WI McG's Flyby and Singer's X-Men 3

[John Fredrick Parker]

It should probably be noted that Singer coming onto do Superman Reutrns was far from determined; our most likely PoD for saving the third X-Men movie would be to simply change any number of chance encounters or events that led WB to get aggressively behind Singer's floated idea, resulting in the studio sticking with having McG directing JJ Abrams' Superman Flyby script.

So where would DC films go from there? I imagine The Dark Knight would be different; is it possible WB doesn't get Nolan to return for a second movie? If so, they're still going to make a sequel to Batman Begins (money is money), but how would it turn out? Would the studio try for an earlier Justice Leage movie?

On that note: one thing I can say, however Flyby turned out, it would be different enough from OTL that WB would likely show real support for Joss Whedon's Wonder Woman project in development at the time. What did Joss Whedon have in mind? Well, it was to be an origin movie, where Steve Trevor brought Diana to the world of men, and the idea is she learns to respect and genuinely care for humanity in falling in love with Trevor; he never got as far as a script, so I don't know which villain she'd be up against, though Ares would no doubt appear behind the scenes. (I'd vote Giganta, given the themes and her fight potential.)

All this also means Singer stays on to write and direct X-Men 3; how does that turn out? According to one source I found, Mike Dougherty had this to say:

The idea – you open up with Alkali Lake but it’s completely barren and dried up and there are these odd reports of strange phenomena going on around the world accompanied by bright lights in the sky.

The idea would be that both the X-Men and the Brotherhood realize that essentially a very god-like force had entered their reality and that it was causing disruptions around the world – mutant prisons being decimated. I had pitched an idea about a fleet of cargo ships getting torn apart in the Atlantic and you found out that they were shuttling mutants as slave labor.

So basically you found out was that Phoenix was going round the world taking things into her own hands and that she had basically returned as a god, which they did touch upon in X3. She had viewed herself as above the conflict, that she was here to end things on her terms, she was basically sick of the fighting and she was going to take things into her own hands and she didn’t give a shit what the X-Men or the Brotherhood had to say about it...

The one idea that I loved, that I really wanted to do, was that Cyclops would build the Danger Room. Cyclops felt guilty, he felt that because the X-Men were too weak, they weren’t strong enough, they weren’t fast enough, that was the reason Jean died. If they were a little bit better at fighting, then she might still be alive. It was all about this guilt he had about her death and so he built the Danger Room to train them to be better. But in the end it really was about him not being able to let go of her, so that causes all the chaos and disruption in the movie. But in the end it’s about him letting her go.

Ultimately she kind of becomes that cosmic force that Phoenix is known to be, she choose to leave Earth and become a god, or at least a higher level of intelligence, and she goes into the cosmos possibly to kick-start life somewhere else… The final scene for me would have been her telling Cyclops or her telling the X-Men "I’ll be watching." Essentially she becomes a god.

So, aside from being better than what we got OTL, there are two key things to note about how this film would be different in terms of X-Men continuity: (1) Cyclops likely lives; and (2) the Phoenix emerges as basically a god, and goes off into space, with the strong possibility of returning and bringing elements of space opera into the X-Men cinematic universe.

So what do the X-Men movies -- or for that matter, what do those Marvel properties held by Fox Studios -- go from there? Do they still move on to do prequel "origins" movies? If so, do they still start with Wolverine, or do they decide to start at the beginning and do a *First Class* film first? Or do they go in a different direction? For example, perhaps they reboot the Fantastic Four franchise to take place in the same universe as the X-Men movies? Or maybe (and I don't even know if they have access to this property) they do an alien invasion film that serves as a Ms Marvel origin movie?

What do you think?

