm moving on Friday to a house that doesn't yet have cable internet hooked up and I'm having my current modem taken back by the cable company on Thursday morning. If there's anything you know you want me to read any time soon, try to post it before Thursday.
I'm going to try and get hooked up as soon as possible in my new place, but I don't know when that will be. I'll probably be able to check in from the campus library in a few days either way.

 

[Herr Logan]

I've been thinking about my concepts for the third, fourth and fifth X-Men movies a whole lot recently. Tonight I was sitting at my table at Popeye's and imagining the fifth in particular.

As I no doubt said before, UXM5 (abbreviation for 'Uncanny X-Men 5') features the old and new teams joining together, Jean Grey returning "from the dead" (it's a clone thing... I know that sounds stupid, but so was what they did in the comics to justify her coming back), three new X-Men (Gambit, Psylocke, and Rogue, the latter of which actually comes to the Institute at the end of UXM4, the Mutant Massacre, the Marauders (including Sabretooth), Mr. Sinister and Apocalypse. The X-Men will split into two teams: Blue and Gold.

Blue Strike Force: Cyclops, Beast, Wolverine, Shadowcat, Rogue, Gambit, Psylocke. Yeah, Cyclops basically gets to break in the newbies. This is unofficially considered the "stealth team," for obvious reasons, although they clearly have a couple of characters with plenty of raw firepower. It's also the team you send in if you need to mess around with computers, since the Beast, and more importantly, Shadowcat, are equipped for that.

Gold Strike Force: Storm, Jean Grey, Iceman, Angel, Colossus, Nightcrawler. This is unofficially known as the "raw power" team, although they clearly have more than one X-Man capable of stealthy maneuvers.

Psylocke will be a former operative for a British intelligence agency, possibly one that utilized her psychic powers. Her reasons for leaving government work may be pretty much the same as Wolverine's-- she's sick of the red tape and prefers more freedom and dedication to a more idealistic cause.
I'm going to bypass any complex explanation for her martial arts prowess or appearance. She'll simply be a British woman (upper class accent) with a killer body, Asian features and dark hair with purple highlights who was trained extensively in hand-to-hand combat and also the use of swords and other "ninja" weapons. She'll have her psychic knife and use it occasionally, but will more often use her "psychic bolts" and telepathy. She'll show a good amount of skin on her outfit, but will have some body armor as well. I'd like to be able to find some middle ground between her original incarnation with armor and her ninja incarnation.
She'll flirt heavily with Cyclops early on, finding him mostly unreceptive. Wolverine will give her a warning about that kind of behavior, saying now that Jean is back, Cyke ain't got any room on his schedule for another woman. The only way to get him in bed is to use psychic manipulation, and nobody should have to tell her what the X-Men's policy is on doing that to
a teammate. Psylocke will develop a rapport (not telepathic and permanent, like Cyke and Jean's) with Wolverine of sorts, based on their similar backgrounds as government agents (even though she was a spy/cop and he was a spy/assassin) and their warrior spirits.

Gambit will be just what he was in the comics: a charming, brash, sneaky, Cajun ex-thief. He'll be in his mid-20's, probably. His eyes will be black with burning red pupils and/or irises. He uses a quarter-staff that either telescopes partially or folds up. He carries several decks of cards as well as kunai (throwing daggers) and kubatans (which I always wanted to see used as throwing weapons, which they usually aren't). He will wear body armor, but not so much that he can't move pretty freely. He'll wear black leather pants, but they'll be mixed with another fabric around his joints (hips, knees) so he can do acrobatic maneuvers. The boots come up to his knees or almost to his knees and are partially metallic. His torso piece will be dark red. He'll wear a brown leather trenchcoat. No, I don't care if black would "look cooler," his coat is brown, and no other X-Men are wearing trenchcoats. Leave that kind of bull$hit to Singer and his lack of restraint. Maybe Mastermind's coat can be black, but not Gambit's.
In a close-up fight, he will be very effective. I want emphasize his agility as one of his mutant powers. He won't be as good as the Beast or Nightcrawler in that regard, and he won't be as fast as Wolverine (then again, no one here is), but he'll be better than Psylocke, and she's really good.
Gambit's role in the Mutant Massacre will either not exist in this movie-verse or won't be revealed until a later movie. I want to give him more time with the team before they just kick him out. He will not get an inordinate amount of screentime or personal plot, but he'll get enough, and plenty of one-liners. He won't be just a cameo, that's for sure.
Obviously he'll have sexual/romantic tension brewing with Rogue, but he'll also flirt with every woman on the team. Cyclops gives him the "stop screwing around, we've got work to do" vibe when he flirts with Jean, and he gets a supremely evil eye and a deep growl from Wolverine whenever he seems like he's about to start flirting with Kitty Pryde. Wolvie is very protective, and he doesn't trust Gambit.
Gambit will possess a subtle hypnotic charm that makes both men and women act more friendly and be more trusting towards him. Because it's not an all-out psychic attack, it sometimes bypasses some of the X-Men's psychic defenses a little. It does not work on Cyclops or Wolverine, however, because they're just naturally mistrustful and don't have much patience for Gambit when he's not on task. It may work somewhat on Storm, who will be the first to meet him and sort of be his "sponsor" for the X-Men, but that may well be just because she likes former thieves. If he were ever to try and urge her, or any other X-Man, to really act out of character, it wouldn't work. It just kind of coaxes people and brings out their more trusting/pleasant nature towards him. I don't know if there will be a chance to show this, but if he used his charm on a regular human, it would be far more effective than on any of the X-Men, again because of the psychic defenses that Xavier has trained them to build up.

Rogue will have been about 17-18 in UXM4, so depending on how much time has passed in the storyverse, she'll be 18+ now. She is a former supervillain-- a former member of Mystique's Brotherhood of Mutants-- and that will have been shown in the previous film, at the end of which she comes to the Institute begging for help and expressing a sincere desire to not only go straight but eventually "fight the good fight." She loves Mystique and Destiny (the latter of which, and Mystique as well, is in prison), but they can't help her with her powers or her screwed-up psyche, so she seeks Xavier, a noted psychologist and expert on mutants. She will not act anything like she did in Singer's/Ratner's X-Men movies (i.e. she won't be a useless waste of screentime when not being a plot device). She'll have a thick Southern accent and a decent amount of white running through the middle of her hair (not just a couple of wisps in the front). She'll often act shy, since she knows her teammates have good reason to distrust and dislike her, but when she feels comfortable around people she's sassy and flirtatious, just like in the comics. She'll kind of alternate between shy, flirty and hot-tempered. She'll love a good scrap almost as much as Wolverine, and she'll have a "disquieting" amount of comfort or enjoyment of illegal activities like breaking in places (yeah, it's okay for Storm or Gambit, but not for her... sounds fair) or fighting the government.
She'll have all the powers she had in the comics (as in 1981-2000, not any of this fire powers or "multiple choice" crap), and it will be made clear she got them from a traumatic and irregular encounter with a former intelligence operative who became a superhero-- Carol Danvers, AKA Ms. Marvel-- who was one of the only people Wolverine could honestly call "friend" before he became an X-Man. Because of that incident, which left Danvers comatose even to this day, Wolverine has no positive feelings for her at all and always treats her harshly, coldly and/or angrily-- when he absolutely has to deal with her at all. It's a shame, because her being a young girl, she's right up Wolverine's alley for friendship, mentorship, etc. But Kitty was never a supervillain and she never tried to kill Wolverine's friends, so she gets all of Wolverine's warm and fuzzy treatment and Rogue is mistrusted by almost everybody. It's possible that I'll have Psylocke having known Danvers previously, maybe in a joint intelligence operation between the U.S. and Britain. Only Professor X is sure of Rogue's committment to the X-Men and to redeeming herself (Psylocke and Jean aren't charged with psychically probing her like Professor X is, and they'd have a lot of trouble even if they tried), although most of the X-Men do act civilly toward her, especially Nightcrawler, Colossus, Jean Grey, the Beast and obviously Gambit, whereas Wolverine, Kitty, Warren and Iceman give her the cold shoulder. At some point in this movie, Rogue will "take one for the team" in some big way and earn more trust from the others, even Wolverine.
Gambit, who never faced her in battle, never knew Ms. Marvel and knows what it's like to be distrusted and is also a "black sheep" among a group of "white hats" (it can be intimidating, being surrounded by superheroes who have valiantly battled evil for the sake of humanity, etc.). Also, she's a very beatiful, very curvy, very sexy woman, and that's right up Gambit's alley. Also, they're both very, very Southern. They go together like... gumbo and hush puppies..? Anyway, playful banter between them will entertain the fans and piss off Cyclops (who is determined to have them all on-task and not to lose any more X-Men).

