Fanboys Anonymous

Welcome to the fourth edition of Fanboys Fix It, where instead of just complaining about what we don't like about something, we try to figure out how we can make it better. The previous three editions have been movies that were packed with flaws, the second of which was X-Men Origins: Wolverine. While that film goes down in history as one of the most problematic, the target for this edition is responsible for ushering in the initial beginning of the superhero craze in an era where nobody would touch the subject. With the upcoming release of X-Men: Apocalypse, it seemed fitting to go back in time to talk about Bryan Singer's premiere crack at the franchise with the 2000 film X-Men.

Upon rewatching this for the first time in years, I actually found myself liking it more than ever. In fact, there aren't a lot of things to complain about. Fundamentally, this is a pretty solid movie, but there are still some things that can be improved upon.

Here is a list of what I feel are the errors of the film, and how I would have fixed them if I had been on the creative team in some fashion.

Core Problem #1: Toad

What a stupid character. Out of all the villains to choose from, why was he the fourth member of The Brotherhood? Magneto, Mystique and Sabretooth are all classics, but Toad?? Obviously, the next best choice was Juggernaut, but even someone like Avalanche would have made more sense. For that matter, why has Avalanche still not been in a movie after 9 of these being made?

Getting rid of Toad also gets rid of one of the most ridiculous things in the movie: Storm's dialogue about toads being struck by lightning. It's an awful line that people make fun of all the time.

Ray Park is cool and all, having brought Darth Maul to life in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, but Toad just felt like a studio executive's note rather than something for the story. "Hey, this martial artist did some cool pole stuff on that movie, so why not have a character do the same thing here? Maybe he can be like, a frog guy too?"

Core Problem #2: Fight Choreography

This is something that would improve as the series went on, but it's terrible in the first entry. There are far too many moments where people are being thrown across a room in ridiculous fashion that I've seriously lost count at how many times it happens in the movie. Once or twice is okay, but only when the context fits it, too. For example, when Magneto launches Wolverine, it's because he has control over the metal in his body. That makes sense. Why, on the other hand, does Sabretooth fly backward when struck by lightning, or do people get kicked or punched and just sort of flip around?

That type of choreography is unrealistic to a point where audiences laugh at it and scoff at the idea that it's supposed to be believable, as it clearly is amped up to a level that's supposed to make you feel it's over the top and more like a comic book. Nowadays, the superhero film genre is succeeding because it's being treated in a more earnest fashion as if things were real, rather than trying to stylize it to give you the feel of watching a more campy comic book cinematic experience.

Core Problem #3: Missing Characters

There's only a limited amount of space in this movie, so the number of characters needed to be cut down to just a few in comparison to the vast amount from the comics. I understand fully well that there may not have been any room for some more characters to be added to the mix, but it was still disappointing going to the theaters to see this and not come across a few of my favorites from when I was a kid, watching the animated series.

For example, it floored me that Beast wasn't involved. In retrospect, I can look at the decision to keep him out and replace some of his character aspects with Jean Grey, making her a doctor to give her something more to do in the script, as a good call. However, part of me was just sad that Hank McCoy wasn't a big part of the school like he should have been. Later films would retcon this, and I'm happy about that.

How cool would it have been, though, to see Forge working in the garage on Cyclops' car for a split second or something like that?

Core Problem #4: The Costumes

Again, this was a different era for film, so I can forgive them to a degree. The uniforms in this movie never looked bad to me, but they still got under a lot of peoples' skin for not being more reminiscent of the comics. I think there could have been a way to incorporate more of the designs from the comic book counterparts while still maintaining a level of realism with the leather outfits. Later movies would try to do this, and I don't see why that couldn't have been done from the start. Magneto's look, for example, is close enough that people didn't really complain, and you buy it being something that he could actually be wearing. I'm not expecting yellow spandex, but maybe some yellow and blue piping on the leather outfits could have gone a long way.

Miscellaneous Extra Flaws & Nitpicking

Basically, those big problems above are the things that would have saved these movies and made them better as a whole, but there are smaller things that could have been changed as well. I'm obviously not going to nitpick every little detail, but a few things that stand out to me are as follows:

1. Storm's Accent – Either do it, or don't. Halle Berry fluctuates throughout the movie and it's terrible when she does it, so she should have either had a better dialect coach or the first time she tried it, they should have realized it wouldn't work and kept her natural speaking voice like they did in future movies.
2. Mr. Guyrich Has Been Dead for Some Time – Why? He was such an important figurehead of the anti-mutant agenda and could have been used in future movies! Mistake.
3. Rogue Casting – While I don't think this severely hurts the film, I do think someone else could have fit the role of Rogue better than Anna Paquin. I love the idea that Christina Ricci almost had the part, and I think she could have killed it.

Well, there you have it—some insight into how I would have changed things in hindsight if Marvel and Fox magically gave me the ability to do so. Thankfully, despite the bumps in the road along the way, the overall grand picture of the franchise has been a positive one, and I'm hoping this continues with X-Men: Apocalypse on May 27th.

Welcome to the third edition of Fanboys Fix It, where instead of just complaining about what we don't like about something, we try to figure out how we can make it better. With the upcoming release of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, it seems as though even the most excited fans are still holding their breath quite a bit about the film actually being good. This is due to several things making us nervous, such as the casting of Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor, the look of Doomsday, the inclusion and casting of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman and more. While all of those things factor in greatly to my concerns, the biggest thing weighing on my mind is how problematic I saw Zack Snyder's previous entry in the DC film franchise, Man of Steel.

