The X-Men franchise revolutionized the superhero film. Before the beloved Marvel characters came to the big screen, there wasn’t much in the way of pathos in superhero films. That all changed when director Bryan Singer took a shine to the civil rights analogies inherent in the X-Men universe.
Singer took the story deeper into the xenophobia realm with X-2, dealing with Stryker and Magneto’s genocidal absolutism vs. Xavier’s desire to find the middle ground. At the time, the complex social commentary was unparalleled in the genre. The studio clamored for a third installment of the series with Singer at the helm. But when Singer got a better offer to cross the cinematic aisle to a DC film, X-Men: The Last Stand was left without a director.
Eventually, the studio hired Rush Hour director, Brett Ratner. Fox has since produced plenty of successful reboots since and the franchise is still going strong over a decade later, but X-Men: The Last Stand remains a blight on the franchise.
The entire production process was fraught with strife and drama. In the end, it was an awful lot of trouble for a film that would be forgettable if it weren’t so memorably awful.
Here are 15 Shocking Things You Didn’t Know About The Disastrous X-Men: The Last Stand.
Read the list at Screenrant!
Even if you’ve never seen The Notebook, it’s a well-engrained aspect of the cultural zeitgeist. Despite middling critical reception, Nick Cassavetes’ 2004 romantic drama sleeper hit (based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks) became the 15th highest grossing romantic film in history.
Effed by the Wind 