I’ve made a new category in the blog called Fanboy, which includes Comics and Star Wars as sub-categories. The cat is officially out of the bag.

I’m sure to no one’s surprise, yours truly was a huge fanboy growing up. I started much later in the super-hero world than most fanboys and (mostly) gave it up later than most kids grow tired of it (but before reaching that fanboy point-of-no-return where you just say, “screw it… I’m an adult who loves me some funny books”).

Anyways, I just saw a featurette for the new Bryan Singer movie, Valkyrie and was reminded of the hollow experience that was X-Men: The Last Stand (a.k.a. X-Men 3… Bit o’ clarification: Bryan Singer had nothing to do with this flick, other than he was fired from it for agreeing to do Superman Returns). So seeing this got me all riled up (for the umpteenth time) and so I’ve decided to write about it.

What was:
The movie itself was not awful. It was good enough to get by and fine for a lot of the less discriminating types (kids, less-picky fanboys, effects-first fans), but to me (and many others), it felt like what I like to call a “First-draft Flick”.

The basic idea was there. The characters where there. The effects were there. What wasn’t there was what buddy of mine here at Continion calls the “spit and polish”. We (the audience) didn’t care enough about the characters… or I should say, in this movie specifically, we weren’t given enough reason to care for the ones we were supposed to care for and cheer against the ones we were supposed to cheer against.

The beauty of what the plot and conflict were supposed to do was make you feel torn about which characters you should root for and feel conflicted about the characters you were supposed to hate. That’s the root of what made the “Dark Phoenix Saga” so great in the comics (no way I’m getting into all that here… you’ll just have to read ‘em if you haven’t). This is the heart of why the movie failed… we were supposed to made to feel conflicted, but instead were made to feel ambivalent and apathetic.

What could have been:
Now I’m not gonna say they should have scrapped it all and done a rewrite… that wasn’t necessary. Like I said, this was a “First-draft Flick”… all it needed was to be run through a real revision process by people who know and love the characters and know what makes movies work… someone like me, clearly).

So here’s what I would have done:

1. Show a lot more of Dark Phoenix/Jean Grey struggling between the heroic (X-Men) side of herself and the evil (Brotherhood of Mutants) side of herself. Show her do some awful things… like turn folks into dust and like it (Ewww, we hate you). Followed by a moments where she regains her soul and saves a teammate or innocents from certain death at the hands of a fellow Brotherhood member (Yaaay, you’re awesome). As the story progresses she does more of the bad and less of the good…. keeps it interesting and we can feel the deterioration of the character… as well as the worsening struggle of the other X-Men choosing between trying to save her and trying to destroy her. The movie did a decent job of laying down the foundation of this with revealing that Xavier blocked a lot of her potential and powers without her knowing “for her own good”. The motivation for anger at others controlling her is valid… just show more of the internal struggle between the base instinct of rage and the human strength of compassion.

2. Show more of Wolverine’s feelings for Jean. Okay… they killed of Cyclops really early in the movie (James Marsden was busy going with Singer over to the Supes movie). Nothing we can do about it, but whatever… this is a spit and polish job not a total rewrite. So stick with Wolvie. He needs to be the one who convinces the other X-Men to not kill Jean when they have a chance (during one of the aforementioned “heroic moments” of hers, I’d say). He will be the one who then feels the guilt when the “evil moments” of the Phoenix come about. This will drive him to do whatever it takes to get to her at the film’s climax.

3. Concentrate a little more on Rogue and Iceman. They are pretty much all you need to show the positive and negative side of using the “mutant cure”
drug derived from that weird kid in San Francisco. It’s a nice subplot to the Jean/Phoenix one. Show the audience how much Rogue really wants to be cured, not because she is a big baby and is tired of not touching stuff, but because she really loves Bobby and wants to have a relationship that involves more than standing a couple of feet apart and x-picnics, or whatever they do for fun. Wanting to be with someone and not being able to because of circumstances beyond your control is something EVERYONE can identify with. I know they were trying for this in the movie, but they sucked at it. Again, spit and polish. On top of this facet of the Rogue/Iceman/Cure storyline, the movie should have incorporated Bobby being torn about it, but deciding it was better to be a hero than to be selfish (self-sacrifice for the good of others, is what being a hero is, isn’t it?). To top it off, show Rogue after she’s been “cured” in a situation where she really needed her powers to do something but couldn’t… enter stage right: reflection, regret and revelation that she actually is heroic after all. If only there was a way she could get her powers back… read on, true believer.

4. Add more to the “Cure-Boy” character and story. The movie did show the team going to save the boy from Brotherhood. That was all well and good, but add to it the fact we could use one last Jean/Phoenix struggle here to tie up all of our previous suggestions and close out the movie well. While the team is working saving the boy, Jean can have a “good moment” and choose to not let, say Juggernaut kill the helpless boy… perhaps at Logan’s appeals to her inherent goodness, all this after Jugs almost kills Iceman (could have used Rogue). As soon as you think all’s well in the world, have the “cure-serum into Magneto scene” and have Phoenix realize she’s next, and bring back the already established rage and passion of refusing to let others control her and dictate which powers she can and can’t use. Have Phoenix shield herself with the “cure-boy” sacrificing him instead of her. Now we’ve taken her to a point-of-no-return. The exact opposite of a hero… killing an innocent (a child no less), to save yourself. Now Wolvie has to act and kill her, despite his feelings for her. The audience can now accept the act as necessary. Here’s the kicker that ties it all up nicely. With the death of the boy, all the mutants of the world who have been cured by the serum, now revert back to their pre-cure state. Without the source of the strange power, the serum’s effect is nullified (sounds far-fetched, but in a movie about people who can fly or control the weather, or turn into ice… it’s more than acceptable).

Now just finish the movie with sadness for the loss of all the folks who fell, and some kind of speech about hope and how heroism and sacrifice are always the right traits to choose for yourself (shot of Rougue here).

Everyone leaves the theatre satisfied, ready to watch it again and again… and more than happy to pony up when the next sequel comes out.

Of course, money-wise the movie actually did very well, grossing more than the original and the first sequel… which is kind of sad since the studio will, in the future, be willing to put out unpolished work like this again instead of doing it right (and sending me their scripts to look over and fix :)… Fox, I’m waiting: tom@tomfulery.com).

If money is all the studios are after (and let’s admit that most are), let me finish by saying that “spit and polish” is the difference between a movie like a $250,000,000 X-men 3 and movies like a $400,000,000+ Spider-Man or Shrek 2.

I’d be willing to work for a small fraction of that $150,000,000 difference.

post sript: I’ve gone back and reread what I just wrote. Good God, am I a huge dork. I should be embarrassed that I wrote, and wrote and wrote about this subject…. but then again, the studio should be embarrassed that they put out the movie the way they did. I’m still a huge nerd, though. Oh well. I’m posting it anyways.