My gut reaction to that movie when I saw it in theaters was to dislike a number of things about it, and over several years with multiple viewings, I was hoping my opinion would change. On the contrary, I still take issue with exactly the same problems I had with it from the start, which further cements the theory in my brain that they are legitimate gripes and not just minor flaws.

With that being said, how do you fix Man of Steel?

Here is a list of what I feel are the errors of the film and how I would have fixed them in a rewrite.

Core Problem #1: The Brainiac Problem

Since this movie was the start of the DC movie universe and a reboot of the Superman story, it needed to establish the world of Krypton yet again. In the past, we've seen it portrayed as a crystalline world with the old films as well as having more of a Jetsons flair in the Bruce Timm animated series. This time around, Snyder's style was a weird, sepia-toned (of course) bio-mechanical look that I personally didn't like whatsoever. I mean, what's up with those odd dragon creatures?? I would have much rather seen something similar to how Asgard was brought to life in Thor, but I'll dismiss this as not a true error of the film and more of a personal preference. I would like it better, but it doesn't improve the movie on a grand scale and if lots of people like it, good for them.

Putting that aside, though, why does this movie do its best to make things more complicated than it needed to be, and in the process, also ignore one of Superman's top 3 best villains ever?

In Man of Steel, we're introduced to this idea of the Growth Codex—a single skull that contains the genetic layout of every Kryptonian. All births on the planet are basically test tube babies and the codex is used to implant a predestination of purpose into each individual. Some are meant to grow up to be scientists, others are soldiers, and so on. The only person who doesn't fit the mold is Kal-El, cause he's a natural birth. We get the symbolism, guys. Way to hit us over the head with it.

Why couldn't the codex be Brainiac? Although the character didn't originally start out as much more than a silly name for a green and purple alien who is really smart, arguably the most widely appreciated version of Brainiac nowadays is the Brain InterActive Construct—artificial intelligence from Krypton that regulates everyday life and knowingly puts the continuation of its own existence above the Kryptonians themselves when it deems the planet doomed. Its justification is that it holds all of the records, so it's the best way of preserving the history of the planet.

First, that right there should be reason enough to tie it into the Growth Codex. It's a computer system that has all of the information! That's the same thing, but they just didn't want to call it Brainiac, cause they wanted it to be a skull instead. Hell, considering the appearance of Brainiac, they could have still kept the skull concept, but just referred to it a single, quickly passing time as "BrainIAC" and it would have tied the two together for future installments.

Second, the idea of Brainiac hoping to preserve Krypton was somehow transferred into Zod for the movie. His story is that he was predestined to be a warrior and that's all he knows how to do, and he just wants to preserve his lineage. Shouldn't Brainiac be doing that? Shouldn't Zod be more concerned with ruling the planet? It's as if they wanted to do Brainiac's story, but gave it to Zod as the vessel.

Also, look at the technology going on. They bothered to have Kelex (awesome) as a metallic, artificially intelligent nanotechnological computer system on Krypton and the World Engines have fucking tentacles! These are totally Brainiac concepts!!

If you have these elements to your story and you have a character that people love which could be used to help simplify things and make it not only easier to tell the story, but in a cooler way to please the fans, why wouldn't you do it? When you ask your GPS for directions and it tells you the quickest, easiest route, why would you rather opt to take a longer path with more detours that puts you on unpaved roads and costs you more gas?

Now, the DCEU is set up in a way where if they try to bring Brainiac into the fold, they'll be retreading on ground they've already covered. Would anyone care to see Superman fight giant machines with tentacles, or would they just claim it's a repeat of Man of Steel? How do you do a story about the preservation of Krypton and being built to serve a purpose when you've already done that with Zod?

This is how you accomplish the same basic ideas of the movie, but make it better:

1. When you establish Krypton, you talk about how there's a 50/50 split between biological and mechanical. You keep the weird dragon creatures and some of the style that I personally don't like, and you chalk that up to the bio side. You also establish that the mechanical side is a product of The Brain InterActive Construct.
2. The governing bodies of Krypton are the council that we see plus the insights of Brainiac. They don't take sentient creatures out of the equation, but they also rely heavily on the computer system to offer guidance. Why not, considering how it has all the technical readouts and such?
3. A bit too much trust is put in Brainiac, though. In fact, Krypton's so dependent upon it that they've gotten to a point where no natural births have taken place in hundreds of years. When they started expanding and exploring planets, they used Brainiac to artificially inseminate the explorers and to always make sure it created beings that kept a homeostasis. This method worked so well that they applied this to the normal planet based on Brainiac's recommendations. Too many scientists and not enough soldiers? Well, the next 1000 babies will be bread to be warriors. This is also a form of population control and all of the information is stored in the Growth Codex—a skull of the oldest living Kryptonian genetic ancestor.
4. General Dru-Zod's mental programming is a bit off. He and many others were implanted with a sense of rebellion because Brainiac was sort of bored and also thought an element of chaos needed to be in the society to keep things in check. He starts a civil war on the planet and in the process, activates the Black Zero weapon of mass destruction, which severely messes up the planet's core.
5. Zod is sent off to the Phantom Zone for his war crimes and Jor-El thinks the planet is doomed to self-collapse, but Brainiac keeps assuring the council that it's okay as it's already run the calculations and has determined that Krypton is a lost cause. Instead, it's manipulation the direction of the council—who are too stupid to realize it—so they focus their efforts on preserving Brainiac rather than themselves.
6. Jor-El hasn't trusted Brainiac in a long time. He rewired Kelex (his personal assistant offshoot of the Brainiac infrastructure) a long time ago and Kal-El is going to be a natural birth with no influence from Brainiac whatsoever.
7. At the zero hour where the destruction of the planet is imminent, Kal-El is sent on a spaceship (along with Kelex) to Earth. Brainiac saves itself. Krypton explodes and sends Kryptonite throughout the universe.
8. Kelex is eventually used to create the Fortress of Solitude, but it doesn't have the full memory banks of Krypton. This means Brainiac can come to Earth in a sequel, pretending to be a source of good for "The Last Son of Krypton" but it really turns out to be sinister.