CONSOLIDATION: As to the idea behind Flyby itself, the big departure from canon* is that Krypton is not destroyed but going through a civil war, and Superman departs at the end to settle scores on his home world. JJ Abrams offered this commentary, indicating it would have a lot in common with what became Man of Steel in OTL:

The thing that I tried to emphasize in the story was that if the Kents found this boy, Kal-El, who had the power that he did, he would have most likely killed them both in short order. And the idea that these parents would see –- if they were lucky to survive long enough –- that they had to immediately begin teaching this kid to limit himself and to not be so fast, not be so strong, not be so powerful.

The result of that, psychologically, would be fear of oneself, self-doubt and being ashamed of what you were capable of. Extrapolating that to adulthood became a fascinating psychological profile of someone who was not pretending to be Clark Kent, but who was Clark Kent. Who had become that kind of a character who is not able or willing to accept who he was and what his destiny was.

The idea in the movie was that he became Superman because he realized he had to finally own his strength and what he’d always been.

*There were other crazy ideas during development (like Luthor being a Kryptonian), but they were dropped by the time the project was, so it's really just this one big one fans would accept or hate.

 

[Kalvan]

Frankly, for the main villain to the first movie, I would have chosen the Barbara Minerva Cheetah, who is similarly a champion of her pantheon, but rather more feral, has {Mild} super speed to lay at Wonder Woman's super strength. She has enough of a sob story to her background that she comes across as more sympathetic than, say, Veronica Cale {Basically a distaff counterpart to Post-Crisis Lex Luthor, with even more J.R. Ewing in her character}, Ares, or Medusa.

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

<snip>

Admittedly, a big part of my choice is in keeping with the "don't blow your best villain on the origin story rule" that Hollywood may not have learned yet.

 

[Devvy]

Sadly for X-Men 3, the critical failure that it was wasn't solely down to Singer's departure (and I say that as a massive Bryan Singer X-Men fan).

Singer went to Superman Returns, but was quite vocal that he would like to do Superman, and then return to do X-Men 3 (and maybe 4, I've seen excerpts over the years that suggest that maybe 3 and 4 would have been filmed back to back as a 2 parter). 20th Century Fox refused, and cut Singer loose.

They then hired Vaughn, who apparently had a wide array of ideas to make a good X-Men film. He left because of apparently insanely high pressure from 20thCF to rush the film out. Vaughn didn't have the time to do X-Men in the quality he wanted, so he left.

20thCF then hired Ratner....and well the rest is history. X-Men 3.

Incidentally, Vaughn directed X-Men First Class, which was widely praised by critics. I reckon that if Vaughn or Singer had done X-Men 3, as a higher quality film, it would of made more money, coming as it does on the back of highly successful X1/X2 films (rather then First Class which has had to bed in again despite being acclaimed as a far higher quality film then X3, and did so without any Hollywood heavyweights such as Berry, Stewart, McKellen or Jackman).

IGN: One thing that’s interesting about the alternate universe/timeline in Days of Future Past is that it could potentially give you the opportunity to revisit things that happened in the third film in terms of characters and endings that you might like to see changed.

Bryan Singer: You mean, what you’re politely saying is, “fix s**t.” Is that what you’re saying? That’s what I’m hearing. [Laughing]

IGN: [Laughing] Maybe…

Singer: There’s going to be a little of that, a few things I can repair.

IGN: Do you have regrets about what Brett Ratner did with Last Stand?

Singer: It would have been nice to have done the third one, but I really wanted to have the Superman [Returns] experience. And I’ve never really talked about it before, but there were negotiating issues that were there. I didn’t fully have X-Men 3 in my mind and I had this take on Superman and suddenly that was easy. That was an easier deal, it took three days and we were ready to go. So I made that move and it pissed off certain people – we’re all good now. But you know, maybe I wouldn’t have ended up with X-Men: First Class and where I’m sitting today making this epic combination of casts. So in the end, I’m glad I had my Superman experience. It was a little awkward for me to see X-Men 3, obviously. In fact I was so emotionally nervous about it that a person -- who shall remain nameless -- brought me to a building in the middle of the night in Los Angeles and sat me in front of the computer and showed me the movie. Completely against the law, long before it was finished, just so I could be prepared. And I watched it reel by reel on the computer. You know Brett and I are good friends, I actually saw him in London last week, and I don’t know if I’ve ever told him that frankly, because I just kept it to myself. But I just needed to see the movie so that when I actually went to the theatre and saw it, it wasn’t shocking to me or disturbing. Seeing a Superman movie will be very different. I’m actually very excited to see Zack Snyder’s Superman because it’ll be so different from mine and that’s quite distant. But today I don’t have regrets because I’m sitting here doing this amazing hybrid, so maybe it was all meant to be.

