Brett Ratner Talks On 'X-Men 3'

[Tuesday, February 28th, 2006]
Brett RatnerDirector Brett Ratner says that after taking the helm for X-Men 3 from Bryan Singer, who left to direct Warner Bros. Superman Returns, he feels responsible for the tone and the story arcs of the first two X-Men films. "It's been very important to me to stick to the tone that Bryan and the actors created, and my input has been trying to make a more emotional film," Ratner told Sci-Fi Wire. "A film with more heart and more pathos. I wanted to try to act as though this is the third in a series, not go in there and reinvent it and make it a 'Brett Ratner film,' but stay with the formula that's worked in the past and just add more heart. I'm a very emotional guy, and I like feeling something in a movie. And the audiences care about these characters so much that it was very important to me to stay true to who they were."

New cast members joining the cast include Kelsey Grammer as Beast, Ben Foster as Angel and Vinnie Jones as Juggernaut. Ratner says he tried to continue Singer's vision. "I thought, 'If Bryan was directing this movie, who would he hire?'" he said. "I was very careful, not because I want to make sure he's happy with the movie—although I care what he thinks and I respect his work—but I didn't want to have fans saying, 'Where did that come from?'"

Ratner says that the movie will continue the story from the previous two. "I feel so reverential towards the first two," he said. "I'm not reinventing anything that's already been done, but I am informing some backstory that maybe you hadn't really seen, but [which] makes total sense from the first two. And we are paying off some of the characters and resolving some of their arcs."

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