All of your problems are solved and you've also set up a bad ass villain for a sequel. Zod's motivations change from trying to keep his race alive to being about how he was born with a lust for power and since he can't control Krypton, he'll go after Earth. You still have the Growth Codex, you still have the natural birth symbolism, and you still have the nanotechnology and everything else.

Core Problem #2: Replacement Characters

This is going to piggyback off the Brainiac situation in the previous problem, but take it to a new level. In the previous paragraphs, I was speaking about how using Brainiac would have been a way to include a popular character and implement him in spots that made it easier to explain what was going on. Basically, they missed out on using something cool which would simplify things.

But when we talk about how it would be better to use established characters instead of making up new ones, we can stretch this even further and apply it to other people in the movie.

Remember how stupid it was to have two mutated hulking animals be the villains in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze only for them to not be Bebop and Rocksteady? Were you disappointed to learn that Harry Osborn would turn into "New Goblin" instead of Hobgoblin or Green Goblin II in Spider-Man 3? Did you never quite understand why The Dark Knight has a big, burly white male cop and a Hispanic female cop, but they aren't Harvey Bullock and Renee Montoya? Wasn't it cool that at the beginning of Avengers: Age of Ultron they were taking down Baron von Strucker instead of a brand new character named something like General Smith?

The same thing happens in this film.

If you were to name the three most important people in The Daily Planet who are supporting characters in the Superman lore, wouldn't it be Lois Lane, Perry White and Jimmy Olsen, not Jenny Jurwich? Why was that character there instead of Jimmy Olsen? I would have been okay with it if Jenny died in the movie (to help up the stakes) and was replaced in the sequel with a young intern named Jimmy Olsen, but that wasn't the case, as Jenny didn't die. If they desperately wanted the Jimmy Olsen character to be a woman, why not just reinvent it as Jenny Olsen like we all speculated? It's not like reinventions can't work if done well. Look at how positive the reception has been for Carrie-Anne Moss being Jeryn Hogarth in Jessica Jones—nobody's bitching about that. Jenny Jurwich served no purpose in the movie at all other than to not be Jimmy Olsen in the Jimmy Olsen spot.

They felt that we needed to have a stern military leader who survives and another member of the military who dies in a self-sacrifice. Those were General Swanwick and Colonel Hardy. Wouldn't it have given Lois Lane more to do in the script and a stronger role if it were her father, General Sam Lane, who was in charge of overseeing the Superman situation? Change the actor, twist the dialogue in the scenes between Lois and General Swanwick (now General Lane) to reflect their father/daughter relationship, and there you go.

As far as Colonel Hardy goes, there are so many people from the comics he could have been. Ignoring someone like Nathaniel Adams (since he will be used as Captain Atom later, so you want to save him instead of killing him off here), these are just a few examples of characters that would have served as better replacements instead of Nathan Hardy: Phillip Hunter or Nicholas Hunter (or Benjamin Hunter), Sgt. Rock, Ted Gaynor, Steven Savage, Horace Canfield, Bulldozer Nichols, Gunner MacKay and there are so, so many more. In five minutes of looking through this DC Wikia page, I was able to come up with these names and only got to page 4 of 15. You mean to tell me the people working on this film couldn't put in the same work?

The worst thing here, though, is Carrie Farris. It's absolutely insane and beyond stupid to name a character something so incredibly similar to another character in the DCU! Everyone keeps thinking this is Carol Ferris, which means it creates confusion for no reason whatsoever. If she is Carol Ferris, then why is her name Carrie Farris? That's like having Batman be Bruce Bayne. If she's not Carol Ferris, then why isn't her name something else? Even if you didn't want to do the research to give her a name of someone from the comics (which is lazy) you still could have just called her Carrie Jones or Amanda Gunderson or whatever and you wouldn't have run into this problem.

It looks like in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, we're going to be having this same issue with Senator Finch. Holly Hunter could have been Elizabeth Alderman or Elizabeth Lawrence or plenty of other names.

Core Problem #3: Recasting

This one is much, much simpler to explain. Amy Adams is too old for Lois Lane in the 2013 Man of Steel. A few years beforehand, she could have been perfect, but even then, they should have died her hair. Lana's the redhead, Lois is the brunette. Does hair color destroy the interpretation of the character? No. But does spending $10 on a bottle of hair dye to go with the right look for the role hurt the budget of the film? If so, I would have sent them a check.

Christina Wren (Carol Ferris...I mean Carrie Farris) looks more like the character and she's closer in age to Henry Cavill. Why is Lois Lane 10 years older than Clark Kent? Some suggestions could have been Jessica Biel, Emily Blunt, Lauren Cohan, Olivia Wilde, Rachel Bilson, Odette Annable, Chyler Leigh, Sarah Shahi—again, I could go on and on with names.

If Amy Adams gave such a great, standout performance that I could ignore the age gap and the hair, that would be a different story, but she doesn't. There's absolutely nothing that she brings to the table that isn't replaceable.

I would have preferred someone younger than Michael Kelly being cast as Steve Lombard as well, for the record, just to clarify that this isn't an issue of ageism vs. gender roles. 

