New behind-the-scenes pictures of X-Men: The Last Stand director Brett Ratner and the actors from the film can be found here.
Meanwhile, Superhero Hype has posted interviews with Kelsey Grammer (The Beast), Patrick Stewart (Prof. X), director Ratner, Halle Berry (Storm) and Hugh Jackman (Wolverine).
Here's highlights:
Grammer on Beast's make-up: "Mostly it was the pallor. He was kind of pale and washed-out looking, the first color test we did for the skin. Then we went really dark, then a little lighter, then a little darker, then settled on the almost as dark as the darkest."
Stewart on the film's set up: "When this story begins, we have lost Jean Grey, so Jean Grey's death is still hovering over the school and the lives of the people. It was an immense loss and a loss that came about through self-sacrifice, which might have been prevented. And Xavier feels huge responsibility for her. We don't know how big that responsibility is until this movie proceeds, because then we discover that actually he has been controlling Jean's life, almost from the time she arrived in the school. That's a troubling aspect to all of this and is one of the things which gives a more mutant tone to some of it. Also, the issue of the Cure, which I think was such a great move on the part of the studio and the writers to introduce it, that now there are choices, where there haven't been any choices before. The fact that Kelsey's character is in government, that there's a Secretary of Mutant Affairs, the whole situation has become more complex and yet not more hopeful or positive. So, there is a somewhat somber coloring to some of the aspects. I suppose both of the other two movies had lighter elements than perhaps this one has."
Ratner on how he picked out the mutants in X3: "I just went through the comics and the materials and thought, 'This is cool.' They're what I thought was cool, and I just wanted to go in and put some color into it. It's a multi-racial comic, and Halle Berry was the only person of color in the last few movies, so I wanted to bring some flavor, as they say. They were inspired by the comics. For instance, Spike started as Kid Omega, but there was another character. I found one character that I liked and then I took the powers. For instance, Callisto has the power of another character who moves fast and has the telepathy thing. The girl from the wall looks like Psylocke but she has the power of one of the other characters. So I mixed and matched powers to service the story. Instead of having ten more actors in the movie, I just said, 'You're going to have these three powers.'"
Berry on demanding more Storm time: "That's what I threatened. (laughs) I really wasn't going to do that, but I thought that I somehow have to scare the sh*t out of them and get them to give Storm a point of view, so I really didn't say that to the studio; I just sort of threw that around thinking that it will get some attention. This is all I ever wanted. Not really more screen time, because I know it's an ensemble, but if Storm spoke for 5 minutes, then I wanted it to be 5 minutes that meant something. 5 minutes of character development; 5 minutes of a point of view and 5 minutes of some back story history, not just 'Go get the plane' or 'Come on kids, let's go'. After three movies, I really wanted her lines to mean something."
Jackman on the Wolverine stand-alone movie: "Oh yes. Of course I'm getting into it at the moment because David Benioff is writing a movie version of Wolverine, which is gonna be a prequel. It's gonna deal with the origins of him so I'm into it a lot. In this movie actually we were lucky to have [Second Unit Director] Simon Crane who did 'Mr. and Mrs. Smith,' and he's amazing. I think a lot of the action pieces are well done and he's phenomenal with what he brought to it. Simon came to me and said, 'I've got an idea,' and showed me some comic books that had some things we could do stylistically that was a bit different. I always saw Wolverine as a street fighter--like watching old Mike Tyson. Nothing pretty, just going for it. Simon said, 'If you look in the comic book he has some really cool moves,' so we did put a couple of those things into this. That's something that some fans might recognize."
You can read the full interviews here.
The film debuts this Friday, May 26.