I haven't really figured out how I would split the two Strike Forces up at any point, but I want to at least give a nod to that having been the case in the comics, and to find a way to keep Storm in a position of leadership after Cyclops' return (he comes back toward the end of UXM4, and he may show up at the very end with Beast, Angel-- who will have a real part in that movie anyway-- and Iceman, ready to work together again). I know I want most of the Blue Team down in the sewers, but also Colossus (he's supposed to kill one of the Marauders, although I don't remember which one) and Angel (who's supposed to get his wings irreparably injured and then kidnapped eventually by Apocalypse) and probably Nightcrawler. I won't have Nightcrawler and Shadowcat injured to the point where they can't fight later in the movie, but they may get pretty banged up.

Wolverine will meet up with Sabretooth (the real one, who talks a lot, taunts a lot and knows Wolverine from way back) down in the sewers and have a really brutal fight with him. The fight shouldn't be more than a PG-13 rating would allow, since there won't be any dismemberment between them, but it'll be pretty nasty, especially since Wolverine acts like a true killer-savage and enjoys every moment of it. Psylocke will fight him first, narrowly escaping death and then Wolverine shows up. Wolverine will eventually "win" the fight by finally stabbing Sabretooth through his lungs and heart (you know, like he did in Singer's 'X-Men', except this time it'll actually do some damage, like it would in real life... or in the comics), leaving him unable to continue fighting. Psylocke tells Wolverine they're friends need backup, and during the moment they both aren't looking at Sabretooth, he disappears. Wolverine says he's going after him, that a maniac like Sabretooth can't be allowed to run around free. Psylocke gently coaxes him out of his bloodlust and emphasizes that their friends need help. Wolverine cuts her off and says "Where are they?"
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Thoughts so far? There's more in a minute.



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[Herr Logan]

I have a few ideas about the big showdown with Apocalypse, though not complete, and I haven't decided on that which I have developed.
His four Horsemen-- transformed and brainwashed mutants riding mutated, winged horses-- will be wreaking havoc in public, with the X-Men fighting them and doing damage and crowd control.
Archangel, after showing off his battle prowess against the X-Men, will be holding Professor X-- who was kidnapped by Apocalypse or his minions-- at the point of a blade. The only way to take him out is psychically and with leverage on the blade away from Xavier's neck. Archangel has mechanical psychic defense mechanisms implanted in his head by Apocalypse-- stronger than the psychic defenses he had built up through Xavier's training-- strong enough to block even Xavier's power. Xavier also has a inhibitor device (like those used by the Hellfire Club in UXM3) that disables his powers. Jean Grey, full of raw power from her "secondary mutation" when she got caught in the nuclear explosion in UXM2 (yes, it was her... the Phoenix was actually a clone of her, with her exact personality and powers... the big difference between the two? The real Jean didn't have the White Queen and Mastermind messing with her head and coaxing out a dormant alternate personality spawned by the nuclear trauma), simultaneously disables both Archangel's defenses and Xavier's inhibitor, leaving Psylocke and Professor X to hit him with psychic bolts simultaneously (Xavier needs the help, since he'll need a moment to recharge his psychic batteries, so to speak).
Cyclops starts blasting Archangel against a nearby wall pretty hardcore. After several times knocking him back, Archangel pleads for Cyclops to stop, claiming, "It's Warren... it's me." Cyclops says, "Warren?" "Yeah, it's me." "Warren, I'm sorry," and he blasts him so hard he falls unconscious. It's for his own good, don't you know.

Apocalypse starts lumbering towards Xavier, feeling like he may want to just stamp him out and save himself some trouble. Xavier, still lying on the ground, pulls himself around so that he's facing the big guy. He gives him a psychic blast, which stops his forward motion. "I think that's close enough."
Xavier can't get inside Apocaplyse' head for whatever reason (Apocalypse' full range of powers and origin are all left a mystery in this story), but he can keep him back. "You may consider yourself the 'fittest,' Apocalypse, but not in all respects. There is a strongest mutant mind on this planet, but here's a hint-- it doesn't belong to you." Psychic blast again!
"You insolent little man..."
"I got yer 'insolent' right here, big guy," says Iceman.
Apocalypse gets hit with a snowball in his face. A regular, well-packed snowball. He just stands there, stunned and looks at the X-Men. Nightcrawler teleports to Xavier, grabs him and 'ports him back to a more or less safe spot. Xavier vomits, as most people do after teleporting with Nightcrawler.
Another snowball hits Apocalypse in the face. The Beast, who is standing near Iceman is laughing hysterically. Admit it, that's pretty damn funny. Iceman throws another snowball. Storm, also near Iceman says, "Robert!" in a scolding tone. Then she says, "May I?" Iceman says, "I insist." Storm scores a direct hit. Apocalypse is still a little bit shocked at all this, but starts walking towards the X-Men. Iceman then lets lose with a full-blown freeze blast, encasing him with ice. He'll break out, of course, and then Cyclops and Gambit attack him with optic blasts and exploding cards. While they do this, Iceman keeps throwing snowballs as well as ice-daggers at him, helping to obscure his vision and keep him distracted on top of dealing with concussive solar blasts and kinetic explosions. Iceman could also be using ice on his feet, but shouldn't be using too much hardcore ice power against him, since all the ice would just get blown up by Gambit and Cyclops. Storm is using wind to keep him away from them and other people. Jean is trying to attack his mind, making very little progress, since he's pretty well protected. The effort of keeping her out, though is even more distracting than repeatedly getting snow and ice thrown in his face.

The rest of the X-Men are either backing up the main powerhouses handling mutants, taking down the one or two remaining Horsemen (one or two besides Archangel should have been taken out by now) or handling the various mutants that have come out to fight for Apocalypse. They've been offered a place in the New Order, you see, which is better than being treated as humankind's b!tches like usual. Unlike in Ratner's 'X-Men 3,' the X-Men will not indescriminately kill these mutants, and they will not be the same kind of bloodthirsty zealots that were following Movie!Magneto in that film. Wolverine will decisively beat down or carve up a Horseman in front of several mutants. A few of them get on their knees and put their hands up, while one of them berates them and tries to attack. Wolverine slugs him very hard in the face, leaving him out cold. "Stand up before we tell you to, and it'll be the last time. Believe it," he says to the mutants who were smart enough to back down. Colossus (who is playing with kid gloves because he never wants to take another life again), Psylocke and some others try to handle the other dozens of mutants who came out to fight for Apocalypse. Psylocke does this both physically and psychically, but she's getting overwhelmed.
Eventually, Xavier gets Nightcrawler to get him closer to the fray and he telepathically broadcasts to all of them that basically, they simply cannot beat the X-Men in the long term. They aren't trained, they aren't organized, they aren't disciplined. The X-Men will take them all down eventually, and what will happen to them then? If Apocalypse is going to kill off all the weak people of the world, considers the X-Men "weak" because of their ethics, and these random mutants fall to the X-Men, what's going to happen to them? They'd better pray the X-Men beat Apocalypse and stay out of the damn way. Go home, and if they ever attack humans again, they'll regret it dearly. Now the X-Men can concentrate fully on Apocalypse and whichever Horseman may be floating around, making mischief.

I know I haven't accounted for all the X-Men during all this. Like I said, even the parts I have imagined aren't nearly complete.

I'm not sure how Mr. Sinister-- who is a very powerful and brilliant lackey of Apocalypse who commissioned the massacre of the Morlocks at his behest-- figures into this story in terms of fight scenes. I know I want either him to reveal that he took Jean Grey from her hospital bed somewhere between UXM2 and UXM3 and replaced her with a supposedly perfect clone, or have Jean remember this. She will have walked up Graymalkin Lane towards the beginning in the middle of the night and psychically called for Scott. I guess that's slighly like 'X-Men 3,' except Cyclops is actually Cyclops and he doesn't have to go to Canada and die off for scheduling reasons. Anyway, Cyclops is extremely pissed at Sinister and has to get a few good licks in. I want him to give a small speech to Sinister, most likely with other X-Men around, that describes how deeply it hurt him and the other X-Men to have his version of Jean go insane, kill lots of people and then kill herself, to be without Jean for so long and then find out she's been alive. Then he should say something like, "I've told you how you've hurt us. Now let's talk about how we're going to hurt you." Cyclops would be, once again, the badass he's been throughout all of my movies. Unlike certain a$$hole directors, I don't believe in shortchanging essential characters like Cyclops and Storm.

It's possible that this movie would end with the wedding of Scott Summer and Jean Grey-- something Scott and the Jean clone agreed to do before they infiltrated the Hellfire Club and everything went to hell because of Mastermind's and the White Queen's mind tampering of Jean.
Whether that happens or not, by the end of the movie, Warren Worthington III will still be the brainwashed cyborg that Apocalypse turned him into, locked in a special cell in the X-Men's lower levels (designed very much like the cell at the Vault in which Dr. Octopus gets put in my movie 'The Amazing Spider-Man'). Cyclops will come see him and express his sincere regret over what happened, and if he's getting married, he says he's sorry that Warren can't be there. Warren will be kept down there to be mentally rehabilitated, if possible (and we know it is), by Professor X, maybe with some help by Psylocke. Warren will probably be colder in his personality in general in future movies, but he won't be taking nearly as much of a judgmental tone with Rogue or Wolverine as he did in the past. He's damaged goods like they are now.
The costume Archangel wore in battle under Apocalypse' control will have been black and red armor instead of blue and pink tights. He'll wear "tights" again in future movies as a rehabilitated X-Man, and it will either be black and red and similar to his villain costume, or he'll go back to blue and white, like he wore before Apocalypse butchered his body and psyche.