Core Problem #4: Jonathan Kent

One of the core principles of the Superman character is that he has the power to be the most destructive force on the planet, if not the entire universe (or even the omniverse considering Superboy Prime somehow punched holes in fucking reality itself...) but because of how he was raised, he grew up to value life and not to be selfish. This is not just a genetic thing passed onto him from Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van (who in their own right, were heroic) as the nature of his familial legacy is strengthened by the nurture of his adoptive birth parents' tutelage. While Krypton is his true heritage and he comes from good stock, it is Jonathan and Martha Kent who raise him to be a good man.

Why, then, is Jonathan such a dick in this movie? He's not some horrible murderer or anything of the sort, but there are some choices in dialogue and actions that are seemingly deliberately made just to have mistakes in the movie. For example, when Clark saves everyone from the bus accident, Jonathan tells him that he can't do that as he needs to keep his powers a secret. That in itself is perfectly okay, but look at this exchange of dialogue:

Clark: What was I supposed to do? Just let them die?

Jonathan: Maybe, but there's more at stake here than our lives or the lives of those around us. When the world finds out what you can do, it's gonna change everything; our beliefs, our notions of what it means to be human...everything. You saw how Pete's mom reacted, right? She was scared, Clark.

Hold on a second. Maybe? MAYBE? Maybe your son should have just let a bus load of children die to hold off on exposing his secret and scaring Pete's mom? I'm pretty sure despite Pete being a fat little turd, Pete's mom would rather be scared of what Clark did than mourn her son's death. The "maybe" causes so many problems because all of his scenes are about him wanting Clark to keep his secret, and it flat out implies that that's more important than human life, which is contradictory to what he should be teaching him. You can literally keep everything else in the whole scene exactly verbatim for what it is and just do one quick rewrite of the line where instead of "maybe" being the answer, Jonathan says "Of course not." When your son has the power to save lives, of course he should, but he should also be careful about how people will react to these extraordinary feats.

Later on, Jonathan's death scene comes up and it reinforces this notion that the secret is more important than saving people, because he would rather spend more time trying to help people out himself than to let Clark do it swiftly. He knows that he'll be safe, since nothing can hurt Clark, and by now, Clark should also know the difference between super speed and average running. Just by his youth and how much better shape he's in, Clark would be able to run faster than Jonathan and save people easier, so nobody would question it if he didn't go crazy with it. Even if he did go full-on Superman mode and exposed himself, wouldn't it be worth it to save all those people and the dog? Hell, at this point, Superman should be able to zip by and save Jonathan at the last second from the twister and people would just see a streak that he could blame on some kind of weird weather anomaly.

It was so much better when Jonathan's death was caused by a heart attack because that was something that Clark actually couldn't save him from, as opposed to something that he could have, but was told not to, since Jonathan had a death wish. A heart attack shows Clark that not all the answers in the universe revolve around being physically strong or fast and there's a vulnerability inside that needs to be protected. Superman would have no problem with tornadoes, but how is he going to save his dad from a heart attack? He can't, and that's why he dies—not because his foot got stuck in the car.

Core Problem #5: The Perception of Dark Destruction

Let me get this out of the way before we begin this section: I have no problem with the idea that Metropolis and Smallville were heavily damaged during the movie, nor do I have really much of an issue with Superman snapping Zod's neck.

The problem, I feel, is not in the idea itself, but in the repercussions from the audience's point of view. Similar to the Jonathan Kent scenario, too much was left on the table where the fans would have to draw certain conclusions on their own.

Immediately, people were reacting to this with hatred that Superman was a killer and didn't care about the deaths of thousands. That's not true. Superman doesn't want to kill Zod, but reaches a point where he sees no way out and that he must make that hard decision in order to protect the planet. Superman has killed before, such as when he killed Doomsday. Where it gets tricky is that Zack Snyder and company didn't set up the circumstances correctly to illustrate not only how Superman was backed into a corner, but that he wasn't equipped to handle the task in a better way.

Up until the final fight, Clark has really not been Superman. This is his first real test against an enemy rather than just saving people from accidents and putting out fires. He has no training in combat and he certainly has not seen destruction on such a grand scale. It's one thing to struggle to help save everyone from a collapsing oil rig where you just need to hold up some metal and tell people to get to a helicopter. It's an entirely different thing to fight superpowered and highly trained warmongering killer soldiers in hand-to-hand combat while stopping their giant planet-devouring machines AND to do so while protecting the civilians in the city...and to do it all singlehandedly.

There needed to be a more concerned effort in showing that Clark was overwhelmed and was trying to figure out how he could fix all of these problems at once. Maybe instead of focusing so much on the fights, there could have been a scene or two where he knowingly ignored the villains and didn't go for a really good punch because he rushed to save someone, which made him vulnerable to one of their attacks. In that scenario, he shows that his priority is the safety of everyone else, not himself, nor winning the fight. Remember the scene in The Avengers where Captain America tells the police that he and the others will take the fight to the Chitauri, but there are people on the streets that still need protection and the cops should be setting up a perimeter and so on? That illustrated that Cap was prioritizing the people while also working out battle strategy. He's more trained in that field, so of course he would be better at it than Superman, but the average moviegoer isn't thinking of that unless they're told. One quick scene where Superman tells the military that he doesn't know the best strategy of how to handle all of the threats and he needs their help while he puts himself out there as the target for Zod and company to attack could have done massive justice.

