It’s the kind of continuity that only really makes sense in Hollywood–or in comic books. Hot A-List Director #1, Bryan Singer, launches 20th Century Fox’s X-Men film franchise to great acclaim and blockbuster ticket sales, and is presumed to take the lead on the third, concluding film. Meanwhile, Hot A-List Director #2, Brett Ratner of Rush Hour and Red Dragon fame, readies a proposed cinematic revival of the granddaddy of all superheroes, Superman, to take flight for Warner Bros.
Yet by the summer of 2006, audiences will be lining up to see X-Men: The Last Stand, directed by Ratner, and Superman Returns, directed by Singer. Both, we are told, are dream projects for each helmer.
No, Earth hasn’t suddenly transmogrified into Bizarro World, where everything works backward. It’s just the result of an arcane melange of development hell, varying cinematic visions and the high-powered studio politics surrounding the sizzling superhero movie market. And Brett Ratner couldn’t be happier among the mutants whose adventures he especially devoured in his days as an avowed comic book fan.
“I kind of put it out there in the universe, when I started on Superman and then that didn’t work, and I thought, ‘Well, Singer has his X-Men, and Raimi has his Spider-Man and now Christopher Nolan has his Batman.’ I sort of pursued Batman a bit, but that didn’t happen… I thought, ‘Well, I’ll never do a superhero movie,’” says Ratner.
“Then Bryan left and they hired some other guy on this, and I said, ‘F**k.’ Because I had put it out there in the universe that I wanted to make a superhero movie, I was like, ‘I want that job. I need that job.’” And when “the other guy,” Layer Cake director Matthew Vaughn, suddenly dropped out of the project, Ratner ratcheted up his lobbying efforts, landing in the director’s chair in the eleventh hour, just two months before shooting.
Opposite X-tremes
Sir Ian McKellen, a veteran of the first two films as the X-Men’s adversary Magneto, says there was very little trepidation among the cast when Ratner came on board–as an X-Men aficionado since his youth, the new director new more about the characters than Singer did when he signed on to the original film.
“Bryan had not known about X-Men until a friend showed him and introduced him to the comic, and then he got–as I did–very excited about the idea of the story,” says McKellen. “So we were all not alarmed, but interested in what new direction Brett Ratner‘s arrival would take the films. There was no worry, because Brett was so in love with the first two films that he wanted to make a third that looked as if it had been directed by Bryan Singer–his own words, in fact.”
“That’s totally what I was going for,” Ratner confirms. “I think that Bryan did a brilliant job of setting up and establishing the tone of these movies, and I thought, ‘Okay, this is going to be the easy part. Now I have to focus on the emotionality of the story and the characters.’”
“Bryan is intense at times, and he is a friend and I love working with him,” says Hugh Jackman, himself originally the second choice to play Wolverine, the role that made him a star. The actor even made a point to visit Singer on the Sydney set of Superman Returns, but those bonds didn’t create a barrier when Ratner took over. “Brett has a very different style. He’s a very visceral and passionate guy. You know exactly what he’s thinking at all times. He can’t hold stuff in. He’s a very happy guy and he loves what he does. I feel that comes across in the film.”
Jackman says Ratner’s zestful, dive-in approach also frequently came across on the set. “There would be times when Brett was on three cell phones at once during a take, and you’d have to say, ‘Brett, we can hear you from here, mate,’” the actor laughs. “But both of them love what they do. Both of them are very intense and passionate.”
Passion can sometimes lead to friction. Halle Berry acknowledges that the lingering rumors of particular on-set head-butting between herself and Singer are true, though she insists she has tremendous respect for his filmmaking skills. “Bryan was a lot more cerebral, and I think that the first two movies reflected that,” says Berry, who was pleased with Ratner’s cooperation in giving her character Storm a stronger voice, and his more direct communication overall.
“Brett is like a five year old in a big man’s body–for real,” the actress explains. “He loves movies and he loves people, and he has this unaffected way of dealing with things like kids have. He is very childlike in that he says what he feels, and laughs when he wants to and gets mad when he wants to. He does everything in a moment and in an instant, like kids do. So you always get the feeling with Brett that you understand exactly where he is and what he is doing, because he wears it all over his body. And I am a person who really responds to that, because I don’t like to guess at things.”
Making His Mark
Once they’d met Ratner and gotten a sense of his plans, the returning actors–none of whom were contractually bound to reprise their roles–quickly signed on to the third installment. The only thing they that concerned them, they agreed, was the relatively short production window they’d been given–after the false starts with Vaughn–to meet Fox’s May 2006 release date. “[Ratner] arrived very late in the day, eight weeks before we started shooting on a very, very, very difficult job,” says McKellen. “I felt very sorry for him, really, because you need eight months to prepare a movie like this.”
Ratner, however, wasn’t sweating it. “I had 125 days of shooting. How many more days do I need?” One of the reasons for his confidence was that the screenplay was in solid shape when he came aboard. “The script was pretty much finished. It wasn’t like it was an issue,” says Ratner, who nevertheless saw a handful of important hurdles to overcome when it came to committing the story to film.
“I didn’t change the story,” says the director. “What I changed was the kind of order of the set pieces.” The most significant change involved a mid-film action sequence in which mutant prisoners are broken out of Alcatraz, a logical incarceration locale, when Magneto uses his power over metal to alter the path of the Golden Gate Bridge. “I said that this was the biggest set piece that I will ever shoot in my entire life, or that we’ll ever see. This is insane. How can we have this in the middle of the movie? There is nowhere to go. Let’s make it more part of the plot.”
