Talk about being on Mutant overdrive, 2 days of non stop X-Men coverage! But it was great and I had a great time!

Talking with Brett is always a blast. When we met up in Showest we had a great interview, Ratner is not one to hold back and beat around the bush. He was just as open and friendly in New York. I sat down twice with him, once at the roundtable along with fellow journalists, and also for our one on one exclusive video interview. I want to bring our readers the most coverage possible so you really get a feel for the guy, so here are both!

While our review of the film is still two days away, it's great to see that early reviews are overall positive and it looks like Brett's name will be attached to a very successful installment of this comic book adaptation franchise.

Our exclusive video interview is spoiler free but our print interview below is full of spoilers... BEWARE! Check out the exclusive video interview with Brett Ratner after you read the completely different print interview below! If you want to only view the video interview because you are wary of spoilers, click here.

IESB: You're done now, man. Can you believe it happened?
Ratner: Can you believe it? Well, I'm actually checking the prints now. That's the last thing that I have to do, but then I'm really done.

IESB: You look tired, man.
Ratner: I am [Laughs]. I am. But I'll survive.

IESB: Can you sort of recount now the whole process of them approaching you and the whole last minute thing?

Ratner: Well, I kind of put it out there in the universe when I started on 'Superman' and then that didn't work and I thought, 'Well, Singer got his "X-Men" and Raimi's got "Spider-Man" and now Chris Nolan has his "Batman."' I sort of pursued 'Batman' a bit, but that didn't happen and Chris Nolan did it, who did a great job, by the way. I thought, 'Well, I'll never do a superhero movie.' Then Bryan left and they hired some other guy [Vaughn] on this, and then I said, 'Fuck.' Because I had put it out there in the universe that I wanted to make a superhero movie and then when Bryan left I was like, 'I want that job. I need that job.' I wanted to do the first 'X-Men' and I'm a big fan of 'X-Men.' And then I got it.

IESB: Since we spoke last at ShoWest you said this was the last of the trilogy. So are you going to start a new trilogy?

Ratner: I don't think so. I don't think that there will be an 'X-Men IV.' I think that there'll be a 'Wolverine and a Magneto.'

IESB: Would you do 'Wolverine?'
Ratner: Yeah, oh yeah.

IESB: Have they talked to you about it?

Ratner: No. [Laughs] I'd love to do it. I'm hoping for it. Maybe Bryan can do that and I can go do 'Superman II.' Who knows (laughter)

IESB: I heard that the movie was screened for Bryan recently?

Ratner: Really? That's news to me. I hadn't heard that. I don't think so. I would show it to him, but he's busy in the edit room and I'm busy, but I can't wait for him to see it. I really can't wait for Bryan to see it. I'm excited for him to see it. I'm nervous for him to see it. (laughs) Shit.

IESB: When you only have four weeks of prep time which is basically no prep time what's the first thing that you do?

Ratner: It wasn't actually four weeks of prep time and I got to tell you that the script was pretty much finished. I mean, it wasn't like it was an issue. I had a hundred and twenty five days of shooting. How many more days do I need. The rush was because visual FX, development of digital FX have to be done and the big set pieces, the bridge sequence was in the movie I just moved it from the middle of the movie to the end of the movie. So the development of that, the design of that was something that when I came on I made a few adjustments. But I didn't change the story. What I changed was the kind of order of the set pieces. I mean, I'll give you an example. When I came on the movie, remember the prison truck? That wasn't in the movie, but they did have a scene breaking out of the prison and so the story never changed, but just the set pieces changes. So the prisoners were on Alcatraz Island , which makes sense as a prison, right, and Magneto used the bridge to help them escape. He brought the bridge over, and I said to Tom Rothman, the chairman of the studio that this was the biggest set piece that I will ever shoot in my entire life or we'll ever see. This is insane. How can we have this in the middle of the movie. There is nowhere to go. Lets make it more part of the plot and that's just the breakout and put that at the end of the movie and make Alcatraz the island where the cure is being kept and manufactured. So then the movie can build and have somewhere to go. So the bridge gets dropped on that island and then we put a face on the cure and the little boy. So that's what was changed. So structurally, if you change something it affects a lot of different things and so we had to come up with something to break the prisoners out which is why the mobile prison and so we had to write that into the dialogue. So those were the kind of changes that we made, but the story was there and the story was fantastic.