When it comes to killing Zod, why after all this destruction does it come down to Clark killing him to avoid hurting one family? Also, why does Zod's heat vision go in a straight line instead of just killing them if it's just his line of sight, considering how he could simply look at them and it would be the end? Let's ignore that plot hole and just go with the ticking time bomb scenario they set up. That one random family could have been an attempt to put the destruction under a microscope. It's one thing to see a building collapse and know that hundreds of people were killed, but it's another to watch each person die. If this was the filmmakers' attempt to put that into perspective and make us feel a more visceral reaction to the deaths that we could easily brush aside with the big sweeping destruction porn of the other scenes, it just wasn't executed properly. As far as if Superman had the right motivations in that scene, that's another whole issue. I think it would have made more sense if it were a family of a man, a woman, and their little boy where the father was standing in front of his wife and son, offering himself as a sacrifice to try to protect them. This would cause a flashback of remembrance for Clark to think back to his father and he would look at the situation where if he doesn't kill Zod, here's another family similar to his own where the boy will have to endure the pain of losing his father and the mother will have lost her husband. Since Clark couldn't save his father before, but he can save this boy's father (as well as everyone else out there), he has to make the tough call and end Zod.

To put an emphatic period at the end of all this, what really would have helped audiences swallow this destruction much easier is if Superman would have reacted to it more after the dust had settled. Yes, now that Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is coming out, we know there's repercussions from Batman and Lex Luthor and the government, but we didn't get anything to indicate to that at the end of this movie. Instead, we had Superman acting cocky to the military about how he could totes kick their asses if he wanted to and they should just leave him alone. Instead of a slightly veiled threat of "dude, you've seen what I can do, and you should trust me or else" it should have been Clark feeling remorseful that he couldn't do a better job saving people and the military being the ones that give him a pep talk. They could cheer him up (to an extent) by telling him he did all he could do and he proved (to them at least) that he has Earth's best interests in mind, and they willingly are choosing to give him some freedom to recompense for their mistrust earlier.

Miscellaneous Extra Flaws & Nitpicking

Basically, those big problems above are the things that would have saved these movies and made them better as a whole, but there are smaller things that could have been changed as well. I'm obviously not going to nitpick every little detail, but a few things that stand out to me are as follows:

1. Pete Ross and IHOP – Pete Ross in general is poorly handled in this. I mentioned before that he's a fat loser and a bully, which is just weird to me to begin with. Whitney Fordman poses a better antagonist, although I would get on board with Pete being converted from a bully to a friend if he didn't turn out to just end up working at a goddamn IHOP. In the comics, Pete became the freaking President of the United States! He also married Lana Lang, who shows up in this movie bearing a resemblance to Kristin Kreuk's version of the character from Smallville rather than the red-haired Lana from the comics. I'm okay with this interpretation of Lana being the new standard as it promotes more diversity (but Lois should have had brown hair, not Lana's red hair, just to reiterate that point). Pete from Smallville was portrayed by a black actor, Sam Jones III. This version of Pete could have taken a similar route, or even stayed a Caucasian person and even an out of shape one if necessary, but why is he just working at IHOP? Why the product placement? That was ridiculous!
2. Krypton Exposition – This should have been tightened up as it just runs too long and that time could have been better spent filling in other gaps of the story. I'm sure if they wanted to, they could have rewritten it to cut down on a scene or two and combine them in some fashion.
3. Hallucinations – It seems as though we're getting another one of these "horrific nightmare" scenes in Batman v Superman and I don't know why Zack Snyder is such a fan of them. This whole stuff with the ship and the hallucination with the skulls was superfluous and unnecessary flair that ate up time.
4. Hamilton shouldn't have died – Keep this character around to be a primary scientist in researching things for S.T.A.R. Labs or even Lex Luthor's version of Doomsday if you're going that route. There's no need for him to have died whatsoever.
5. Fortress of Solitude – Speaking of destroying things that you could use for the future, why did you just get rid of Jor-El and the whole idea of the Fortress of Solitude? If you don't know if you can use something in the future, but it's a big part of the canon, leave it open ended. You don't need to come back to it, but you are writing yourself into a corner you need to explain harder later on if you want to bring it back. This is why I'm worried they'll cut corners and kill off Dick Grayson just to get rid of the problem of having too many Robins to deal with and they'll merge him together with Jason Todd. Now this means we're one movie into the DCEU and we can't have Jor-El and the Fortress of Solitude ever show up again unless there's some convoluted method that eats up more screen time that is introduced to explain why it could have a resurgence. And what impact did it have to destroy it? None. It was pointless.
6. The Dogs – Why isn't either of them named Shelby?
7. Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel – I hope that Clark using the pseudonym Joe while he was traveling the world was a reference to Joe Shuster, and I wish that his time on Deadliest Catch playing around in the ocean would have addressed him as Jerry to make it a double. Missed opportunity.
8. Stealing – Maybe if one of the criticisms of your movie could be that it's too dark and everyone's too cynical, don't show Superman stealing clothes and screwing up trucks just for revenge. The truck thing is played for a laugh and that's more excusable to me, but stealing the clothes wasn't something we needed to see, cause we would just fill in the gaps ourselves about how he got his clothes he was currently wearing. Now, instead of us making the judgment call ourselves on whether he just had extra clothes stashed somewhere or he purchased them or whatever, we know that he's a thief—probably because his dad had a conversation with him at some point that said if you're missing clothes, it's more important to get something on than to be nice to people, cause they should all die anyway.
9. Closet Scene – The dialogue in that scene where Clark hides in the closet at school is too sappy. If the world is too big, then make it small? Someone's trying too hard to be deep.
10. The Suit – Overall, I love the suit, but one change I would make that I think could have had a really nice reflection on the classic look is for the little blue sections around his waist to be red and for a more pronounced gold belt-like center to be placed in there. This wouldn't give him the red underwear and gaudy yellow belt, but it would resemble it more.

