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81scorp · 5 years ago

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Constructive criticism: X-Men 3

(Originally posted as an editorial on Deviantart on July 3, 2016)

Comicbook movies. More specifically: Superhero comicbookmovies. Rarely taken seriously because the material the are based on are rarely taken seriously. While Richard Donner`s Superman was successful and Tim Burton`s Batman managed to step away from the more campy and silver-age image that superhero comics are so heavily associated with, attempts to bring other franchises to the big screen didn`t work that well. Movies of this genre survived mostly by being "so bad it`s good". Attempts were made at making more serious Superhero comicbookmovies like "The Crow" or "Blade". But the wave of not only more comicbookmovies but also more serious comicbookmovies didn`t really take off until Bryan Singer`s X-Men. X-Men wasn`t perfect but it was a good start for the "let`s try to make a serious superhero comicbookmovie and not turn it into a big, campy, live-action saturday morning cartoon joke" genre. When it was time for a sequel the director, writer (or writers) and actors had gotten more familiar with the characters, the world they lived in and things seemed to work more smoothly. Then Bryan Singer left to work on Superman Returns. Brett Ratner took his place and followed the whims of the not-so-competent big suits at Fox. The result... could have been better. What should have been a story about Jean Grey`s transformation into the phoenix was turned into a story about a mutant-cure with the Phoenix Saga in the background. Jean Grey`s Phoenix thing was hinted at in the first movie. (After they stopped the machine Jean Grey gasped as if something had touched her mind. This is just not me interpreting things that aren`t necessarily there, it was confirmed by Singer or some other guy who worked on the first movie.) And it was STRONGLY forshadowed at the end of the second movie. How would I have done it differently? Well, since the story would focus more on the Phoenix thing I would change the title to something that reflected that. The best one I have so far is: X-Men: Birth of the Phoenix. Maybe not perfect, but atleast it`s Phoenix-y.

The Story It begins with young Scott and Jean having a romantic picnic together. Jean says that she`s had this idea about creating some kind of direct link between her mind and Scott`s, in case of a worst case scenario. Scott is OK with the idea and Jean creates the bond. We jump forward in time to the scene in X-Men 2 where Jean sacrifices herself, then cut to Scott waking up. It was a dream... and a memory. Logan and company are fighting in the Dangerroom. Prof X and Beast are watching from a control room. The name "Warren" is mentioned once. Prof X mentions that it is hard to read Kitty`s mind when she`s phasing, it could make it difficult to communicate with her when necessary in a fight. After their Dangerroom session Wolvie bumps into Scott in the hall. There`s a short conversation, like in the movie and they move on. Scott takes his motorbike to go somewhere and have some alone time. Ororo and Kitty goes downtown to buy some computer-stuff. Logan and Peter (Colossus that is) joins them as they want to get a little fresh air. Downtown: Kitty, Ororo,Pete and Logan get attacked by some kind of S.W.A.T team. They deal with their attackers easily but get knocked out by a psi-blast (from an unknown woman hiding in a van nearby). Prof X senses the psi-blast and tries to locate the source but the doors to the van are shut. (The van is very high-tech and with all the doors closed it`s like magneto`s helmet: telepathy-proof.) A second van has picked up the unconscious X-Men, but no one noticed Kitty because she stayed out of the fight. Also: she`s hard to find by a telepath when phasing. She sneaks aboard the second van and stays hidden. Scott is at his alone-time place: the lake where Jean sacrificed herself. Scott remembers the day they held a funeral for Jean. After the ceremony was over Prof X had a private conversation with him. He told Scott that when Jean first came to the school her mental powers were much stronger, too strong in fact for her to be able to control them, she also had a darker side. The Professor used his powers to make Jeans powers weaker and also helped keep her dark side under control. It`s not something he`s proud of but he sees what he did as a necessary evil. Her dark side and her stronger powers were coming back when she sacrificed herself at the lake. "But why didn`t she tell me through our mental bond?" Scott wondered. "You would probably have tried to stop her." Prof X assumed. "She made her choice Scott, she would probably have killed everyone onboard if she had stayed on the plane." Scott gave himself a minute to process what he`d just heard. We`re back in the present, Suddenly Scott gets a telepathic message from Prof X that fills him in on what has happened and that his help is needed. We get to see another memory: Jean, as a child, had a friend who got run over by a car. This was the moment when Jean`s telepathic powers were triggered and she experienced her friend`s death from her friend`s perspective. There was another girl there who witnessed the whole thing. She was about Jean`s age and she understood what it was like for Jean, because she had telepathic powers too. Her name was Emma Frost. Jean wakes up from her dream/memory. After a few seconds a grown up Emma Frost comes in to check up on Jean. Jean has partial amnesia, she doesn`t remember her time with the X-Men but she remembers her childhood with Emma. Emma was there for her and helped her pull herself together after her other friend had died. The two of them became best friends. Jeans telepathy feels a little sluggish, that`s why Emma`s there, to use her own telepathy to help Jean get her old telepathic strength back. (Jean was in a coma at the bottom of the lake and survived by subconsciously creating an airbubble with her telekinesis. Emma found her with her telepathy and hired two henchmen to dive down and pull her up.) Meanwhile: Prof X explains the situation to Scott, Kurt, Rogue and Bobby. The Prof and Beast will keep their yes open for anything that might tell them where the kidnapped X-Men are. Meanwhile, Bobby, Kurt, Scott and Rogue gets to be out on the field. Their first job is to find and, if possible, recruit a new mutant that has showed up in town. They may be young but they have showed, both in their previous adventures and in Dangerroom, that they are capable of handling serious situations. They leave to prepare themselves for their first mission, except Scott. He stays to have a private word with Prof X.