[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]Thoughts?[/FONT]


By the way, if there gets to be an 'Uncanny X-Men 6,' it'll probably feature Magneto returning as the main villain, possibly with Mystique now on his team, but definitely some of the other members of her Brotherhood (Blob, Pyro, Avalache), the Toad, maybe Unus the Untouchable again (he'll die in this one if he comes back), the Acolytes (there would probably be a stated familial relationship between [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]Carmela Unuscione and Unus-- Angelo Unuscione-- if Unus is in the same movie). Whether or not Astroid M was used in the first 'Uncanny X-Men,' it's definitely in play here.


[/FONT]

 

[Herr Logan]

*pouts*

Thoughts, anybody?

If you need me to break it up into smaller paragraphs, I can do that.

 

[Herr Logan]

Every day I pray for comments, and every day, the Lord ignores my desperate pleas.

I've eaten at Wendy's every single day since I last posted that nobody responded. I'll continue this trend until somebody gives me some actual God damn comments! Would you let me do that to myself? Would you??



A new thought on the moment where Archangel gets taken out of the fight in UXM5:
Instead of having Cyclops go to town on him after Jean disables his mental shields and the Professor (who has been his hostage) mind-blasts him, I'm gonna have Rogue tackle him while he's reeling from the psychic attack. This is partly inspired by the Fox Animated Series, clearly. Rogue takes off a glove and touches Archangel's face, absorbing his strength (which is now greatly enhanced due to Apocalypse' enhancements) and some of his brainwashing and programmed hatred. It will be a horrific experience for her, as it was for Warren when he had visions of genocide and slaughter beamed into his head and his psyche imbued with darkness and ill will. It is a sacrifice she is making. Her skin turns blue, but I'm not sure if I'm going to have her grow wings or not, but that would accentuate how much of a hit she was taking for the team. Rogue tells Cyclops to act now, before Warren's bad mojo makes her do bad things, so he gives her a full-power optic blast and knocks her out, hopefully for the duration of her possession of his tainted life essence.
Warren is weak but still conscious and strong enough to climb to his feet. He acts like he's just woken up from a long sleep, like he's free of the programming for the moment, which may or may not be an act.
"Scott, it's me... it's Warren... please help me, Scott."
"We will, Warren. We'll help you."
He hits Archangel with a hardcore optic blast as well, leaving him out cold.
The next time we Warren Worthington III awake, he'll be in a high-tech detention cell deep in the X-Mansion's sub-levels. He'll still be blue, he'll still have vastly enhanced strength, he'll still have enormous, cybernetic wings, and he'll still be very, very messed up in the psyche after what he's been through. Xavier won't let him out until he's certain that Warren is free of Apocalypse' programming and influence, and he gives him psychic therapy for it every day, like he's been giving Rogue since she came to the Institute.

Rogue came to the Institute at the end of UXM4 for therapy and instruction with her powers, but unlike in the comics, she was not put on active duty right away. For the movie-goers, it won't much matter, since all the build-up to her being fit for field duty will have happened between movies and she'll be an X-Man starting at the beginning of UXM5.

Because Rogue really put herself through the ringer to not only save lives but to help save an X-Man from himself, the X-Men are more accepting and grateful to her. Toward the end, possibly in the very last scene (before the credits, that is), Wolverine will call her to attention, look her up and down, extend his hand and say, "Welcome to the X-Men," just like Cyclops did in the very beginning of the movie.

Rogue's outfit in UXM4 (where she'll be a villain for most of her scenes) will be this:

Remember, I said outfit, not hairstyle.


In UXM5, her outfit will be similar to this:

Now that's a healthy-looking 19-20 year-old girl! She'll look younger in the face, but hey, this version isn't any more developed than Jim Lee would have drawn her when she first joined the X-Men.

I'm considering maybe having it be this costume but with the over-the-knee boots and bomber jacket:

That's similar to the standard X-Men trainee outfit, but it might also be an acceptable full-fledge member uniform.

I probably won't have Kitty Pryde wear that outfit in UXM5. In UXM4, where she's codenamed Sprite, she'll wear something like that with a mask.
In UXM5, where she's codenamed Shadowcat, she'll wear something similar to this:

The sleeves would be much less puffy and the boots wouldn't loose like huge socks about to fall down.

She'd wear a real utility belt, to carry technical equipment for messing with computers and other mechanical systems.


Thoughts..?

 

[Herr Logan]

You're making me so very, very sad right now.


Okay, so for 'Uncanny X-Men 2,' I figure-- and have been told-- Count Nefaria and the Ani-Men could be cut out completely. I think that if that happens, the actual first phase of the Phoenix Saga from the comics could be done faithfully.

What happened in that phase is this:

The X-Men (Cyclops, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Banshee, plus Jean Grey) were in Manhattan around Christmas time in civvies doing shopping and chasing women (Nightcrawler and Colossus were doing that). All of a sudden, Sentinels attack them in public and end up abducting Jean Grey, Banshee and Wolverine, incorrectly believing Cyclops to be dead. Professor X, who was on a fishing trip with noted scientist and astronaut Dr. Peter Corbeau in the waters of... somewhere that's warm during December... was also abducted by Sentinels. While all this is happening, the Sentinels are having concerns of the solar flare that's been going on, although why they should care is not clear.

Wolverine, Jean and Banshee wake up in shackles in the secret base of Stephen Lang, a vehement mutant-hater and project leader of a supposed "mutant-monitoring" government operation (which he secretly turned into an outright mutant-hunting operation). Jean Grey tells Lang he's a sad, pathetic little man while going off on him and he slaps her, prompting Wolverine to break his shackles with raw strength and start tearing through the security people trying to get to Lang. He frees the others and then they argue about whether they can afford to rescue Professor X, who is being held somewhere in the same base. Sentinels show up and there's another battle, and the X-Men have to run for it. They break through the outer wall of the base (without Xavier) and find out they aren't on Earth-- they're on the Moon, and they have no air once they break through.

Back on Earth, Cyclops and the other X-Men are frantically trying to find the missing X-Men, not having any success with using Cerebro to track their brain patterns. Peter Corbeau comes to the Mansion and tells Scott what happened to Xavier. He mentions the Sentinels making some remark about the solar flare and how that seemed odd. They deduce that the missing X-Men can't be found by Cerebro-- which can usually find a known mutant anywhere on Earth-- because they aren't on Earth. The Sentinels care about the solar storm because they have to travel through space to make trips. Corbeau fixes it so the X-Men come up in a space shuttle and takes it to the Moon. The shuttle is attacked by Sentinels and and then slams through the outer wall of the secret base. Once inside, the X-Men are set upon by Sentinels, which are relatively easy to take out. In the comics, these Sentinels come after those built by Bolivar Trask and his people, and these are second-rate in comparison, because they were built based on incomplete notes recovered from Trask. Cyclops finds Stephen Lang and beats the ever-loving $hit out of him. Then the X-Men have to fight deadly robot duplicates of the original X-Men team plus Xavier, Polaris and Havok. Wolverine figures out that the robot Marvel Girl is a machine and slices it up, giving the other X-Men leave to destroy their combatants instead of using non-lethal means. The X-Men chase Lang into his get-away plane and he ends up wasting himself by ramming into a wall that was supposed to move out of the way or something, and Jean jammed the controls of his craft.

The X-Men now have to go home, possibly before the base explodes. The solar storm is so dangerous now that they will have to remain inside a special radiation-proof cell in the shuttle and use the computer guidance system to fly them home. The computer guidance system is busted, however, so someone will have to remain in the cockpit to fly the shuttle, and that person will probably die. Jean absorbs all of Dr. Corbeau's piloting knowledge so she can fly the plane, claiming her telekinetic screen should be able to protect her long enough to get them all home. Cyclops objects, and she telepathically sedates him, knocking him out. Wolverine objects as well in his sarcastic, tactless way and gets b1tched out for it. They lock up in the radiation cell and Jean starts flying them home. Cyclops wakes up and desperately tries to open the cell to go to Jean, but Nightcrawler physically holds him back. Her TK screen holds up for a while, then it doesn't. She is nuked, basically.

When they land on Earth, they splashdown in Jamaica Bay off the coast of Manhattan. Corbeau and all the X-Men except Jean make it to the surface. Cyclops tries to swim over and down to find Jean. Nightcrawler claims he can't help her, and Cyclops says that if he gets in his way this time, he'll kill him. Jean rises from the water on her own in a new costume (which is really a modification of her green and yellow Marvel Girl costume) and announces herself as Phoenix. Then she passes out and has to go to the hospital for a while.