Well, there you have it—some insight into how I would have changed things in hindsight if DC magically gave me the ability to do so. This is the type of movie that has a ton of things that I absolutely love, like the first contact angle and "Welcome to the planet" and so forth, but some things that really just irk me so much that I can't love it and it makes me nervous for how things will go with the rest of the films coming up.

Welcome to the second edition of Fanboys Fix It, where instead of just complaining about what we don't like about something, we try to figure out how we can make it better. With the upcoming release of Deadpool, this was the perfect time to examine why this movie took years to get made and almost never came to be at all. This all stems from the massively disappointing fourth entry in the Fox X-Men franchise, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

The first two X-Men and X2: X-Men United did very well, but things went to shit with the third installment, X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006. Everyone was hoping that this standalone Wolverine film would bring the series back on track, but it turned out to be another step in the wrong direction, causing the studio to rethink their strategy for future films.

Why is it so bad? What is wrong with the movie? How do you fix X-Men Origins: Wolverine?

Let's take a look.

Core Problem #1: Tone

Keep in mind that this series is all about hindsight, where I try to get as close as possible to the movie that they clearly wanted to make while also taking the necessary steps to make adjustments for the better. That's hard to do, though, when the movie itself doesn't know what it wants to be.

Sometimes, this wants to be a gritty, serious story about two brothers who either embrace their inner beast (Sabretooth) or reject the killer inside him in hopes of being more normal and less feral (Wolverine). Other times, this movie thinks it's this campy "superhero film" of a different era where it needs to be all spectacle and no substance.

The fight choreography is the easiest way to see how silly this can be. The action is often unrealistic as hell, with people flipping around in impossible ways (even for mutants) for no reason other than someone said it would look cool for them to flip—and it doesn't. Am I the only one who thinks Victor is a badass in a lot of ways but is laughably stupid looking when he gets on all fours and pounces in the middle of a bar? Oooh, I get it, that's because he's like a sabretooth tiger. Well, he looks ridiculous, and that type of on-the-nose writing makes me shocked that we didn't see Logan actually come across a wolverine in the forest that acts as his spirit animal and points him in the right direction to find Kayla.

Since it's practically impossible to balance two extremes like serious/silly, neither ends up working. The lighter stuff takes out any emotional impact from the darker stuff and the darker stuff makes it so it can't get so weird as to be funny and entertaining in that way, and thus we end up with something that pleases nobody.

Core Problem #2: Kayla Silverfox & Emma Frost

Normally, I advocate trying to fit in references to characters all over the place and if you can insert someone from the comics in a role rather than make something else up, you should go ahead and do that. To some extent, this movie does follow that rule, but it also does it in a way that is detrimental to the overall picture.

Emma Frost should not have been in this movie. First off, she's not even officially Emma Frost in the credits, but just "Emma" despite being a blonde mutant woman with diamond skin…named Emma. Second, as far as I'm aware, she's not related in any way to Silver Fox like she is in the movie. For some reason, they decided that they should be sisters, and this is to give Kayla a reason to betray Logan, and it all just works backward.

If Kayla needed a sister, why is it Emma? Because Emma wasn't used in the movies yet? More so, Kayla doesn't need a sister, because she doesn't need to have a reason to betray Logan, because she doesn't need to betray Logan! It's not a twist that got the audience reeling and it didn't amount to anything. After the reveal, Logan wants to just leave but then comes back to save her, and then she dies anyway. You could skip all of this nonsense by just having her die when she fake-dies in the movie.

In that scenario, Kayla dies as a legitimate good person who did nothing wrong and was just in the way. It gives Logan more of a reason to hate Victor because he actually did kill her instead of just faking it like in the film. The way it goes now, he basically seems to forgive Victor despite how John Wraith is dead. I guess that guy didn't mean much to Logan, right?

Kayla's role in the film is to love Logan, get killed so he can go on a hunt, reveal that she is still alive and that she was part of the ruse but only to get her sister (who isn't a factor beforehand) out of captivity, let Logan save her sister, and then tell Stryker to leave her alone while she dies. By the end, Logan doesn't remember her anyway, so it's all a moot point. She could have died at the beginning and not made any more appearances, rendering the Emma character superfluous so she can be saved for other movies. Same story, less mess to clean up, even better results.

Core Problem #3: Gambit

A running theme for this movie is pointless characters and just as Emma is one, Gambit falls victim to the same issue.

The list of events Gambit does in the movie is the following: 1) throws a card at Logan because he thinks he's coming after him, 2) starts to say this and easily gets knocked down by Logan who is busy with other shit, 3) starts fighting Logan again but loses, 4) takes Logan to Three Mile Island and promptly goes...somewhere...to do...something...while everything else is happening, 5) pops up to save Logan from being crushed under cement even though he would survive it anyway, 6) tells him his name despite that being on the dog tags anyway, 7) fucks off never to be seen again in the lore as of yet.

Once again, they must have included Gambit into this movie just because they wanted to put Gambit into the movie. Nothing he does is instrumental to the plot in a way that only he could do it. If Logan were to find out there Stryker was located by anyone else (Blob, for one, who tells him to find Gambit just so Gambit can tell him the same information) then he can just go there on his own. He damn sure leaves on his own and fights the villain without Gambit's help, so there's no need for him.

Nixing him from the movie also means we don't have the Taylor Kitsch version. While he wasn't horrible, he definitely wasn't the Gambit we deserve.