Instead the prison break was scaled down “so the movie can build and have somewhere to go,” says Ratner, and the Alcatraz/Golden Gate sequence was shifted to become the main set piece in the film’s climactic confrontation, with the prison playing a much more significant role in the storyline. “Those were the kind of changes that we made, but the story was there and the story was fantastic.”
As a longtime fan of the X-Men comic books, Ratner also wanted to slip in some sequences that would please his fellow old-schoolers in the audience. “I sat down with the writers and I said, ‘What is it that didn’t make it into the second movie?’ They said the Danger Room.” For X2, a set for the Danger Room–the potentially lethal training facility for Professor Xavier’s students–was constructed but never filmed, because ultimately it was decided that it wasn’t organic to the story being told. Not only did Ratner want to include it in the third go-round, he was determined to find a reason to keep the Danger Room from getting the axe again.
“I said, ‘Okay, we have to find something that the fans love that we can incorporate into the Danger Room that’s going to pay off in the third act.’ That way when the studio sees my new version, they wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, just lose that. It’s too big and too expensive.’ And that was the Fastball Special,” Ratner says, referring to the familiar fighting maneuver from the comics in which the mutant strongman Colossus (Daniel Cudmore) literally hurls Jackman’s Wolverine into battle. “When we paid that off in the third act, there was no way that they could tell us we had to lose that because the pay off was integral to the story, and that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to put stuff into the movie that they never had in the other movies.”
[PAGEBREAK]Endgame
“Was it a happier set?” muses McKellen, who wasn’t on the scene when tensions were high between Singer and Berry on the second film. “Well, it was just different. Who knows what it would’ve been like with Bryan this time because we all know what we’re doing. Because we’ve done it now for three films. It wasn’t new territory. We didn’t have to go out into the jungle, beating aside the dangerous paths that were trying to strangle us. It was plain sailing, really, and it probably would’ve been the same if Bryan was directing this time as well.”
“They have so many things in common that it was hard to talk about the differences,” says Patrick Stewart, who re-upped as Professor X. “Seeing the movie now it is much easier, because the level of high intensity and high energy that Brett has on the set is very much reflected in the way this movie has been made. Overall there is it seems to me a sustained level of intensity, where as with Bryan’s two pictures–which I admire immensely–there were perhaps more variety and variance in tone at times. I think this is just going to wind people up and blow them around the auditorium.”
“I think that Brett has done an amazing job,” echoes Jackman. “I think that he has put his mark on it and it’s a more emotional film. Ultimately what Brett did, smartly, was he didn’t try and reinvent the wheel. I don’t think that someone who isn’t really an expert on movies will really be able to tell the difference, in terms of style.”
Wolverine’s Mini-Me
Of course, on the set, the director did depart from the more cool, controlled style of Singer–especially on the day that Ratner (whose height is reported, generously, at 5’8”) squeezed into the Wolverine suit and makeup usually reserved for the 6’3” Jackman and played a scene as Logan.
“I got a little tap on the shoulder just before action was yelled,” recalls Jackman, “so I just sat out [the scene] and he walked down there. I couldn’t see it because I was behind a corridor wall, and the next thing I hear is this hysterical laughter from Halle Berry. Brett was fully into it. He learned the whole scene and it was a long scene, about two pages. Halle never stopped laughing from beginning to end. I think that he was a little miffed about that. I think that he seriously wanted to do it. He said, ‘I was pretty much as good as you, right?’”
“Imagine Brett in Hugh’s costume,” says Berry, who breaks into laughter again at the thought. “That’s all I’m going to say. It was just hysterical.”
After his line reading, Ratner attempted to direct the next sequences still in costume, to no avail. “I was trying, but people kept laughing when I would come in to give them directions, and I was like, ‘I’m going to take the claws off,’” he says. “Then I just came out with the wig and the suspenders, without the top part on. My belly was sticking out and Halle just couldn’t hold it together. I said, ‘Okay, I will take this sh*t off.’”
Ratner says he plotted the prank “to blow off some steam. You know, you’ve got to do that sort of thing.” It was for the eyes and ears of the cast and crew, however, and not his bosses at Fox. “I didn’t include it in the dailies, because if the studio sees this they would’ve been like, ‘What the f*ck is this guy doing?’ It was a good little joke for us, and I made a Christmas card out of it, too… I’m like the most Jewish version of Wolverine that you’ve ever seen.”
Super-Switcheroo?
James Marsden found himself in the unusual position of working for both Ratner, reprising his X-Men role as Cyclops, and Singer, playing Richard White, the third point of the Lois Lane-Superman love triangle in Superman Returns. As a result, he knows both helmers well. “The great thing about the both of them is that they are very good friends and they respect each other,” says the actor.
Indeed, Ratner’s anxious to get Singer’s take on where he took the mutants in the third film. “I really can’t wait for Bryan to see it. I’m excited for him to see it,” he says. Then he thinks a moment. “I’m nervous for him to see it. Sh*t.”
Assuming he survives his friend’s critique, Ratner’s doubtful he’ll take a fourth entry in X-Men series. “I don’t think that there will be an X-Men IV. I think that there’ll be a Wolverine.” Has he thrown his hat in the ring to direct that film, a much-discussed prequel?
“Yeah–oh yeah. I’d love to do it. I’m hoping for it.” Then he has a more intriguing notion. “Maybe Bryan can do that. and I can go do Superman II.”