Scott: You called for me. You assume that I`m gonna come back and fight for you again just like that?

Prof X: Not assuming... more hoping. Even if he`s angry, Scott decides to come back and start fighting for the mutant cause again. ( It`s a kind of "The needs of the many"-logic). He feels that he has mourned enough, been inactive for a long time and needs to get his head back in the game again. So he joins Kurt, Bobby and Rogue in their mission. Meanwhile in an unknown location: Logan, Ororo and Pete are being held prisoners in a room with electronic handcuffs and high-tech collars that work as neural inhibitors that makes them groggy and unable to use their powers. A man called Pierce talks to a man called Shaw through speaker-phones. He leaves the room and Kitty comes out from her hideout. She sees her friends, tells them that she`s gonna go get help and runs away. A guard enters the room just in time to see her phase through a wall. He tells the other guards through his com-radio that there`s an intruder in the headquarters. Scott, Rogue, Kurt and Bobby have found the mutant that they were searching for at a nightclub. His name is Remy Lebeau, goes by the nickname Gambit and he has a cajun-accent. They try to persuade him to join them, he is cautious and thinks that they are some kind of police. The S.W.A.T team that works for the badguys bust into the nightclub. Scott, his gang and Gambit fights them. Scott and his gang also make sure to protect the innocent bystanders and help them escape. Rogue uses her absorbing powers to knock out one of the S.W.A.T guys. Prof Xavier`s school: The telephone rings, Beast answers. It`s Kitty calling. She knows where Logan, Pete and Ororo are imprisoned. She tells them where she`s calling from and that there is a S.W.A.T team chasing her. Beast alerts Scott and the gang through their wrist communicators. They are a little preoccupied fighting their own S.W.A.T team. Kurt volunteers to break away from the fight to find Kitty (since he`s a teleporter and can therefor travel much faster than the others). He finds Kitty and helps her to beat the men that are chasing her. Scott, Gambit and the rest of the gang beats the last S.W.A.T team members. Gambit, used to being a loner, is still cautious but has seen that Scott and his friends are good guys so he decides to stick with them, at least for a while. They know where the HQ of the badguys is thanks to Kitty and they have an idea what they can expect on the inside of it thanks to Rogue. Rogue also picked up a name from the S.W.A.T guy`s memory, she just doesn`t have a face to go with that name. The name is: White Queen. Somewhere else: Jean is alone in her room, practising her telekinesis on some objects. She remembers when the Professor came to her home and talked to her parents and that Emma had a bad feeling about him. Then came the day when she moved to Xavier`s school. Emma was there to say good bye and wave her of. She told Jean that she didn`t trust the Professor. After a couple of days on the school she found out that the Professor had discovered that her powers were greater than his and that he felt theatened by it. Xavier put mental blocks in her mind to weaken her powers and erased all her mories of Emma Frost. Jean snaps out of her flashback and returns to the present. She loses her concentration and the things that she levitates drops to the floor. She`s silent for a moment. Meanwhile: White Queen`s HQ: Storm is being interogated and tortured by a woman with telepathic powers. It`s the White Queen, and she`s Emma Frost! (Not a big surprise for those who are familiar with the comics.) Outside, the X-Men sneak into the HQ with help from Shadowcat (Kitty). They split up, Shadowcat goes to free her friends, the rest are there to attract the attention of the guards. Rogue has phasing powers just like Shadowcat now. (We see in a flashback that happened a minute ago that Rogue talked Kitty into letting her touch her, long enough to borrow her powers for a while but not long enough for her to faint.) Rogue looks at her wrist watch which is counting down how much time she has left before her powers wear off. (So she doesn`t try to run though a wall when she`s about to go solid. Also, she has learned enough about her powers to know how long she has to touch somone for her borrowed powers to last a certain amount of time.) Shadowcat finds and frees Wolvie. A guard stuns her with a tazer gun, Wolvie gets angry and SNIKTs him, more guards come, Wolvie frees Colossus and the two of them fight. Emma realizes that she can`t get any more info out of Storm. She releases Storm from her shackles and is about to put the power-dampening collar back on her and tell her guards to bring one of the other two mutants in for interogation. She sees on the surveillance monitors however that her guards are busy being beaten up by the X-Men. Rogue comes into the room through a wall behind Emma and grabs her face from behind. Emma frees herself from Rogue`s grip after a few seconds and knocks her out with a telepathic blast. Seeing her friend getting beaten gives Storm extra strength and attacks Emma with lightning. Slightly groggy from Rogue`s surprise attack and with her guards losing, Emma realises that she is not fit to fight and escapes through a secret door. The fight is over. Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Iceman and Gambit are united with Colossus (who carries an unconscious Kitty) Wolvie (who carries an unconscious Rogue) and a tired Storm. Beast arrives in the Blackbird to pick them up. Cyclops decides that they should not fly directly back to Prof X`s mansion but instead make a detour to some other place: Warren Worthingtons House. Warren Worthington (AKA: Angel) is a billionaire, supports Prof X financially and is a mutant. He used to be a member of the X-Men (and still is) but is now helping them indirectly with the financial stuff. Prof X joins them after an hour or so and he doesn`t like Scott`s decision to not return to the school and there is a small conflict between them. Rogue has awakened from her mindblast and remembers the memory fragments that she picked up from Emma`s mind. She tells her friends about something called the "Hellfire Club", a club of rich socialites with lots of power. Within this Club is something called "The Inner Circle", some kind of mutant Illuminati and... Jean is still alive! "Hellfire Club" sounds familiar to Warren. He`s a actually a member of it. (he inherited the membership along with the company from his father) he visited it once, didn`t like it and never went back. Scott uses Warrens connections with the Club to sneak in with Ororo, Pete and Rogue as guests in posh, civilian clothes. Nightcrawler and Wolvie enters through the sewers. Their backup team: Angel, Shadowcat, Beast, Iceman, Gambit and Prof X is hiding on the Blackbird which is in stealthmode a block away and they have radio-contact. Shaw, Pierce, Leeland and Emma sees Scott and company arrive through their security cameras. Inside the mansion Scott and Rogue starts looking for something that can give them answers, like a hidden door or something. They find Jean who knocks them out telepathically. Ororo and Peter are searching in the other end of the house and finds Shaw, who beats the crap out of them. Nightcrawler and Wolvie enters through the sewers and meets Pierce and Leeland. Pierce, who turns out to be a cyborg, defeats Nightcrawler and Leeland uses his gravity-manipulating powers on Woverine to make him fall through the floor and get washed away in the sewers. A few minutes later, Shaw, Emma, Leeland and Pierce celebrate their victory and congratulate themselves and their newest recruit Jean for a job well done. Somewhere in the sewers Wolverine gathers his strength and gets ready for a new round. Wolverine: OK suckers... You`ve taken yer best shot. Now it`s MY turn! Meanwhile: The backup team: The gang haven`t heard anything from Cyclops and the others, they are starting to get worried and prepare themselves for action. Prof X notices that Gambit is thinking about leaving the team and talks to him. Gambit is used to travel alone and has only hung with the X-Men for a day and even if the stuff they do is important he doesn`t know if he`s willing to die for their cause, something he suspects will happen if he stays with them. Prof X wants him to stay but he knows that the decision to leave or stay must be Gambit`s.Meanwhile: Hellfire Clubs HQ: far away from the festivities there is a guard walking around, making sure that everything is OK. He hears something, goes to investigate, gets SNIKTed by Wolvie. This attracts the reaction of a few other guards who goes to investigate, they are also defeated. Meanwhile: Pierce, Frost, Leeland, Jean and Shaw continues to celebrate their victory. Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Storm, Rogue and Colossus are wearing hightech handcuffs. Cyclops remembers his private link with Jean and tries to access her mind through it to hopefully pull her out of the brainwash. He ends up on the astralplane and meets Jean who doesn`t remember him but thinks that there`s something familiar about him. Emma notices that there`s something wrong, enters Jean`s mind, fights Cyclops and (almost) kills him. Cyclops collapses in the physical world but slowly gets back up on his feet. The shock of watching Cyclops (almost) die triggers some memories for Jean. Emma senses that Jean is breaking free of her mind control and the two of them start fighting on the astral plane. (In the physical world it looks as if they are just staring at eachother very intensily.) Wolvie breaks in through the door. Iceman, Angel and Beast crashes through a window. Shadowcat shows up through the floor and phases through the hightech handcuffs. Shaw presses a panic button that calls the guards and also sends a signal to the police. An awesome fight breaks out. Iceman is almost killed by a guard but is saved by Gambit who decided to stay. (Yay!) On the astral plane Jean has found out that Emma is NOT an old childhood friend who was always there for her when she needed it. Those were fake memories implanted by Emma. And Prof X put those mental blocks in her head to weaken her powers because she asked for it herself out of fear of what she could become. Emma`s plan was to turn Jean into The Inner Circle`s newest member: The Black Queen. Jean gets the upper hand and fries Emma`s brain. All the members of the Inner Circle and their guards are defeated, the police arrive, the X-Men runs away and flies off in the Blackbird.

