Hey folks, Harry here. Al came to bat for the X-MEN team. He's not one of their team, but I can say that he does know what he's talking about. This was exactly my point yesterday. I felt the other guy had a personal agenda against Bryan and the team behind the X-MEN. The scripts are not AWFUL. Hell... they are not BAD. In fact, they are pretty good. They were missing on a point here or there, but the character lackings... especially on an ensemble film... well sometimes it comes out in the performances. I think a lot of us are a bit shaky on the casting choices, but as I've said... I'm happy with them. To me... this cast is basically baggage free. We don't have ol Tom Cruise as Cyclops and the Bordello of Blood babe as Jean Grey and a ton of other known commodities. If the film is shot right, James Marsden should become CYCLOPS for us. That's what I like. People gripe about the actors not having particularly good histories, but what the hell had Christopher Reeve done before SUPERMAN? Or Harrison Ford before STAR WARS? Which film pointed us into thinking Michael Keaton would be any good at all as BATMAN? The negativity on this project just needs to drop. Listen to Al... he makes a lot of good sense here...
Hi, Harry. I enjoy your site, but I prefer to stay uninvolved. However, I feel like I really should say something here. I'm a screenwriter, and I'm also very familiar with the X-Men comics. I thought the rant on the X-Men script you posted today was overboard and really didn't give any insight into the scripts themselves, so I felt compelled to reply, as you apparently did in your opening. I'm going to go into a bit more detail, but I will strive to avoid spoilers.
Now, first of all, I haven't even read all three. I read the McQuarrie/Solomon draft and the Whedon draft. Haven't seen the shooting draft, unfortunately, so I can't comment on where they went wrong from Whedon. But I know they did if they changed it.
The plotline remains consistent from original to this day, and it is precisely what Mr. Furious described (if you want spoilers, go read his rant). It's not the most well-thought out plot, but it's what they went with and it won't hurt, because it's not terribly ridiculous and it's propelled by the themes the movie is trying to hold onto, which is an allegory to Nazism with the persecution of the mutants. All well and good, in the end. It's no more ridiculous, really, than Lex Luthor's plot in Superman, and I've got no beef with that at the end of the day, when everybody involved took it seriously.
Now, the problem with the McQuarrie draft, IMHO, is that the characters are not well flushed out. There aren't very good reasons for things, and several key plot points have characters making moves just to be in position for the plot. One very bad scene has Rogue going to see Wolverine, while bringing a friend, for no apparent reason, just so she can be there for the next plot point (to go into any more detail would be a spoiler). Now, in all fairness to McQuarrie, it would have been EXTREMELY difficult to flush all of the characters out with a cast this large. I, personally, would have had a ton of problems doing it-- I'm not sure I could have done a better job... I'm not sure anybody could have. It's just very hard, he had a short amount of time and a lot of pressure, and the script is flawed, but not awful. Had he more time, I expect it would have gotten better. Any screenwriter will tell you that magic happens during rewrites, first drafts stink, and directors, studios and actors, experienced ones, anyway, tend to understand that. Anyway, rant out of the way, the script wasn't as strong as it could have been.
So, moving along to the Whedon draft, what he did was flush out the characters more closely with the theme, which is what he excels at on Buffy. And he did so in the Danger Room. Now, I just went on a rant about how difficult it is to do that with such a large cast, and there's two reasons he was able to do it: 1. He's a brilliant writer and 2. He just made them archetypes (read: cliches). We've seen all of these characters and conflicts in previous movies. Doesn't matter, though, because it feels fresh and nice here-- everything in the Whedon draft makes more sense, from the Nazi metaphor to the character machinations... all the way down to the reason for some characters to have code names and some to be avoiding it. Jean Grey in particular is fleshed out a lot better, and she has a moment at the end that fans will really appreciate. Rogue is played truer to her age, but there's some Buffy-esque dialogue coming from her that probably doesn't belong.
Anyway, most of the character conflicts are established in the Danger Room (and then the resolution is hit a second time there, too), which was new to Whedon's draft and apparently not something Singer wanted to do. I don't know much about why Whedon's draft wasn't used-- if they were too far along in production, if he didn't do what the asked, if the danger room was a real problem-- but I certainly feel like it's a shame. In comparing the two drafts, it's difficult to see what was different, but I can tell you this: If they were both pairs of glasses, you could see out of the first one, but it would be foggy and blurry. The second one would be sharp and clear. Thing is, again, almost all screenplays are like this from first to second draft.
Okay, now... in comparing it with Batman & Robin? Apples and oranges. B&R had an almost spiteful streak of determination to spit on the first two movies and a gay agenda that went beyond the realm of good taste. It was a gleefully stupid movie-- problem is, nobody but the director *wanted* to make a stupid movie. I still pity the cast of that movie... Clooney in particular shoulders the weight of that film's failure, and he really doesn't deserve it. Keaton is the great Connery original, but I think Clooney could have been the sleek Brosnan successor. Whatever... not going to rant on B&R, but I hated it as much as the next geek. Bob Dole would say to X-Men, "I saw Batman & Robin, and you, sir, are no Batman & Robin."
X-Men will not be a terrible movie. It may not be great (and, anyway, what is great? Superman? Matrix? Batman? Everybody wants different things!), but it will not sink to the depths of Batman & Robin. That previous review seemed to have a personal agenda, and it wasn't fair to the writers or to Bryan Singer. They may read this, and they're people, and they deserve more respect as human beings with feelings than to have some pissant take out a personal agenda in a public forum. They're working, probably very hard, and they're TRYING TO MAKE A GOOD MOVIE. Hopefully the script will get in order, hopefully we'll all be pleased. Hopefully Mr. Furious will take a valium and go to school with the Bowler.
Al.
