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The Way ‘X3′ Should’ve Been Made According to Michael Dougherty
By Landfill | November 10, 2009
At one point Michael Dougherty and Bryan Singer were actually working on hashing out some ideas for the third X-men film but they ultimately left the project because Singer wanted to direct Superman Returns. We all know what happened to the franchise after Brett Ratner was attached but we never actually got the chance to hear how Dougherty wanted the the end of the trilogy to go, until today.
While promoting his new film, Trick r’ Treat, Dougherty sat down with the /Filmcast crew to discuss his ideas about the X3 that never was. The Geek Files took the time to transcribe the whole thing for us so you get to see exactly what was said during the podcast.
First off, Dougherty talks about what he liked and disliked about Ratner’s X3. “There are things that I think worked really well in it and then there are things I wouldn’t have done, but it’s not my choice.”
“They tried, they really did, and I think they did some things really, really well, there was some really great action.”
He goes on to say he disliked the fact that Rogue takes the cure in the third film by saying, “The whole point of Rogue’s character is that she is supposed to come to terms with who she is and also I don’t think it’s good to tell girls ‘Yeah you should change yourselves so you can get a guy.’”
“I would have loved to have done X3. We had ideas when we finished X2; we were brainstorming ideas when we finally hit that fork in the road. Bryan [Singer] really had to make the choice between Superman Returns or X3. I think it would be fun to go back and maybe do the comic book version of what we would have done, the ‘What if?’ version. It’d be fun if we did ‘What if we did X3?’. What I do remember is some of the ideas that I had pitched to Bryan.”
Dougherty’s idea was to show Alkali Lake, where X2 left off, and show it dried up and strange phenomena happening near by with bright lights occurring worldwide. He said he wanted to open the third film but like Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
“The idea would be that both the X-Men and the Brotherhood realise that essentially a very god-like force had entered their reality and that it was causing disruptions around the world, you know… 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 labour.”
He goes on to say the audience finds out it’s the Phoenix force going around trying to end things on her terms, trying to help mutants in order to make things right, something similar to the end of Ratner’s film.
“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.”
Dougherty goes on to say he would have liked the idea of Cyclops building the danger room in order to strengthen and quicken the X-men through rigorous training, something that he blamed for Jean’s death in X2.
“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.’”
The ending sounds alot like what we received recently with Watchmen. I hope I’m not spoiling anything but at the conclusion of that story, Dr. Manhattan decides to leave Earth and possibly start life somewhere else in the universe.
Dougherty concludes the story by saying, “I would love to have done a huge mythic film that sets it up for even more stories.”
It’s always fun to see what could have been but we all know we’re definitely not getting anything like that. If anything, Dougherty’s ideas sound similar to how X3 went, but deeper in tone and more reason to the storyline rather than action packed with tons of unnamed mutants running around fighting a lost cause.
By the way, I’d like to acknowledge David Bentley from The Geek Files for translating the podcast for us. Be sure to head on over to /Film to hear Michael Dougherty’s exact words on X-men 3.
Topics: #Released CBMs | 1 Comment »
One Response to “The Way ‘X3′ Should’ve Been Made According to Michael Dougherty”
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November 12th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
wow, that would have been a great film… what a shame