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Last week when I wrote about the issues surround X-Men: The Last Stand I didn't realize I was going to be writing a two part story; however I saw some new (or at least new to me) information. I was channel surfing when I came across a documentary concerning X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men: Origins: Wolverine, I think it was on Fox Movie Channel but it couldn't find it in the channel listing.
The documentary was interesting because it appeared to be made up of two panels, the first with Brett Ratner, Zak Penn and Simon Kinberg, and the second panel had Gavin Hood and someone who didn't say boo so I couldn't identify, since I didn't catch the beginning I was trying to get the drift of what is going on. I never did figure out if it was two panels edited together or if Gavin was teleconferenced in or what the deal was. If someone knows what documentary I am talking about please email me.
The documentary was interesting because the four primary participants were basically slamming 20th Century for who poor a job was done behind the scenes on these two movies. I would say no punches were held, but as brutal as it was its not the case.
When talking about the script for X-Men: The Last Stand [TLS] I learned several things. I knew the movie was originally intended to be two movies under Bryan Singer, what I didn't know was that even when Brett Ratner was brought in there still was possibility that it was going to be two movies, the final decision occurred while filming. The fourth movie was going to feature Bolivar Trask and the first encounter with the Sentinels as the bad guys. There are a number of scenes even in the final cut of TLS that make reference to the next movie but a hand full of scenes were filmed and cut completely or a few more edit heavily to drop the references to the next movie.
Once the decision to go to a single movie was made TLS had a major rewrite. The final sequence of the second act of TLS was supposed to be Magento breaking his fellow mutants out of Alcatraz via moving the Golden Gate Bridge. The CGI work for moving the Bridge was already complete and since there wasn't going to be X4, Worthington Labs were relocated from Washington DC to Alcatraz and a large number of plot holes opened up. Ratner owns up to this decision as his decision. However in my review I am not sure he had much choice.
The decision to have the final battle to Alcatraz required a new prison break, hence the mobile prison. It was a scene original written for X-Men (2000) and now incorporated into TLS, the original mutants were supposed to be Mystique, Juggernaut, Gambit and Multiple-Man. Gambit (Keanu Reeves) was cut at the last moment, too many one off Mutants. It was unclear whether or not it was filmed.
Nightcrawler was cut on Fox's orders, I had long been under the impression that it was Alan Cummings decision to not do the film, but it was the other way around.
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Wondering why Angel was in the film, how about the Morlocks, how about the precursor view of Angel trying to cut off his wings. The story line for those that need to connect the dots in the Comic books have the Morlocks torturing Warren Worthington III and tearing his wings offs, he gets artificial wings and becomes the ArchAngel. That storyline was supposed to be in the film and the end scene with Angel flying above San Francisco was supposed to show off his new artificial wings.
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| Concept Art for Cyclops costume in X3 |
James Marsden filmed his scenes in two weeks while on break from filming Superman Returns, Anna Paquin was on set for under two weeks because she was filming two other films. Olivia Williams (Dr. Moria MacTaggert) had to be flown in from England for her two weeks. The scheduling issues were driving the crew nuts. Whole sequences for those three actors were never filmed.
One of the challenges that Brett Ratner identified was getting the script in the morning for what they were supposed to be shooting that day. He had little or no time to block out the action and many scenes were shot with one camera and only a couple of takes because that is all the time they had.
Many of the CGI shots were ordered before Brett Ratner was hired as director, I have already talked about the Golden Gate Bridge, but other like atomization of Charles Xavier in the Grey house. He had to block his take around someone else work.
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| Wolverine looking at Cyclops glasses at Alkali Lake |
So even though the film had a $210 Million dollar budget in 2005, many effects had to be practical and done on the cheap. The floating rocks at Alkali Lake, the objects in Jean Grey's house all we floated using string at best. The follow up question, where was the money spent? Remember my comment about pulling punches, here is a case where they really held back.
Previously John Bruno, Visual Effects supervisor, estimated that 1/6th of the entire films budget was spent on the Golden Gate Bridge sequence ($35M) all before Matthew Vaughn was even hired, let alone Brett Ratner. He continued that the next most expensive sequence, tens of millions, were spent on the film grafting of Patrick Stewart and Ian MacKellan for the prologue scene. That's $50 to $60 million on TWO scenes.
Finally there were a several scenes that were filmed but never used, there is no real explanation on why these scenes were cut, Pyro running through the woods to bring the news of the Cure to Magento in his hidden fortress. Jean Grey becoming the Dark Phoenix in the Mutant Camp. I have seen those but there is a scene with Jean Grey on the Bridge, refusing Magento's orders.
One must wonder what might have been....
Finally as I wrote last week there is a lot of the story being told as "Easter Eggs" behind the actors. It's estimated that there are between 75 and 100 such things in the back ground, guess I am going to have to pull out my copy and review.
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