Jean starts breathing heavily, Prof X tries to calm her down but it is too late. Her dark Phoenix side has awakened. She tears the Blackbird apart telekinetically. Angel saves Gambit and Prof X, Storm saves Wolverine, Colossus survives a fall from a high altitude and Iceman creates an ice-slide for the rest of the gang. Jean rearranges the molecules in her clothes to form a suit, her Phoenix suit from the comics with the red, gold, the bird symbol and everything. The X-Men reluctantly fight Jean while Prof X tries to reach her mind. Jean regains control of herself again but doesn`t know how long it will last. She kisses Cyclops, says goodbye to her friends and flies out into space. The next day or a few days later: Scott is back at the Lake where he first lost Jean, he is Joined by Prof X and they talk a little. Prof X, who managed to get a glimpse inside Jeans head, says that she had become to mutants what mutants are to people. Scott wonders what happened to her. Did she fly out into space to die or did she find some way to survive? The professor doesn`t know but he tells Scott that if he wants to come back to the school the doors are always open for him. Prof X then leaves Scott alone. Scott has a moment of silence, then he walks away. (To go his own way or to rejoin the X-Men? It should be left ambiguous.) The End BTW: In my version The Stromtroopers of the HFC don`t wear those sci-fi-ish outfits that they wore on the comics with those masks, but, as I said, they look like an ordinary S.W.A.T team with bulletproof vests and helmets with black visors over their faces. The employees at the HFC don`t wear rokoko outfits or fetishy maid outfits, the Inner Circle don`t wear 18th century-ish outfits but more contemporary clothing. And Emma`s and Jean`s Queen outfits don`t look so dominatrix-y. But like I said: Jean`s Phoenix outfit is comicbook accurate. Constructive criticism of my constructive criticism Whoa! Meta! On the fence: To many characters? There`s a rule in script writing that you shouldn`t have too many characters. My version has 12 characters (not counting Jean). Maybe I should have cut down on a few? Maybe remove Colossus completely since he doesn`t contribute much as a character? Limit Angel`s role to only have him tell them that he`s technically a member of the HFC and remove him from the final fight? Or maybe it works fine the way it is, but then again I`m probably biased. Those are my ideas and thoughts. Feel free to disagree.

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