IESB: Were there any directorial decisions though that you felt you would've like had more say on that you missed out on precisely because you came on so late?

atner: No. I don't think that there anything. No. I didn't feel that.

IESB: It totally felt like the first two (films).

Ratner: That's totally what I was going for. I wasn't trying to reinvent the genre or the films. I think that Bryan did a brilliant job of setting up and establishing the tone of these movies, and I thought, 'Okay, this is going to be the easy part. Now I have to focus on the emotionality of the story and the characters.' And if anything because I came on and I was like, okay 'I'm the hero now. I come in and save the day, this is what I want to do.' So I sat down with the writers and I said, because Zak Penn was on the second movie 'What is it that didn't make it into the second movie?' They said, 'Well, the danger room.' They actually built a danger room and never shot it. I said, 'Why did that happen?' They said that it felt like an appendage and didn't think that it was integral to the story. So I said, 'Okay, we have to find something that the fans love that we can incorporate into the danger room that's going to pay off in the third act.' That way when the studio sees my new version they wouldn't say, 'Oh, just lose that. It's too big and too expensive.' And that was the fastball special. When we paid that off in the third act there was no way that they could tell us we had to lose that because the pay off was integral to the tone of the story and that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to incorporate and make the danger room and put stuff into the movie that they never had in the other movies, and oh, I even got the Sentinels in there.

IESB: That was a pretty nifty and cost effective way of getting them in the movie.

Ratner: It worked, right?

IESB: Halle Berry said that you picked out her wig for the movie and that you know woman's wig well.

Ratner: If it has to do with women, Yeah.

IESB: That's what she said that you know women really well.

Ratner: Yeah. I know women really well. (laughter) I was raised by my mom, my grandmother and my great grandmother. So that's it.

IESB: So you dressed up as Wolverine and read two pages of dialogue…

Ratner: Yes. Who told you that?

IESB: Hugh and Halle , she said she had a really good time.
Ratner: Yeah. She distracted me. My dialogue was messing up because she was laughing at me.

IESB: Why did you do that?

Ratner: To blow off some steam. You know, you've got to do that sort of thing, and that was like the hardest day of shooting too. I showed up and I had the costume on and I didn't include it in the dailies because if the studio sees this they would've been like, 'What the fuck is this guy doing?'

IESB: Will it be on the DVD?

Ratner: I hope so. I don't know. I don't know. If not it was a good little joke for us, and I made a Christmas card out of it too. So that was fun.

IESB: Did you direct in the Logan costume?

Ratner: I did, but let me tell you something, I do not envy these guys. That was the most painful thing that I've ever worn. That leather suit, maybe it's because it didn't fit me, but because it pulls and connects with a zipper. So it's pulling down here and up here and so it's like pulling in your groin area really hard and pulling down on your shoulders. So if you notice that everyone is kind of stiff and walking like this - it is the most painful thing. I needed like a four-hour massage. I'm telling you, this outfit was ridiculous.

IESB: You wore it all day?

Ratner: I mean, it just started coming off piece by piece. First I took off the wig and then I was like - I was trying, but people kept laughing when I would come in to give them directions and I was like, 'I'm going to take the claws off.' Then I just came out with the wig and the suspenders without the top part on and my belly was sticking out and Halle just couldn't hold it together. I said, 'Okay, I will take this shit off.'

IESB: Did you have one made or did you wear Hugh's costume?

Ratner: That wouldn't fit me. No. Actually, yes, I did wear Hugh's. If you look at the picture it was like two times too long. I'm like the most Jewish version of Wolverine that you've ever seen. I am the Wolverstein!

IESB: How does a director deal with an actor who is difficult or demanding?

Ratner: You bitch slap them [Laughs].

IESB: Do you take the iron fist or the velvet glove approach?