I think I can make that work for my movie, with just a few modifications. Basically, everything can remain the same except for the X-Sentinels (the robots that look, act and have powers of the original X-Men), with maybe a couple of small scenes from the comics taken out (Storm getting taken out of the shuttle before they get to the base, Colossus freaking out and destroying his space suit), and also Thunderbird would have to be put in. Thunderbird needs to die in the explosion of the flying getaway vehicle of an evil villain to be even remotely faithful, but here's a good opportunity to substitute-- instead of holding onto Count Nefaria's fighter jet, he'll hold onto Stephen Lang's mini-shuttle and cause it to crash before escaping the launch bay. I'm going to have Jean go into a coma after rising from the water, and I may also hold off on having Jean declare herself as "Phoenix" or wear the new costume until she wakes up again. When she does wake up, she will definitely create the Phoenix costume out of her hospital gown and other nearby particles, whereas she didn't previously have the power to transmute matter.

My alternative for Jean Grey's first "death" was that she be caught in a nuclear detonation caused by the destruction of a Sentinel's nuclear core, but if I can go with the original set of events, that's actually more plausible. How the hell can one young mutant like Marvel Girl ever hope to contain a nuclear explosion?

The proposed outline of UXM2 is as follows:

Original X-Men land on the island of Krakoa, seeking an extremely powerful mutant presence, and get ambushed by an unseen foe.
Xavier recruits new X-Men
New X-Men are briefed and fly to Krakoa. They split up into pairs and search for the other X-Men or anything suspicious. They fight various monsters and creatures of the island. Eventually a stone temple appears and they all meet up there. Krakoa reveals itself as the mutant they were seeking in the first place-- a collectively conscious eco-system created by a nuclear explosion decades ago. They fight Krakoa and end up destroying it/ sending it into space.
After a night of high tensions between new members and old, the Beast, Iceman and Angel leave the team for different reasons. Sunfire, citing his involvement with them as a one-time favor, also quits after his first mission.
The X-Men are trained rigorously and begin forming bonds with one another, most notably Wolverine & Nightcrawler and Colossus & Storm.
[Basically all the stuff I mentioned before, with the changes I mentioned]
The movie ends with an irradiated Jean in the hospital in a coma.


What do you think?

 

[Zev]

The X-Men (Cyclops, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Banshee, plus Jean Grey) were in Manhattan around Christmas time in civvies doing shopping and chasing women (Nightcrawler and Colossus were doing that).

I seem to remember an issue of the Claremont X-Men where Jean and Scott were puttering around at Christmas time, being all fra-la-la-la. Suddenly, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby popped up to say basically "That's not how we used to write them" (as they had written Jean/Scott as "will they or won't they?" and now they were being written as "They will... IN THEIR PANTS!").

You should think of adapting that cameo, as it was a cute moment and still pretty true today.

 

[Herr Logan]

I seem to remember an issue of the Claremont X-Men where Jean and Scott were puttering around at Christmas time, being all fra-la-la-la. Suddenly, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby popped up to say basically "That's not how we used to write them" (as they had written Jean/Scott as "will they or won't they?" and now they were being written as "They will... IN THEIR PANTS!").

You should think of adapting that cameo, as it was a cute moment and still pretty true today.

That was indeed the very issue where the Sentinel abduction takes place and the whole Phoenix Saga kicks off.

Well, Kirby sure as hell won't be able to make a cameo. Stan Lee, if he's still around in this wonderful vision of the future where I'm making X-Men movies, will have to be in it. Maybe Stan and Chris Claremont? Hell, Claremont should cameo in each movie, although I'm not sure if I want his input on the script. The man is a legend-- one of the best American fiction writers in my personal opinion-- but he's been... "off his game" for a few years, and I don't want that ruining an adaptation of what he did right back in the day. Stan Lee probably wouldn't even bother giving input; he just smiles, nods and says "I like it" to whatever people do with his creations. Nice guy, but not exactly a guy whose commentary on recent products means much to me.
Claremont would also write himself into crowd scenes in subsequent issues. He had himself and David Cockrum discussing the making of the very page this occurred on, I think with the fight between Firelord and Phoenix, and Chris mentions that there'll be a huge sound effect as a character lands, just as there is one in the very same panel. I'm sure there's plenty of room for such cameos.

If Stan Lee died before this movie got made, I'd have actors stand in for a younger Lee and Kirby. If Stan was still alive, then it wouldn't be right to just have a stand-in for Kirby. In any case, I agree, that would be a good cameo to adapt in one way or another.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "still pretty true today." What is, specifically?

If you mean we've gotten past the "will they/won't they" stuff and just outright accept that they're together, then yeah, definitely.

I know I won't be dragging that crap out past the first movie for damn sure. By the beginning of the second movie, Cyclops and Jean will probably have moved into one room together. It's been a few years since the first movie, and by the end of that, they were definitively involved with each other romantically, although not necessarily sleeping together just yet. By the second movie, they're sleeping together regularly. You won't get a sex scene between them until UXM3, though, but that doesn't mean it won't be implied that they're well past that stage already.

Thanks very much for the input, Zev.

 

[Herr Logan]

It occurs to me that my own intentions as far as presenting the socio-political issues of the premise of X-Men through dialogue from the characters would probably be the first non-comics commercial presentation of the X-Men to really encourage the audience to choose their own opinion regarding the situation.

Professor X and several of the X-Men often present the mutant/human problem as the same as race relations and the homophobia problem. It's not, never has been and never will be. Yes, the same biological programming is in play for all of those problems; the fear and aggression toward things that are different from us is probably tied up with the drive to protect oneself. Still, we can rise above our basic drives and accept people who are different from us that are not threats. Mutants are not just different; they are threats. They are a legitimate security risk for the entire world, to themselves as much as to baseline humans. The concept of the Mutant Registration Act isn't nearly as evil and unreasonable as people may think.

This is not an endorsement for things like the Patriot Act or most of the current security measures put in play because of paranoia or political maneuvers. I'm saying the mutant powers can actually render the criminal justice system completely ineffective. If people's powers were registered, then there might be a chance that crimes involving those powers could be solved, or wouldn't be committed since the powers are already registered. If the authorities don't know who can do what, then there might be no way or preventing or investigating a mutant crime. It changes the whole playing field. This isn't saying I necessarily agree with Mutant Registration, but I can easily see the valid arguments behind it, which means I can write for Senator Robert Kelly.

I'm talking about the real Robert Kelly. The real Kelly is not out to write up totalitarian laws just to gain political power. He's not like most real life politicians. He's a staunch libertarian who wrestled hard with his own values and changed his policies based on extreme circumstances. Back when he got into politics, they didn't have people like Magneto threatening the world with its own nukes, or so-called superheroes that eventually turned into supervillains and killed lots of people on a whim (Phoenix). Things have changed in the world, and he changed because of it.
This is a guy who probably wouldn't push for tougher gun laws and definitely wouldn't buy into something like the Patriot Act, but he'd see mutants arrested for refusing to register their powers and agree to be closely monitored. It's out of fear, but it's not unreasoning fear. He's a smart, decent man who admitedly has personal reasons for his policies (he lost his wife in a mutant battle, I think), but he is thinking of the rest of the country and the world when he supports a policy that denies a portion of the population civil rights.

I want to have Professor Xavier and/or the young Dr. Henry McCoy (probably the latter, since Xavier is a hardcore believer in his dream and probably wouldn't give an inch) concede to Senator Kelly in a televised panel discussion that his view and his fears have merit, leaving the ultimate deciding factor what each individual values more: liberty or security. This depends largely on one's faith in humanity (meaning people, not baseline humans) as well, and in the power of good people cooperating against bad people. If you value liberty more and trust in the good of people, then you might be willing to let the government simply upgrade their weapons and tactics, rather than oppress mutants who might be criminals at some point. You might also expect more superheroes than supervillains to arise and support and maybe trust superheroes like the X-Men to stand up for those who would be hurt by supervillains.

I don't want to make this necessarily a more cynical take on the X-Men, but I, just like anyone else who has strong convictions and wants to produce superhero movies, cannot put all my beliefs aside. Instead, I want to find ways to get my points of view across that do not alter the characters or cheapen the story (like with cutesy little lines like "have you ever tried not being a mutant"... yeah, we get the analogy, Singer). The best vehicles in this particular case are Senator Kelly and Wolverine.

Wolverine is the one who will express my view that Xavier's dream is unattainable and actually be listened to. You wouldn't listen to Magneto, Stephen Lang or Apocalypse and take it at face value, right? When Wolverine tells Kitty Pryde that he doesn't believe that the dream will come true, however, the audience shouldn't write it off.
Wolverine will, by the 4th movie especially, be shown to be a loyal, passionate, mostly reliable team player. He may buck authority every now and then and do things his own way, but he still does it for the team. At the end of UXM3, after he up and left after Jean Grey died, he came back after a couple of weeks of grieving, started wearing the standard X-Men belt buckle and started pushing the X-Men to get back to business as usual, even with the loss of Jean and Cyclops as team members. He is now training each of his teammates to vastly improve their martial arts skills, especially in case they ever get their powers neutralized again, like in UMX3. He's helping Kitty Pryde become an X-Man and helping Storm lead the team. He's got real weight to his voice at this point.

