Okay, if you're going to get on my case about how I think Vaughn's version was gonna be bad, how can you say it was gonna be good?
Because of Vaughn's talent. The mere fact that one movie he directed (
Layer Cake) would encompass the greatness of every Brett Ratner movie and then some speaks volumes of his capacity as a director.
In any case, you didn't
think Vaughn's version was "gonna be bad", you flat out said you were "certain" (verbatim) that it would be. I, on the other hand, merely
speculated that it would have been a superior product to Ratner's film, and overall a better movie, but again all I have going for me are my presumptions, so who knows, right?
-Vaughn completely disregarded Singer's films. He provided lip service when he talked about how he liked Singer's films, but it was nothing more. In the same statement that he would say he liked Singer's films, he'd go on and on to talk about everything that was -wrong- with them. His complaints with what he thought were wrong indicate that he would have made drastic changes to the tone of the films. Ratner at least made an attempt to stay true to the source material.
His comments were generally that he wanted to roughen the tone of the picture and actually make it more emotional -- he said in an interview with ComingSoon that Singer's movies really didn't provide you with any sincere emotional moments where you nearly wept, or were close to tears, and with this I agree. Singer's films were a bit stoic and while they were excellent and had full of emotion per se, neither of them griped you in a way in which you were brought to tears.
And in any case, Vaughn making observatory comments on Singer's films isn't the same thing as "Ratner attempting to stay close to the source material", because Singer's films
weren't the source material, the comics are.
-The infamous script that was reviewed by AICN was the script that was written under the supervision of Vaughn. So Ratner gets a LOT of the criticism here when he simply put, doesn't deserve it. Ratner isn't responsible for things like killing Cyclops, curing Rogue and Mystique, and things such as that that people have huge complaints with. That was all done under the supervision of Matthew Vaughn.
No, all of this things were under the supervision of Avi Arad and 20th Century Fox. Avi Arad wanted the cure storyline. Fox wanted no Phoenix and no Cyclops, but Penn and Kinberg argued that you had to have both. Curing Rogue was up in the air until the very last minute according to Ratner on the DVD's commentary track, thus the alternate ending where Rogue doesn't receive the cure.
As for Mystique recieving the cure, that was Penn's idea that he wanted from the very beginning, to show how corrupt Magneto and his Brotherhood really are, versus the altruistic nature of the X-Men. Killing Cyclops was also, actually, an alternative suggested by Penn when Fox was determined not to have Cyclops in the movie, and James Marsden could only do so much because he was filming
Superman Returns at the same time.
The "infamous script" was actually an 80 page outline that both Penn and Kinberg wrote while Kinberg was in California and Penn was in New York. Vaughn did supervise the script, but many of the things you list were either mandates by the studio and/or Arad or simply story solutions that Penn and/or Kinberg created themselves.
However, while some things were out of Ratner's control (like the killing of Cyclops) many of those decisions were Ratner's, because as director he had final input and control. He was the one that made the executive decision to cure Rogue and Mystique (however I believe he showed indifference on the curing of Mystique) and he was responsible for the short running time that so many people complain about, and the horribly explained cutting of several scenes involving character development for several of the film's primary characters, such as Phoenix, Rogue, Magneto, Jimmy, and so on and so forth.
Besides, how can you even accuse Vaughn of accountability when it was Ratner who made the final decisions? I mean, c'mon, that's a bit obvious.
-If you think that things were bad as is, Penn and Kinberg constantly referred to how bad things were under Vaughn. They were NOT happy with many of the decisions made under Vaughn, and constantly stated that they needed to tell him that if he proceeded with some of his ideas, the fanbase would have his head on a stake. They didn't talk about his ideas much, but one idea that they talked about was how in the final battle, Wolverine was to run around Alcatraz with Leech in a backpack, curing everyone. There are so many reasons why that is such a stupid idea, I'm not even going to get into it here.
That was only one instance that I recall hearing, do you know of others?
-I have seen storyboards for particular scenes under Vaughn, one specifically being his version of the Danger Room sequence. One which has Iceman and Rogue being fried by a Sentinel, but when the simulation ends, they grow their skin back. Wait, what the ****?! I understand that the Danger Room is a hologram, a simulation, but PEOPLE are REAL! If you FRY OFF THEIR SKIN it doesn't grow back just because you shut off a hologram!
How can you prove that those storyboards would have led to the final product? Obviously the Danger Room was revamped since its initial stage of production when it was introduced, and who knows if that was something that Vaughn wanted or something that Penn/Kinberg cooked up.
In any case, I had no problem with the sequence as it was presented, since obviously in the Danger Room in the film you could get hurt. But seriously, it's a holographic room, that's already quite a stretch, especially in the quasi-realistic world Singer presented. Having holographic emitters able to stimulate burnt flesh isn't out of any reasonable plausibility, at least within the confines of the story.
Vaughn's ideas were absolutley horrible.
Again, subjective.
The impression that I got from him in his interviews was that he was more concerned with using the X-Men franchise to make a name for himself as a director, that this was to be "X-Men: A Matthew Vaughn Film" first and foremost, and an X-Men film second.
He actually said that he was open to the opportunity to direct
X-Men 3 because he enjoyed the first two films and thought he could make the franchise even better. His
Stardust film is a pretty faithful adaptation (from what I've seen), so who's to say it's all Vaughn's prerogative to further his film career? That's a bit of a stretch if you ask me.
At least under Ratner, his talent level may have been lacking a little bit, but he put the X-Men part more important than his own name. Some people don't feel he succeeded, but at least he TRIED to make this an equal part of the trilogy, just as X-Men or X2 were.
And who's to say Vaughn didn't try?
If you are all so mad about what Ratner did, and how out of place it felt, how do you think it would have felt from someone who was going OUT OF HIS WAY to make it different from Singer's films?
Again, this is assumption, rather than fact. From what I've heard, Vaughn wasn't going out of his way to make
X3 any different from Singer's film as Ratner did -- because really, as much as the films are similar asthetically (to a degree) and that they feature the same cast and characters (which would have happened anyway with or without Vaughn) there are notable thematic differences under Ratner's helm that make it noticeably distinct and not for the right reasons.