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

Singer went to Superman Returns, but was quite vocal that he would like to do Superman, and then return to do X-Men 3 (and maybe 4, I've seen excerpts over the years that suggest that maybe 3 and 4 would have been filmed back to back as a 2 parter). 20th Century Fox refused, and cut Singer loose.

But remember, it was far from guaranteed that Warner Bros was going to halt production on Flyby to bring Singer on board -- the story of OTL is as much about how that project failed as how Singer's began. Remember, Warner Bros approached him to hear his pitch (having heard good things about it from Donner) right after McG's departure, and if the director had not simply quit, they probably would have stayed with what they had going (since starting from scratch would also cost, or be assumed to cost, a lot money). The story there is McG was fighting with the studio on where to shoot the film -- he wanted Vancouver and/or New York, they wanted Australia -- saying it was a matter of story principle, when he later admitted it was due to his own fear of flying. Just get him to admit that much, and I'm sure WB will find a way to get him to Sydney.

 

[Devvy]

But remember, it was far from guaranteed that Warner Bros was going to halt production on Flyby to bring Singer on board -- the story of OTL is as much about how that project failed as how Singer's began. Remember, Warner Bros approached him to hear his pitch (having heard good things about it from Donner) right after McG's departure, and if the director had not simply quit, they probably would have stayed with what they had going (since starting from scratch would also cost, or be assumed to cost, a lot money). The story there is McG was fighting with the studio on where to shoot the film -- he wanted Vancouver and/or New York, they wanted Australia -- saying it was a matter of story principle, when he later admitted it was due to his own fear of flying. Just get him to admit that much, and I'm sure WB will find a way to get him to Sydney.

I don't really know about Superman, McG, or anything else, so I bow to your knowledge on that. X-Men is my thing through and through!

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

I don't really know about Superman, McG, or anything else, so I bow to your knowledge on that. X-Men is my thing through and through!

Mind you, the McG thing I got from Wikipedia, so I'd love it if someone who knew more about Flyby than me cared to weigh in.

 

[JVM]

I think it's actually conceivable for Flyby to be reworked into something acceptable. It wasn't a wholly awful script, it just had some awful elements. Cut away the awful elements (mostly the Krypton stuff) and it can hypothetically work.

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

I think it's actually conceivable for Flyby to be reworked into something acceptable. It wasn't a wholly awful script, it just had some awful elements. Cut away the awful elements (mostly the Krypton stuff) and it can hypothetically work.

Just to be thorough, what (aside from the civil war on a still existent Krypton) were those awful elements? The worst other thing I know of was Luthor as a secret Kryptonian, but that was scrapped by the time McG left.

 

[JVM]

Just to be thorough, what (aside from the civil war on a still existent Krypton) were those awful elements? The worst other thing I know of was Luthor as a secret Kryptonian, but that was scrapped by the time McG left.

Well there you go, those were the big three problems.

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

Well there you go, those were the big three problems.

Well, the "Krypton Civil War" angle is really the one problem then. (I count it as one thing.)

 

[CT23]

I think the problem with X3 (which I actually kind of liked) was that it tried to do two main storylines in one movie.

The "Cure" and "Phoenix" storylines should have each had their own movie. IMO, "Cure" for X3 and then save Phoenix for X4.