When Kitty Pryde asks Wolverine if he really thinks the Professor's dream will ever be reached, in their lifetime or any other, Wolverine says no, he doesn't. Kitty is surprised by this, since Wolverine has clearly devoted himself-- as much as any stubborn individual can-- to Xavier's cause. Wolverine says that, while every person is an animal, people need more out of life than to just survive. They need things to live for, to believe in, or at least something to do to keep them busy until they die. For him, violence had been his way of life, living from fight to fight, until he found people who more or less accepted his violence but expected more from him. The dream may be idealistic and naive, but it is a good dream, and these are good people fighting for it. He still gets to fight, and he can feel good about why he's doing it and who he's doing it with. It's not about the destination so much as it is about the car you're riding in and who else is in it. It doesn't matter if they ever actually achieve full-blown peace between humans and mutants, as long as they don't give up on a good cause.

Then there's the extra maudlin stuff.

"I know you probably think this is stupid but, I kinda feel like the X-Men are my family now... like, even more than my real one," says Kitty.

"That ain't stupid at all, pun'kin. Unforgivably sappy, but not stupid. While we're at it, I'll try one: As far as I can remember-- which ain't far, fer complicated reasons-- I ain't never had any kind o' family. 'Til I came to the X-Men, that is. Now, if you repeat a word o' that to anyone, little girl, I will hurt you."

Such a tender moment.

I also plan on having someone in UXM5, probably Cyclops, pontificate my take on why Apocalypse is a complete moron in his personal beliefs, or just stark raving mad.

Thoughts?

 

[Herr Logan]

Update:

I'm still breathing... and waiting...

 

[Zev]

It occurs to me that my own intentions as far as presenting the socio-political issues of the premise of X-Men through dialogue from the characters would probably be the first non-comics commercial presentation of the X-Men to really encourage the audience to choose their own opinion regarding the situation.

Professor X and several of the X-Men often present the mutant/human problem as the same as race relations and the homophobia problem. It's not, never has been and never will be. Yes, the same biological programming is in play for all of those problems; the fear and aggression toward things that are different from us is probably tied up with the drive to protect oneself. Still, we can rise above our basic drives and accept people who are different from us that are not threats. Mutants are not just different; they are threats. They are a legitimate security risk for the entire world, to themselves as much as to baseline humans. The concept of the Mutant Registration Act isn't nearly as evil and unreasonable as people may think.

Well, that's mainly because X-Men isn't presented as an autonomous concept that just happens to bear some resemblance to race relations and homophobia, but is actively intended to be viewed as subtext. Just with hot chicks and explosions for the young'uns.

If mutants actually existed, yeah, I'd want them in a separate school so that Billy couldn't strangle his girlfriend with telekinesis and make it look like an accident or whatever, but in the real world, I'd also want a Superhero Registration Act and probably a lot of other things that wouldn't make reading comic books a lot of fun (see the Iron Spidey armor. Yeah, in the real world, EVERY superhero should have bulletproof Stark-designed armor, but I don't want a bunch of metahumans in red and gold anymore than I want all of them in black).

This is not an endorsement for things like the Patriot Act or most of the current security measures put in play because of paranoia or political maneuvers. I'm saying the mutant powers can actually render the criminal justice system completely ineffective. If people's powers were registered, then there might be a chance that crimes involving those powers could be solved, or wouldn't be committed since the powers are already registered. If the authorities don't know who can do what, then there might be no way or preventing or investigating a mutant crime. It changes the whole playing field. This isn't saying I necessarily agree with Mutant Registration, but I can easily see the valid arguments behind it, which means I can write for Senator Robert Kelly.

I'm talking about the real Robert Kelly. The real Kelly is not out to write up totalitarian laws just to gain political power. He's not like most real life politicians. He's a staunch libertarian who wrestled hard with his own values and changed his policies based on extreme circumstances. Back when he got into politics, they didn't have people like Magneto threatening the world with its own nukes, or so-called superheroes that eventually turned into supervillains and killed lots of people on a whim (Phoenix). Things have changed in the world, and he changed because of it.
This is a guy who probably wouldn't push for tougher gun laws and definitely wouldn't buy into something like the Patriot Act, but he'd see mutants arrested for refusing to register their powers and agree to be closely monitored. It's out of fear, but it's not unreasoning fear. He's a smart, decent man who admitedly has personal reasons for his policies (he lost his wife in a mutant battle, I think), but he is thinking of the rest of the country and the world when he supports a policy that denies a portion of the population civil rights.

I actually don't like the wife bit, as it's a bit too cut and dry to have everything be traced back to some notable incident in one's path. Look how annoying it gets on Lost. Plus, didn't J. Jonah Jameson's wife die because of a masked man (hence it makes so much sense for him to hate vigilantes). Can't anyone do something because they just think it's the right thing to do?

Also, I actually would like to see Kelly support the Patriot Act (or something like it), since you seem to be writing him as on the "security" side of freedoms vs. security.

I want to have Professor Xavier and/or the young Dr. Henry McCoy (probably the latter, since Xavier is a hardcore believer in his dream and probably wouldn't give an inch) concede to Senator Kelly in a televised panel discussion that his view and his fears have merit, leaving the ultimate deciding factor what each individual values more: liberty or security. This depends largely on one's faith in humanity (meaning people, not baseline humans) as well, and in the power of good people cooperating against bad people. If you value liberty more and trust in the good of people, then you might be willing to let the government simply upgrade their weapons and tactics, rather than oppress mutants who might be criminals at some point. You might also expect more superheroes than supervillains to arise and support and maybe trust superheroes like the X-Men to stand up for those who would be hurt by supervillains.

See, that might be a bit too preachy and "talking heads-y". I might be able to stand one of the younger X-Men listening to Kelly give a speech and call him Hitler or something, following with McCoy saying that "he has a point" and they're not worried about what he's trying to do, but rather what he might do might lead to. Maybe just a quiet moment where Kelly is talking with his wife and asking "What if I'm doing the wrong thing?" Seeing him question himself would humanize him a lot more than having one of the good guys come right out and say that he's not such a bad guy.

 

[Herr Logan]

Well, that's mainly because X-Men isn't presented as an autonomous concept that just happens to bear some resemblance to race relations and homophobia, but is actively intended to be viewed as subtext. Just with hot chicks and explosions for the young'uns.

I read the collection called 'The Unauthorized X-Men' a few weeks back, and one of the essays argued that it was wrong to read X-Men stories as an allegory. The gist of it all is that it demeans the value of the stories to simply boil it down to "what it represents." Yes, it's a good thing that they've interwoven a positive message in these stories, but that's not why I got into the X-Men.

I got into the X-Men originally through the animated series (love that show) when I was about 10 years old, and then the comics.I got into it because Wolverine said "I go where I wanna go." I got into it because Cyclops tricked Agent Gyrich into sending a Sentinel that lead the X-Men to their secret base after he blasted its arm off in the pilot. I got into it because Beast walks on ceilings and tosses out literary quotes while committing a federal crime. I got into it because Gambit did it "wit' style, petit, with style." I got into it because she is Storm, Mistress of the Elements, and she commands you to "release that child." I got into it because Xavier stared down Magneto without flinching. I got into it because Rogue can't go five seconds without saying something flirty. I got into it because these characters are great to watch and read, because of how they're written and drawn. I already knew that racism was bad. I didn't much know about homophobia at that age, but when I found out, I knew immediately that it was bad. These things are instinctual for me, just like it is that letting people get hurt when you have the power to stop it is the low road in life, and that's the essence of any superhero story.

When I started reading the Essentials, I was blown away at how entertaining those stories were. I don't need any cautionary tales or after-school specials to tell me not to hate people for no good reason, but I need entertainment, and that's what good writing provides. That's what the X-Men are about for me-- the characters and how much they kick ash, even when they aren't literally kicking ash.

I don't want my movie to be set up as an allegory. In the Animated Series, it was outright stated that hate for mutants is both reminiscent of and intertwined with other forms of prejudice. They dealt with it in a pretty matter of fact manner, actually. Right from the beginning, at age 10, I never believed Xavier had a chance in hell of achieving his dream, but I watched and read X-Men stories because he tried, and because he tried, there were big explosions and snappy one-liners and socially inappropriate growling noises.
I want my movie to show the day-to-day life of the students at the Xavier Institute of Higher Learning and the highlights (the big battles) of their lives as X-Men. Philosophy and parallels with our real-world problems will be stated straightforwardly so we can hear what the characters have to say or do about it, rather than feel condescended to with not-at-all-subtle allegories. I want to hear Xavier speak as an anthropologist and a psychologist and serve the audience some real food for thought, not just a few idealistic slogans. This movie series wouldn't win any Oscars, but it should be more than just action and interpersonal drama. It would be nice if people walked away from this actually thinking about some of the issues raised, while also jazzed up about all the moments where one of the X-Men does something bad-ash.