Core Problem #4: Deadpool

Speaking of getting a bad version of a character that we don't deserve rather than something better, this is the part of the film that gets the most amount of criticism, and with good reason.

Let's just start this section off by saying that somehow, they took a character that is insanely popular because of the crazy things he says and goes by the nickname The Merc with the Mouth and they sewed his mouth shut! WHAT?? That's like doing a Green Arrow movie where he doesn't use a bow and arrow, or a Daredevil movie where Matt Murdock can see perfectly fine.

At the beginning of the movie, we're introduced to Wade Wilson who is very skilled at killing people and also won't shut the hell up. He's childish and annoying. That's the Deadpool we're getting in this new movie coming out in a few days and thank God, because that's all we see of that version of the character in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The next time we see him, he's been experimented on as Weapon XI, can't speak, is controlled by a computer, and has the powers of teleportation along with Cyclops', and these two swords coming out of his arms.

Oh yeah, and he's the villain, which should have been Omega Red instead. Arkady Rossovich could have been introduced as an enemy from the start, seeing as he's tied to Russia and Stryker had recruited Team X for America. Since part of his power is draining life force, he could cancel out the healing factor from Logan and Victor, evening the odds for a three-way fight between them. The "big reveal" at the end—instead of it being Kayla's deception—could be that Stryker was working with Rossovich all along, as he doesn't really care about Russia, nor does Stryker really care about America. Both of them are in it for the Mutant Agenda more than anything else and that is where their priorities lie. When else are we going to see Omega Red in a movie other than one centralized around Wolverine? He's big enough for that type of film but not for something starring a whole team.

If you want to go really balls out with this, Gambit's role in the movie should have been Deadpool's so we have the climax of the film being Deadpool and Wolverine teaming up against Omega Red and Sabretooth. You can even tie in Deadpool's scarring to Red's life force draining abilities, which sets up why those two are at odds with one another. Then, Deadpool can get the solo film we're seeing now, and maybe that would have stopped Ryan Reynolds from doing Green Lantern and getting a huge setback in his career.

Core Problem #5: The Opening Credits

Right now you're probably thinking "What?! That was the best part!" Indeed it was, and that's why it's on this list. The montage of Wolverine and Sabretooth going through the different wars is so awesome that when I saw this in theaters, my expectations for the rest of the movie went up so far, only to be let down even more. I had gone into this hating X-Men: The Last Stand and with very low expectations but with high hopes as well. This movie started off in a way that made me temporarily think that my fears were pointless and that I was in for an awesome ride, but then it soured and continued to suck.

Basically, they dangled a carrot and then when I went to reach for it, they slapped me in the face and said I was wrong for thinking this wouldn't be a bad movie. Thankfully, X-Men: First Class was better, The Wolverine was a step up from this and X-Men: Days of Future Past blew me out of the water, so now I don't know what to think about X-Men: Apocalypse.

Miscellaneous Extra Flaws & Nitpicking

Those are the biggest structural problems to the movie, but there are some other, smaller things that I feel could have been changed for the better as well. I can't remember every little thing, but a few that stand out to me are as follows:

1. CGI on Charles Xavier – Holy shit does he look like he's a wax statue!
2. Bolt – Stupid. A waste of Dominic Monaghan, too, as he's better than that role.
3. Adamantium Bullet – This is how Logan loses his memory? A gunshot to the head? There's no explanation for how this works other than them just saying it does. The bullet falls out just like any other, so why are his memories erased? Why is it conveniently not memories like how to talk and walk or anything of the sort?

Well, there you have it. The movies have figured out a way to reset the timeline and get rid of some of the problems with this film, but they unfortunately can't erase it from our actual reality.

Welcome to the first edition of Fanboys Fix It, where instead of just complaining about what we don't like about something, we try to figure out how we can make it better. Considering that Star Wars: Episode VII—The Force Awakens will be released in a few days and one of the hottest issues about it is whether it will live up to the hype or fall short compared to what happened with the prequel films, what better topic is there to kickstart this segment than How to Fix the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy?

Granted, there are a lot of things that these three movies got right. I think a lot of people are harder on them than they need to be and aren't willing to give credit to the positives because they just focus on the negatives. We have some awesome action sequences, much of the lore is established here that's taken for granted (like Coruscant, the Jedi Council, the connection between Stormtroopers and Boba Fett, etc.) and there are glimpses of genius along the way.

Sadly, there are also plenty of reasons to hate these movies, which is why it lends itself to such a good topic to discuss. After rewatching all of the films for our recent Movie Club, I couldn't help but ponder how things could have been much better. Therefore, I present to you my list of what those problems are and how I think they could have gone about things in a different, better way.

Core Problem #1: Anakin's Age

In The Phantom Menace, Anakin should have been a teenager and not a child.

Padme being a young queen is okay, as that has happened in ancient cultures before, but the age difference between Padme and Anakin is creepy. If they're closer to age, it makes more sense for them to be romantically linked.

Attack of the Clones gets to show off Anakin's rebellious side like a typical teenager, and it's more interesting than the do-good kid.

At this time in his life, Anakin is interested more in girls and what he's going to do with his future career aspirations. That's why he's interested in helping out our heroes when they're stranded (because he's interested in Padme) and then jumps at the chance of becoming a Jedi because it's a purpose for his life.

An important part of a teenager's experience is learning how to drive and getting his/her first car. This is your pod race connection. He's an adventure seeker and reckless because he thinks he's invincible, like all teenagers do. Since he's bursting with testosterone and wanting to show off for Padme, as well as dealing with the typical rage of a teen, it's more believable that he would have the itch to fight and join the space battle on his own accord rather than accidentally falling ass-backward into the sequence.

