Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Michael Dougherty's vision for X-Men 3


I should let go, but I can't especially when X2 and Trick R Treat screenwriter (and cutie) Michael Dougherty talks about his ideas he suggested to Bryan Singer for the X3.

"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 in X3. She had viewed herself as above the conflict, that she was here to end things on her terms, she was sick of the fighting and she was going to take things into her own hands and she did not give a s**t what the X-Men or the Brotherhood had to say about it.

"And ultimately the way it was going to end, at least the version I was pushing for, would be that Phoenix was kind of like the Starchild at the end of 2001, she didn't just get stabbed and die again, but she kind of chose to leave.

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

He said Phoenix eventually realised her new-found abilities were causing chaos and destruction but could be used for creating life instead.

Dougherty added: "I would love to have done a huge mythic film that sets up it up for even more stories."

Interesting, what do you think?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh I don't know, I think Phoenix works very well in comics but not so much in movie...it turns X-Men into a space opera which I don't think would have worked with the direction the movies took.

Not that I agree with X-Men 3, that was an awful movie. They could have done Dark Phoenix at street level using Mastermind.

There's a pretty easy way to make an X-Men 4 without a reboot though. Just have Jean and Cyclops in a cocoon at the bottom of the lake. I don't want to see any more storylines about cures. I want to see the Savage Land, Mr. Sinister, Madelyne Pryor, Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch, Emma Frost and The Acolytes.

Anonymous said...

This does sound interesting. I just saw "Trick R Treat" right before Halloween and loved it.

Prince Todd said...

Why didn't HE write the script? Atleast there would have been some semblance of the original story retained. I love the idea of the Starchild idea...That is essentially what the Phoenix force is.
Phoenix was basically a goddess...Yet Logan stabs her to death. That still pissed me off. It also pissed me off how the entire series revolved around: Logan, Jean, Scott, and Rogue...HELLO it was the X-MEN! If I wanted to focus on them I'd read the comic books.

YvesPaul said...

I hated X-Men 3 with how they killed off everyone. The movie franchise requires them to revolve the story around people that the audience are familiar with, so that pretty much cut off the chance for an X-men 4. Unless of course, they did the time traveling skit that it's so overtly done.

Guess they should have taken it to the astral plane.

Unknown said...

The movie was terrible, but i have no desire to read a "what might have been" comic.

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Viktor is a small town southern boy living in Los Angeles. You can find him on Twitter, writing about pop culture, politics, and comics. He’s the creator of the graphic novel StrangeLore and currently getting back into screenwriting.