I also want to actually show the various X-Men express their thoughts and feelings on being an X-Men. Singer's movies were just freakin' sloppy, on top of everything else. That school was all over the place, and the X-Men could barely be considered a team. Get those damn kids out of there, at least for the first few movies! Is it weird to have a school that starts its school year with only five students? Yeah, but it's also weird to have wings growing out of the back of a human being. Screw what people think is weird, and yes, I do intend to point out how weird it is in the script. I'm going for intimacy here with these characters. Singer's X-Men were cardboard cut-outs. Why the hell was Cyclops an X-Man? Oh, that's right, he doesn't get an origin. Neither does Storm. Those two are expendable anyway, right? Who cares why the supposed leader of the team (who didn't do much leading, of course) fights for the cause. The fact that Movie!Xavier was so damn cuddly makes it seem like it's merely because things are "nice" at the school. The real Xavier is compassionate, but he's also a hard-ash at times, especially with the first team, and he makes them work hard. He doesn't just roll around, making small-talk with antisocial drifters who stumble into a room full of kids ready to kill the first thing that moves and talk about how to manage your jealousy towards said antisocial drifter.

I want to hear Cyclops say he believes, and actually mean it and back it up. I want to hear him talk about how he knows full well about human nature and the natural tendency toward prejudice (having been taught by, again, a renowned anthropologist and psychologist), but he believes that with education and willpower (emphasis on the latter), people can rise above it. I want to show that different X-Men believe to different degrees. Angel isn't really sure if he believes in the dream's feasability, but he became a superhero even before he met Xavier because he wants to prove to himself that his wings don't make him less than human, and that there's a reason why he has them. Jean believes in the power of compassion and also the will, so she believes with her whole heart. Beast also tends to give the benefit of the doubt to humankind's better nature. Iceman doesn't even know what to think, but he couldn't stay at home and he can't make it on his own. In time, he might believe.
When the next team comes, we get their feelings, too. Banshee, while perpetually amiable, is fundamentally jaded from being an international cop for many years, and he's here just to help out Xavier and make use of himself while he still can. Thunderbird is just trying to prove himself, kind of like Angel. Nightcrawler has faith in the goodness of God and God's children, so yeah, he believes in the dream. He also loves to swashbuckle, and that's no small part of why he stays after Krakoa. Storm expects people to do the right thing, even when she they won't, so while she is primarily there in just a superheroic capacity , she does want human/mutant peace badly enough to almost believe it will happen someday. Wolverine doesn't believe the dream will come true. First he just wants to run with a new crowd and get out of government work, then he comes to know that the dream is good in and of itself and wants to fight for it on principle, regardless of the reality of the situation. He will express this out loud to Kitty Pryde in the fourth movie. As for Sunfire... he takes off after Krakoa, and his constantly defensive and hostile manner makes it pretty clear he thinks Xavier and his whacky band of misfits are damn fools for every possible reason.

Do I want epic battles? Hells yes. One-liners? Damn skippy. But what truly captivates people and makes them choose the X-Men over any other team is the merits of those particular characters. It's why I am adamant about certain mannerisms and mainstays of characters being portrayed faithfully in movies, because archetypes are just freakin' worthless. You want to write a generic group of heroes? Create your own and just use the same generic themes and behaviors you'd have slapped onto an established franchise. Leave the X-Men to someone who actually cares about character development. That's directed at nobody here, by the way... it's the generic "you."
I want to see the X-Men actually act like people (but only people that are exactly like themselves, as seen in the comics), not just stand-ins in a grandiose, big-budget after-school special. Will we all learn an important lesson by the end of each movie? Hell, who knows, but the point is, if someone agrees or disagrees with the movie's message, it will be because someone in the movie said something intelligent and specific about the issue, not because good prevails over evil or one character sounds more cheesy in his grand speech than another.

If mutants actually existed, yeah, I'd want them in a separate school so that Billy couldn't strangle his girlfriend with telekinesis and make it look like an accident or whatever, but in the real world, I'd also want a Superhero Registration Act and probably a lot of other things that wouldn't make reading comic books a lot of fun (see the Iron Spidey armor. Yeah, in the real world, EVERY superhero should have bulletproof Stark-designed armor, but I don't want a bunch of metahumans in red and gold anymore than I want all of them in black).

I guess I should try not to emphasize the merits of a Registration Act so much as to actually suggest it's the right move, but I do want to present both sides of the issue. A Superhero Registration Act would suck for the stories. Then you just get current Marvel, where SHIELD is in everybody's business 24/7 and nobody has a secret identity anymore. Screw that! The masks stay on, God dammit!

I actually don't like the wife bit, as it's a bit too cut and dry to have everything be traced back to some notable incident in one's path. Look how annoying it gets on Lost. Plus, didn't J. Jonah Jameson's wife die because of a masked man (hence it makes so much sense for him to hate vigilantes). Can't anyone do something because they just think it's the right thing to do?

There's also the fact that I don't know if Kelly's wife was killed before or after the incident where Mystique and her gang tried to have him killed, when he first proposed the Mutant Control Act.

I'll seriously consider not having the wife bit. Thanks for your thoughts on that.

By the way, it's really gonna suck, watching 'Lost' on TV instead of DVD. God damn commercials...

Also, I actually would like to see Kelly support the Patriot Act (or something like it), since you seem to be writing him as on the "security" side of freedoms vs. security.

I want there to be a clear disconnect between mutants and humans in Kelly's mind. He is a libertarian, and that kind of person would not support the Patriot Act. He's not so afraid of international terrorists that he'd give up the freedoms that have been taken since it passed, but when it comes to mutants, that's a different matter. Al Qaeda has nothing on the likes of Magneto or Dark Phoenix. Do they have WMDs? Magneto and Dark Phoenix are WMDs, and they could use conventional ones as well, just because they can. It may sound hypocritical, but pretty much everything someone does that doesn't make sense in these movies, someone else will point it out and argue it. That's "realism" for you.

It's possible that I'll have him change his view on the Patriot Act out of necessity, since the nature of the Patriot Act lends itself to helping keep track of mutants if they implemented such measures. At the very least, he'll be confronted with that issue and will be asked to respond.

I want to make a clear contrast with Movie!Kelly from Singer's film. That one was smarmy, sleazy and rude. The promotional website for Kelly (the one that asked you to report any suspected mutants and sent you T-shirts and stickers and buttons if you signed up) specifically identified him as a Republican, too, and that's not accurate.

I want Kelly to be not easy to hate for the audience. That will show how easy it is for things to potentially spiral into disaster-- when a person who is fundamentally good tries to do the right thing and risks screwing over lots and lots of people.

See, that might be a bit too preachy and "talking heads-y". I might be able to stand one of the younger X-Men listening to Kelly give a speech and call him Hitler or something, following with McCoy saying that "he has a point" and they're not worried about what he's trying to do, but rather what he might do might lead to. Maybe just a quiet moment where Kelly is talking with his wife and asking "What if I'm doing the wrong thing?" Seeing him question himself would humanize him a lot more than having one of the good guys come right out and say that he's not such a bad guy.

The quote from the good guy about how he's not such a bad guy is Kitty Pryde stating that her parents think he's a good guy, and she doesn't understand how that makes sense with his seemingly anti-mutant sentiments. I'd want one of the X-Men, probably Wolverine, to respond that he's an @sshole, but perhaps Nightcrawler could try to rationalize it for Kitty with the whole "fear causes irrationality" bit.

I want to see bits and pieces of a televised debate shuffled between other scenes, and I want those points made clear in a concise fashion.
I could certainly stand to show Kelly questioning himself, too. He even gets McCoy to give him an inch, but he's still not 100% convinced himself. Conflicted.


Thank you very much for posting, Zev.

 

[Herr Logan]

According to Wikipedia, regarding Senator Kelly:

When he appeared in Uncanny X-Men #246 (July 1989), he had married Sharon, a former maid who worked in the Hellfire Club. Sharon Kelly was killed the next issue, in Uncanny X-Men #247 (August 1989), by the Master Mold. This further incited his stance against mutantkind.


It wasn't about the wife in the beginning, so we'll leave that out.

 

[Herr Logan]

I'm considering having Magneto return in my 'Uncanny X-Men 2,' after the Krakoa rescue. This way, the new team can fight him before UXM6 and without the back-up of the full original team or later recruits, and we also just get to see him again. This fight with Magneto could flow into a conflict with Sentinels, newly finalized and launched. The fight could attract attention, and the Sentinels attack them, forcing them to join forces (it won't be overdramatized, and certainly won't warrant some ridiculous title like "X-Men United" or some crap) for the moment. Magneto would escape after the dust settles, and Jean Grey would end up nuked through her telekinetic forcefield by an atomic blast from the nuclear core of a damaged Sentinel and put into a coma.

