Q: In Rush Hour, you kind of built your own franchise there from the ground up. You were there pretty much from the beginning, kind of put your own stamp on it, and ideas about changing characters and stories whatever, X3 is different than that for you, you kind of joined the train as it was moving pretty quickly, my question is why, what did X-Men mean to you and why did you want to come aboard this in the last hour?

Ratner: I was such a fan of the X-Men series and I was talking with Hugh about this, he said, you've probably made history, you have directed more movies with a 3 at the end of it, Red Dragon didn't have a 3 but it was the third in the series but the benefit I had for Red Dragon was I had 3 different movies that existed Manhunter, Hannibal and Silence of the Lambs, that were the exact same genre but very different movies. With this movie I had two movies that existed with one director which created a fantastic tone and with some of the best actors in the world and I said oh this is going to be an easy job, little did I know we're in December in Vancouver.in the freezing cold. But the truth is that I was such a big fan of what was established and I knew that if I stuck to the tone of this movie, to the formula, and we have all the same actors coming back, it would be so much fun for me and a huge challenge by the way because I've never done a visual effects movie before.

Q: Can you pinpoint a specific element that you put your personal stamp once you came aboard?

Ratner: I think, like I said it's been very important to me to stick to the tone that Bryan and the actors created and my input really has been just to make a more emotional film, a film with more heart and more pathos so I wanted to, you know, try to tell the story, and act as if this is a trilogy and that this is the third in the series, and go in there and not reinvent it, not make it a Brett Ratner film but kind of stay with the formula that worked in the past and just add more heart. I'm a very emotional guy, I like emotion, I like feeling something in a movie, the audience cares about these characters so much it was very important to me to stay true to who they were.

Moderator: It was six years ago, at an event not unlike this we brought a bunch of press over from the scifi and genre world, you were shooting in an abandoned beer factory or something, do you remember that in Toronto ? And we had never met you before and the thing that impressed me so much about you was your incredible enthusiasm for the film, for the character, how do you maintain that for the third time around, and might be the fourth time around, how do you keep it going and maintain that incredible enthusiasm?

Jackman: I think, um, well Ian's being doing this a little longer than me but I've been acting for 10 years but you get a sense when you get a role and you're in a movie, in a story, which you don't want to let go of. You watch the movie, I saw X-Men one, saw X-Men two and as soon as it's finished you're like we have unlimited movies, these characters can go any which way and to me as an actor it's an amazing part. I think Wolverine in not just the comic book genre but any kind of action movie is one of the great parts I think. I love playing him and it's a challenge. With Brett on board, Brett sort of pulled me aside, I think all the actors aside and said our job in the third one is to not only round out the series because we are paying off things which have been sewn in X-Men one and X-Men two, deliberately, and we're getting to pay them off now, not only are we rounding it out we are going to take the stakes much higher than they've ever been. Emotionally we are going to get much further than we've ever been. So it's a challenge. You know for me if you're going to play a role and you're gonna do it again, you want to be able to do it better. You want to take it further and you want to show more. And in the script, I think we had the best script to start with of any of the three and so really that's the long answer of saying it was easy to get the passion to be there and I feel blessed to have the role.

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