Referring to early shots of Beast, Colossus and others from X-Men: The Last Stand, director Brett Ratner said: "Those photos were [taken] before I even started shooting. They were done in the testing process, so those photos are very, very old," he told MTV.
"I think whenever you're on the Internet and you have nothing to do and you're a fan, you become very anxious to get the information, but you have to consider the source," he said, further decrying the leaks. "If it's sent out by [the studio], then you know it's official, but if it's put up on the Internet by someone who stole something illegally, then I think you should first consider what you're looking at."
He insists the final version of the characters will please fans of the classic comics.
"If you take any beautiful woman and put her in bad lighting, she's not gonna look good," Ratner said, insisting that the leaked images have had the same effect on his costumes. "It's not the look of the movie and it's not even close to what we went for, and I'm hoping when the fans see the final result, they're gonna love it."
Finally, Ratner admits what some fans would say was obvious: "I love [the X-Men] world, and I'm sure Bryan Singer would love to do it too, and he's actually better at it than I am," he admitted before bringing up the planned Wolverine and Magneto solo films. "For him to come back [for those] would be amazing," Ratner said. "Just like I would love to do a Superman movie one day. We'll swap."