If I keep Thunderbird in the movie, he'll have to die, and having him go up against Magneto at all is a drastic change from the comics. I also don't want Magneto to kill him, as that drastically reduces the ambiguity surrounding Xavier's feelings towards him (reluctant enemies with left-over feelings of friendship, or mortal enemies). If I have Thunderbird, I'll also keep Sunfire until after they return from Krakoa, and I also can't keep Sunfire without having Thunderbird. Even if I take those two out of play, I can still keep Banshee, who I'll probably have put out of by the time things really get rolling in the third movie.

At this point I'm not really keen on reinacting the entirety of the Sentinels/Lang incident on the moon, although I'm fine with having the Sentinels attack the X-Men while they're in civvies in Manhattan, forcing them to change into costume and fight them.

What do you guys think?

 

[Herr Logan]

Any thoughts? Any at all?



More rambling from me:

For 'Uncanny X-Men 2,' I'm now leaning back towards having the post-Krakoa action feature the Sentinels and Steven Lang and not Magneto. As much as I want to have Magneto come back before UXM5, I want the first movie featuring Sentinels to just have the X-Men fighting them, without help from Magneto. I'd go with the same basic plot as in the comics, with the Sentinels capturing Jean, Wolverine, Banshee and Xavier, another big fight Sentinel fight at Lang's secret base, Lang getting killed during his attempt to escape and Jean turning into Phoenix.

Here are the major changes from the comics:

• First of all, Thunderbird is still alive, since nobody wanted me to stick with Count Nefaria as the villain. Thunderbird will fight the Sentinels with the other X-Men.
• The fight between the X-Men and the Sentinels in Manhattan, before the Sentinels capture three X-Men and retreat, will be significantly longer than in the comics. This is the first time the X-Men encounter Sentinels in this movieverse, so it has to be especially dramatic and not a recurrence from an earlier adventure.
• Additionally, the X-Men will have a somewhat harder time beating the Sentinels, since these will not be weaker, secondary model and nobody has any experience fighting them. Cyclops said in the comics that Lang's Sentinels were easy compared to Trask's. Well, these movie Sentinels were built through the efforts of anthropologist Bolivar Trask (who compiled the data needed for the Sentinels' mutant detection and the knowledge of known mutant powers), Steven Lang (who ran Operation: Wideawake for the government and armed them to the teeth) and cybernetics expert Donald Pierce (who invented the technology needed to make Sentinels). These will be the real deal, and it is the first time, so there won't be any references about these being cheap knock-offs, and the X-Men will start out at a disadvantage, especially since they don't function well as a team right off.
• There will be no X-Sentinels-- robots that look and act like aggressive versions of the original X-Men, complete with simulated superpowers.
• The secret base of Steven Lang will probably not be on the moon, for simplicity's sake. The less time spent on figuring out where the hell the missing X-Men are and portraying a remotely believable space excursion using a NASA vehicle, the more time there is for drama and action.
• Thunderbird will meet his demise by hanging onto Lang's escape plane, much the same way he did in the comics with Nefaria's jet. Lang in the comics ran his vehicle straight into a wall and exploded due to interference from an X-Man with either the vehicle or the wall that was supposed to move out of the way. I'd have Thunderbird be part of the cause of this fatal misdirection, and he'll die with Lang.
• Because the secret base isn't on the moon and there's no return trip through space, there's no way to use the solar flare to nuke Jean. I've already mentioned how I want to use a nuclear explosion that she tries to contain telekinetically while still protecting herself. This could come from a nuclear reactor in the building, rather than a nuclear core as given to each Sentinel that becomes unstable due to battle damage. I'd appreciate thoughts on that, whether or not you think I should have the Sentinels with nuclear power sources, thus making their existence even more dangerous and irrationally conceived. If I do use that idea, the nuclear reactor cores have to be Lang's doing and not Pierce's. Pierce is an arrogant bastard, but he's not so reckless as to endanger himself, the Hellfire Club and any number of their power holdings by putting nuclear cores in combat robots meant to go head to head with monstrously powerful mutants, I think.
• Banshee will burn out his vocal chords toward the end of the battle royale, crippling his powers for a long while and leading to him quitting the team between this movie and the next.
• Jean should probably submerge the unstable nuclear device in a nearby lake, thus setting up the classic rising from the water surrounded in fire scene. You know, the one we didn't get in Fox's X-Men 3? She'll say "I am Phoenix," like in the cartoon, rather than give the short speech she gives in the comics, and then pass out, irradiated as hell and in need of intensive medical care.

Here are the especially cool things that remain pretty much the same from the comics:

• Wolverine, Jean Grey, Banshee and Professor X will be wearing mutant inhibitor collars that cancel out their powers. I'll have it mentioned in the next movie, where all of the current X-Men except Wolverine will be wearing them while captives of the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club, that Donald Pierce and Bolivar Trask invented the collars.
• Lang slaps a shackled Jean, who insulted him, and Wolverine breaks free from his heavy metal shackles and goes half-berserk (he'll go completely berserk later, taking out at least one Sentinel all by himself) in response.
• Cyclops, upon learning who was responsible for capturing, restraining, mistreating and planning to perform cruel experiments on his beloved Jean, finds Lang and beats the ever-loving **** out of him with just his fists, no optic blasts. One of the X-Men will have to restrain him and get him to regain his focus.

I'm not going to confirm or deny in Uncanny X-Men 2 or 3 that Jean has been possessed by a sentient cosmic force, although it could be mentioned in a session between Jean and the Professor in the third movie as something that occurred to Jean in one of the few dreams that don't star sleazy Jason Wyngarde and his hideous sideburns. Like in X-Men 3, the most prominent stated theory about her change in behavior will be her own psychology. However, I'm going to tie this to real-world psycho-criminology and have it be (despite the possibility that she's cosmically possessed by a beautiful and terrifying lifeforce guardian of the universe) that the massive irradiation not only mutated her physiology further, boosting her powers exponentially, but gave her a form of brain damage. In real life, a person with certain psychological issues that suffers even a slight case of brain damage-- something that wouldn't even have to affect your cognitive faculties at all-- may become a criminal due to their inhibitions being weakened. Jean may not fit the normal profile for this, but she does have psychic trauma in her past. Her first use of her powers was when she was 9 (early bloomer) and she psychically experienced the death of her best friend. This turned her comatose, and the Greys had Professor Xavier come in to help her. In addition to bringing her out of catatonia, he blocked her telepathy for several more years so she could mature enough to handle it. Actually, I would say that the initial incident coupled with the stress of having her telepathy reemerge (in UXM1), which overwhelmed her at times because she couldn't screen out people's thoughts at first, and also the stress of being a superhero sworn to protect a world that hates and fears her by risking her life-- I'd say that counts as the abuse part of the Holy Trinity of pathological criminality (abuse, neuroses and brain damage), and I'll also say that she's more than a likely candidate for some form of neurotic disorder because of it, even if she covers it up well.

The way she behaved during the earlier part of the Dark Phoenix saga (the search for Dazzler, rescue of the X-Men from Emma Frost and settling up with Kitty's parents by psychically forcing them to forget certain things and do other things) is consistent with how a person with lowered inhibitions and some leftover aggression would act. She was still the same person, for the most part, but she did some things she ordinarily wouldn't do (she was especially brutal with some of the Hellfire mercenaries, she made Kitty's parents forget that she was endangered and sign her up with the Institute, and she was attracted to Jason Wyngarde and even kissed him when she saw him in person).

It will be made clear that the nuclear exposure alone is not responsible for her change in behavior overall. Jean may have still done what she did in those instances, but she sure as hell wouldn't have turned on her teammates, consorted with villains and killed a whole bunch of people for the thrill of it if not for Emma Frost aka the White Queen and Jason Wyngarde aka Mastermind messing with her head throughout the third movie.

I was going to forego the split personality if I could, but I think it's actually necessary for the later stages of her transformation, as she clearly switches between two distinct patterns of behaviors and sets of desires. I guess I'd have this alternate personality developing beneath the surface throughout UXM3. This Phoenix persona will not have existed at all before Jean was nuked, and this will not have directly resulted from Xavier having blocked her telepathy at an early age. The psychic blocks Xavier set up will be mentioned in the first movie and references again in the third, but they will only be brought up in the third as a possible factor, as I want these characters to ask lots of these types of questions in these movies, to show the thought and deliberation that goes into their decisions. Well, that, and as exposition for those who forgot or didn't know. Anyway, the combination of the enormous, almost unmanagable power upgrade and Mastermind seducing her darker side creates a corrupted Jean that acts differently according to competing whims and convictions (the Black Queen) and then splits into two separate personalities (Dark Phoenix).

There are many factors here that contributed to her becoming Dark Phoenix, but almost all of them occurred while she was an adult. Yes, there is leftover rage about her trauma as a child and her career as an X-Man brought more of that, but there's none of this "Level 5" mutant super-child who was already on the path to villainhood crap. It's essentially just like the comics-- if not for Stephen Lang, the Sentinels, Mastermind and the Hellfire Club, Jean would never have become Dark Phoenix.