Ratner: I've never had any kind of difficult actors like that. I'm the type of guy that will normally jump on a table - I mean, Chris Tucker, people say that he's difficult. He's not. He's one of my best friends, but when he resists something I'll jump on the table and I'll beg him and I'll act it out and I'll plea and do whatever I have to do. I've never ever had to get tough with actors. I sometimes get tough with my crew and I get tough with adversaries like sometimes the studio or something when they tell me to do something, but otherwise I'm not crazy. I love my job and I'm a happy guy. It's not a difficult thing. It's a difficult process, but I try to make it fun for everyone. I'm like the kid who would get the whole neighborhood out to play baseball. 'Come on, lets go play.' I have to get everyone motivated and excited about the process. It's a very tiring experience, the sitting around and waiting and all the time in between and all the sets and all of the coverage that I do and all of that. So I have to kind of keep the energy level up so that everyone is feeling like they can do this. So if I'm leading that it kind of gets everyone there.

IESB: Do you think that directors forget to or become to internalize or wrapped up?

Ratner: I don't know, I have never met any directors. (laughter)

IESB: You are getting ready for Rush Hour III, Can you talk about that a bit?
Ratner: Sure. In the first movie Jackie [Chan] was in L.A. and he was the fish out of water and the second movie Chris was in Hong Kong and this movie they will both be in France where they don't speak the language and so they will both be fish out of water and everyone hates the French so we'll make the French the villains.

IESB: Don't say that once you get to Cannes .

Ratner: They know (Laughter)

IESB: What did it take to get them back together again?

Ratner: $25 million is what it took to convince them.

IESB: Did you get Aishwarya Rai for Rush Hour ?
Ratner: I'm trying. I'm trying to figure it out, the schedule and the budget. Roselyn Sanchez has a little cameo and she's going to be great.

IESB: You mentioned that sometimes have to be confrontational with the Studios but it looks like Fox on X-Men gave you full support to the point you got more money from Tom.

Ratner: Oh, one hundred percent. Tom Rothman was just amazing and supportive during the whole process and it's incredible how smart they are about this, especially this genre. They really get what this is supposed to be and at the end of the day there are some very controversial things that happen in this movie with the cure and Rogue and those decisions and at the end of the day Tom left it all to me. He said, 'This is your film. You have a voice and you can back this up.' There might be some controversy over it, but ultimately it's what I really believe. I think that it's a movie about a choice, but you see both sides. If you just see one side it's a let down at the end.

IESB: I heard that you filmed about three endings?

Ratner: I don't know about three. It was just alternate versions of it. It was cured. Not getting cured. I mean, Rogue not getting cured was an alternate version. There was another ending at the school and kind of a wrap up where Beast was going to be teaching the ethics class at the school.

IESB: Patrick Stewart said when he shot the final scene in the hospital that none of the cast knew about that.

Ratner: No one at the studio knew either [Laughs]. I shot it without putting it on the schedule. I didn't even want anyone to know about it.

IESB: Why did you choose to do that?

Ratner: It's a spoiler. I just wanted people to not - it's a wink. Death is irrelevant in this universe anyway. I got the idea when I read the script about the ethics class and where you put the consciousness of a person's body and I said, 'Oh, Professor X is such a beloved character so maybe he comes back.' So there is a whole other complex thing that real hardcore fans will get about him having a twin brother who died at birth. It's some crazy backstory shit going on about the brother who was brain dead and he grew up. He could show up in the 'Magneto' film or 'Wolverine.'

IESB: Music videos or movies, what do you prefer?

Ratner : Music videos, I never want to direct a movie ever again (laughter)

IESB: You have mentioned the James Bond franchise, would you ever want to do a 'James Bond' film?

Ratner: Oh, that would be incredible. I'm so jealous. I want to be directing 'Casino Royale.' Pierce Brosnan came to me when I was shooting 'Rush Hour II' and I got a call from my assistant saying that Pierce Brosnan wanted to meet me and I said, 'Well okay, I'll be back in three months when I'm done shooting this.' He said, 'No. He wants you to meet tomorrow.' I said, 'Okay, he can come here because I'm shooting.' He came to Vegas and I see James Bond walking in and I was like, 'Holy shit.' He sat down and says, 'I want you to direct the next "James Bond."' I said, 'Holy shit.' He said, 'I can't believe you're the same guy who did "Family Man" and who did "Rush Hour."' He said, 'You have to do this movie for me. Unfortunately I have no say in it.' And of course I didn't get the job. (laughter) But it was nice that he flew to Vegas. That is why I did After the Sunset because of Pierce.

IESB: What do you think about Daniel Craig?

Ratner: I'm excited about it. I would direct a Bond film if you were signed on for Bond. (laughter)