"I sense a great disturbance in the force, as if a million balls cried out in joy and were suddenly fondled."

X-Men: First Class grossed $56 million over the weekend, which is ridiculously good for the average film, but still the worst opening of any of the X-Men films. Many people blame Wolverine for turning people off to the franchise, as well as Brett Ratner’s X3, which grossed $102 million in its opening weekend back in May 2006, despite “chugging a big bowl of monkey schlongs” (according to scientists).  The question is, what was Brett Ratner trying to say with his series of tweets yesterday to X-Men box office comparisons?  He was quick with a phony congratulations to X-Men: First Class director Matthew Vaughn this morning (complete with the multiple of exclamation points of disingenuousness).  But as Pajiba points out, hiding behind box office numbers wouldn’t be the first time he made preposterous a statement in defense of his terrible movie.

I’M THE BLOCK QUOTE, BITCH:

It was a tacky thing to do. But, I suppose that’s to be expected from the director who once said this about The Last Stand as compared to Bryan Singer’s opening installments: “Mine was the one that made the most narrative sense. And I’m not knocking Bryan’s movie but he just does a certain thing; Bryan uses his brain and I use my eye and my instincts more. It’s a whole different approach to making a movie. I’m not saying my movie wasn’t smart; I just wasn’t intellectualizing it.” [Pajiba]

That’s right, Brett Ratner doesn’t intellectualize decisions like you effeminate academics.  He goes with his gut, and you can’t learn that in any school (except maybe at the six-week Gut Seminar Ratner sponsors at the New York Film Academy, but a place that advertises in the back of magazines hardly counts as a “school”).  It’s just a wonder his gut ever tells him anything besides “MOAR NACHOS, PLZ.”  In any case, the question remains: was the Rat Man gloating?  I decided to take a look back through his recent tweets for clues, and this is what I found:

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Perhaps nothing is as rare in movie news as what I’m about to report: a pleasant surprise.  After Fox performed dry anal rape on the X-Men franchise by hiring Brett Ratner for X3, following it up with a lame Wolverine movie, and announcing that the Gossip Girls guy would write the teen version called X-Men First Class, today it seems they at least have the common godd*mn decency to give it a reach around.  They got Bryan Singer (who also reportedly came up with the story) to produce, and he brought on Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn to direct.  I can’t think of a better choice, except perhaps Diora Baird, our nation’s greatest hero.

“I’ve been a fan of Matthew’s since Layer Cake,” said Singer.  
First Class chronicles the beginning of the X-Men saga, before Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr took the names Professor X and Magneto and when they were discovering their powers for the first time.  Close friends thn, the two men worked with other mutants (some familiar, some new) to stop a global threat.  In the process, a rift between them opened, which began the eternal war between Magneto’s Brotherhood and Professor X’s X-Men.  The studio has dated the pic for a June 3, 2011 release. [Variety]

Fox making a good decision?  I had to look out the window to make sure it wasn’t raining frogs and dogs and cats having sex with each other.  Also, I never thought of this before, but X-Men is supposed to be an allegory for the civil rights movement — it’s interesting that Magneto is the Malcolm X, while Professor X is Martin Luther King, and yet it’s Xavier who ended up with the Black Muslim last name.  And if you’re just joining us, this has been another exciting episode of “Deep Thoughts That Didn’t Go Anywhere.”

Oh and sure, make the Jewish one the bad guy.  Typical Hollywood.

^{Mom thought letting her baby weight train was cute until she got caught in his triangle choke.}

As if to save me from the evil robot baby in the last story, I found this story about a toddler with a rare genetic mutation that makes him super strong.

A three-year-old Michigan boy is super-strong. He can move furniture, hold five-pound weights, and do sit-ups with ease. Liam Hoekstra likely has a condition called myostatin-related muscle hypertrophy, which means his body has very little fat and enlarged muscle fibers that make him exceptionally strong. Because Hoekstra is so strong — he falls, for instance, without getting hurt – he is not learning the appropriate fear judgment of a child testing his or her limits.

Super strong and without fear?  Quick, get him some spandex!  So anyway, I clicked on the video all ready to see muscle baby here perform feats of strength, but all they did was talk about psychological effects and potential health problems and lame crap like that.  Talk about lazy reporting. You could at least break a two by four over his back.
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This picture gave my computer AIDS. :-(

Variety reports that Brett Ratner is attached to direct a film adaptation of “Youngblood”, not based on the awesome Patrick Swayze hockey movie of 1986, but rather a shitty comic book that sounds like a mashup of every other shitty comic book.  In essence, the perfect Brett Ratner project.

Youngblood was a high-profile superteam sanctioned and overseen by the United States Government. The members of Youngblood include Shaft, a former FBI agent and archer whose bow uses magnets to propel its arrow instead of a string; Badrock, a teenager transformed into a living block of stone; Vogue, a Russian fashion model with purple-and-chalk-white skin; and Chapel, a government assassin. [Wiki]

Wow, that sounds, um… awesome. Reached for comment, Ratner said, “I’m pretty excited about this, y’all, but don’t expect miracles.  I don’t know if I’ve got another X3 in me.”

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There have already been three X-Men movies, and even while the last one was pulling random mutants like a dude who throws sticks and a gay guy with angel wings out its ass, there was no Gambit.  Gambit’s finally in the upcoming X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and here we have our first picture. As you can see, he’s played by Canadian Taylor Kitsch, previously of Friday Night Lights. I think the character would be more fun if instead of cards he carried around a sack full of baby chicks

[Empire via Wearemoviegeeks]