Thoughts?

 

[Goddessreicho]

OMG!!! I love this thread. I have been wasting my time in the movie thread trying to tell people that the movies ruined the characters. Washed out cardboard wanna be's that they turned out to be. Nearly completely unreconizable. "Dr." Jean, WTF!!!! I find it insulting that UXM and evolution have her following that path. Ugg...

I just called the movie XINO and gave people reasons why and I was basically laughed at. I was told that Singer is perfect and there were no flaws in the other two movies....I was thinking that if they want to blindy accept the sub-par previous movies they can.

Anyways I currently working on a reconstruction project with some people. Unfortuntely they also loved the crap that was previously released, so its basically based on those. I have made it a priority of mine to give Scott and Ororo expanded backrounds based on basic character knowledge.

I love the ideas that have floated around here.

One of my last post was in the Brian Singer X3 thread and my last statement was that I refuse to accpet the movies as any sort of cannon even other as a AU.

I will demand more! And so here I am. It's nice to be here.

 

[Herr Logan]

OMG!!! I love this thread. I have been wasting my time in the movie thread trying to tell people that the movies ruined the characters. Washed out cardboard wanna be's that they turned out to be. Nearly completely unreconizable. "Dr." Jean, WTF!!!! I find it insulting that UXM and evolution have her following that path. Ugg...

I just called the movie XINO and gave people reasons why and I was basically laughed at. I was told that Singer is perfect and there were no flaws in the other two movies....I was thinking that if they want to blindy accept the sub-par previous movies they can.

Anyways I currently working on a reconstruction project with some people. Unfortuntely they also loved the crap that was previously released, so its basically based on those. I have made it a priority of mine to give Scott and Ororo expanded backrounds based on basic character knowledge.

I love the ideas that have floated around here.

One of my last post was in the Brian Singer X3 thread and my last statement was that I refuse to accpet the movies as any sort of cannon even other as a AU.

I will demand more! And so here I am. It's nice to be here.

It's nice to have you! Very nice.

This is indeed the place to brainstorm better, more faithful adaptations. Just keep in mind that I've had to upgrade my standards for faithfulness, in terms of what's appropriate for this thread, due to the widespread popularity of the Ultimate universe and the existing movies, and because we need to stay strong in the face of previous trolls and threads that parody and mock this one. We want the real X-Men here-- nothing less.

Welcome to the Haven.

 

[Zev]

Hey Herr, just wondering if you've been watching Heroes. Well, obviously you have, but what are your thoughts on it?

I think it's awesome that it's basically the X-Men, only gender-swapped and, since this is TV, much sexier. There's Angel, Rogue, Wolverine (as a blonde cheerleader!), Xavier, Kitty Pryde (as a black male felon), Phoenix, Marvel Girl, Destiny, and the Japanese geek whose power I can't place, but is a definite callback to Days of Future Past/Rachel Grey.

Of course, other than powers the show is really the Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes (well, Earth's Only Heroes) banding together to stop a disaster. Which makes me wonder if an Avengers show done Heroes style would work.

With X-Men, you'd have to have a paradigm sense once they all get together and go to the X-Mansion. Worst-case scenario, the shift turns off the fans. Look at some of the unrest in season two of Prison Break and the last season of Angel. You either take too long recruiting all the mutants and alienate the fans or you bring them all together and you alienate the fans.

But an Avengers TV show... depending on how you did things, you wouldn't need to change the formula much, only add in more "Assembling," maybe season-long arcs based on different villains (the Kree-Skrull war, Kang, the Masters of Evil). The character archetypes are basically sound. The rich industrialist, the veteran out of time, the scientist with a nervous disorder, his socialite wife... alright, the Viking God might take some doing, but Hawkeye would be fun.

 

[Herr Logan]

Hey Herr, just wondering if you've been watching Heroes. Well, obviously you have, but what are your thoughts on it?

I think it's awesome that it's basically the X-Men, only gender-swapped and, since this is TV, much sexier. There's Angel, Rogue, Wolverine (as a blonde cheerleader!), Xavier, Kitty Pryde (as a black male felon), Phoenix, Marvel Girl, Destiny, and the Japanese geek whose power I can't place, but is a definite callback to Days of Future Past/Rachel Grey.

Of course, other than powers the show is really the Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes (well, Earth's Only Heroes) banding together to stop a disaster. Which makes me wonder if an Avengers show done Heroes style would work.

With X-Men, you'd have to have a paradigm sense once they all get together and go to the X-Mansion. Worst-case scenario, the shift turns off the fans. Look at some of the unrest in season two of Prison Break and the last season of Angel. You either take too long recruiting all the mutants and alienate the fans or you bring them all together and you alienate the fans.

But an Avengers TV show... depending on how you did things, you wouldn't need to change the formula much, only add in more "Assembling," maybe season-long arcs based on different villains (the Kree-Skrull war, Kang, the Masters of Evil). The character archetypes are basically sound. The rich industrialist, the veteran out of time, the scientist with a nervous disorder, his socialite wife... alright, the Viking God might take some doing, but Hawkeye would be fun.

I do watch 'Heroes', and I think it's fairly interesting. I think it's getting better, now that the characters are interacting and we finally got to see Congressman Sleazeball fly, finally. One thing that pissed me off about tonight's episode is that the Japanese guy who follows Hiro around should have told Nikki that he doesn't know anyone in America and needs to get his bearings, or something. "I thought you could help me." Help you with what, you perv? Clarify!
One thing I am anxious to learn is what the cheerleader's daddy has in store for her, and how he'd react if she finally told him her secret that he already knows.

I try not to equate it with X-Men, since I spend a lot of time envisioning what faithful live action adaptations would be like and I don't want to corrupt that.
When you equate them, you're basically talking about the powers, not the personalities. It's also a completely different premise, as you mentioned.

In an X-Men series, on TV or in movies, I wouldn't even consider straying from the paradigm of them being contacted and directly brought to the X-Mansion, and instead have a bunch of strangers all over the place have to find each other. It defeats the purpose of the X-Men.

Like you said, 'Heroes' is more like the Avengers' origin (not quite the same, but more like it). I'm very glad you said that, since that's a clear rejection of this nonsense idea that the Avengers were or should have been assembled by the government. It's not the same as 'Heroes', where they're just getting to know their powers and end up preparing for an upcoming holocaust, but it does have strangers with powers responding to the same emergency.

In an Avengers adaptation of my own making, which would hopefully occur after some of the characters had their own solo movies, I would obviously just go with them showing up at the same crisis and then deciding that teaming up is a good thing. In movies, I'm not sure how I'd handle Captain America, whether he'd be there in the beginning, or just be discovered after the founding members decided to be a team. Again, I like faithfulness, and I do like the idea of the team forming without any suggestion from Cap. He's always up for teamwork, but with the others, it's actually noteworthy if they can make that decision.
In an ideal world, I'd have enough room to have the first movie without Cap and show the Avengers as they were in the very beginning. The Hulk's attitude and the various heroes' friction with him and occasionally with each other would be a big focus. In a second movie, I'd have Cap get found and thawed out, and the Hulk will probably quit somewhere in there and maybe become a foe again. And I'm talking about the real Hulk from that era, not Ultimate Hulk. I wouldn't take anything from the Ultimates. Nothing. Well, maybe Quicksilver's uniform, but pretty much nothing else.

There's no way in hell I'd leave Thor out of it, especially if Loki is a villain, obviously. Thor sure as hell wouldn't be portrayed as he is in the Ultimates. He's a god, plain and simple, with no ambiguity as far as the audience is concerned (maybe some characters could have doubt about Asgard, but they know he's got his own superpowers and not fancy high-tech hardware) and he doesn't go to peace rallies because he's not into politics, or at least not in the way a citizen of Earth would be. He doesn't demand peace at rallies... he smacks you down until you act peaceably! He involves himself with the affairs of the people of Midgard, but in a fly-by-with-cape-flapping sort of way, rescuing people and smiting bad people.
I also think it would be cool if at least Iron Man kept his identity secret from the rest of the team for at least the first movie. Ant-Man/Giant-Man could go either way, but the Wasp sure as hell can't hide her identity without a mask. She's a high-profile person in civilian life, isn't she? Waitaminute... if she's almost always in tiny form in front of civilians, then her identity would be safe... ugh... whatever. Iron Man keeps his mask on during meetings and Stark is merely spoken of. Yeah.

I have no idea how these people on 'Heroes' are going to gel as a team. At the beginning, I was thinking "They'd better damn well actually become superheroes, or that's a waste of a title." Looks like they will be.

I haven't seen 'Prison Break.'

Thanks for posting, Zev.

 

[Zev]

I haven't seen 'Prison Break.'

Oh, you should. It's great television. There's actual suspense because characters die. Characters you care about and love and they die and yet instead of getting angry you actually feel sad about the characters dying.

And I know you don't like character comparisions, but Michael Scofield?

Is Batman.

Only cooler.