We have children in the Jedi Order training in Episode II, yet at age 9, Anakin is supposed to be "too old" to begin training. The last time we had heard this was when Yoda said Luke was too old, and he was around 20-something. Luke's case makes sense more than a 9-year-old, so if Anakin was about 15, then I would buy into him being too old at this point, too. Plus, if Luke is able to learn so much in the short amount of time that he's training with Obi-Wan and Yoda, then it shouldn't make sense for Anakin to be training for 10 years and still just be at the level he's at in Attack of the Clones. Making it a shorter time frame where certain, special Jedi are able to advance quicker helps justify what happens with Luke later on as well as Ezra Bridger from Star Wars Rebels.

Because of this, we wouldn't need a 10-year time gap between the first and second films. Anakin is around 15 in The Phantom Menace and we can still make him 20 in Attack of the Clones to skip time but not as drastically. Without that gap, the same actor could play the character throughout all three films. Obviously, Jake Lloyd couldn't have been cast, because he would have been too young, which means we'd have gotten a better actor (sorry Jake) for the part. Imagine Ryan Phillippe as Anakin Skywalker, or James Franco, or Leonardo DiCaprio!

The cherry on top: if Anakin had been a teenager instead of a child, there wouldn't have been a reason for them to think it would work for him to say "yippee!"

Core Problem #2: Tone Down Silly Stupid Humor

To go along with this problem of Anakin being a stupid little kid who says "yippee!" are far too many examples of childish humor to list them all here. Of course, it must be said that George Lucas purposely included this as an attempt to market the films toward kids, but if you look at the original trilogy, those worked for children and didn't pander to them. Kids love the Marvel Cinematic Universe, too, but you don't see those movies adding a quota of poop and fart jokes.

Let's just state the obvious target for this one: Jar Jar Binks.

At the beginning of The Phantom Menace, he's actually not a bad character. At the very least, he's no worse than some of the things we've seen before, like Garindan (aka Long-Snoot, that stupid anteater thing in A New Hope that snitches on the Millennium Falcon and sounds like a kazoo) or the cantina band. If you only saw the scene where Jar Jar is saved by Qui-Gon Jinn and then tells them to hide in the underwater Gungan village, then you'd think he was on par of a character with C-3PO—I guarantee it. Seeing the rest of the film is what ruins that image.

Jar Jar Binks starts going downhill when Captain Tarpals tells him he's-a in big doodoo. Ugh. This is just a sad way to tone things down for kids to understand, because "doodoo" = "bad" and if they had a line of dialogue that was more adult, it would just be too hard to grasp, right?

In general, though, most of what bugs people about Jar Jar boils down to him being a comic relief character for children. He could be clumsy, but not stupid-clumsy. Does he need to step in poop? A gag like him being temporarily paralyzed by the pod racer's energy beam could have been funny if it hadn't been so over the top, and the reason it was taken to that ridiculous level is because bad filmmakers think you need to do that for kids. That's why baby talk exists instead of talking to children like adults talk to each other. Put on the Sprout network and take a drink every time someone is SUPER DUPER EXCITED or if they fall down, they go "wooaah, waaooahh, WOOOAAAAH" before they crash or something like that.

Jar Jar could still be a comic relief character if he were toned down and made more PG-13 funny instead of G-rated "fun for the whole family because it won't offend anybody" material. Think of him as Chewbacca gone wrong. Chewie is a ridiculous concept. He's a walking bear thing that grunts and has a crossbow. Despite this, people love him. Why? Because he doesn't go overboard like Jar Jar to the point where he would become annoying. Jar Jar could have been a decent supporting character if he hadn't been the equivalent of that loud, obnoxious kid in class who demands attention and is willing to do stupid things just to get it.

Also, stepping away from Jar Jar, there's a distinct difference between the droids in the first film and in the second and third. For some reason, when Jar Jar was more tame, the droids became sillier. There's no reason for them to be groaning when they're killed or anything along those lines.

It's funny when Leia calls Han a "stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf-herder" and the only thing he takes offense to is "scruffy-looking." It isn't funny when Jar Jar is given a commanding role in a military force and lucks his way into juggling bombs and tripping over droids. A good joke is when Obi-Wan uses the Jedi mind trick on the drug dealer and tells him to go home to rethink his life or when he's cocky and says Qui-Gon was right that the negotiations were indeed short. A bad joke that is totally unnecessary is pretty much everything done by the commentators on the pod race. I laugh when C-3PO thinks everyone is being crushed in the trash compactor, but not at anything that happens with him during the Battle of Geonosis.

Core Problem #3: The Pacing of Politics

A common complaint about the prequels is that there's too much talk about boring politics. Some of this was absolutely necessary, but I'll agree that a lot of time is wasted that could have been used for something else, especially when a lot of the setup doubles back on the same points already established. Half of The Phantom Menace is about people talking about an invasion and upcoming conflict when the troops of the Trade Federation have already invaded and taken over. Apparently "the death toll is catastrophic," but we don't see absolutely any of that. Things seem peaceful, almost, and you can look at the villains almost more like imposing security guards than an invading genocidal force of nature.

Essentially, the prequels follow this path:

Step 1) Trade Federation creates a blockade for Naboo
Step 2) Trade Federation invades the surface of Naboo and take over the planet
Step 3) Chancellor Valorum doesn't do anything about it, so he gets replaced by Palpatine
Step 4) Gungans and Naboo take back control of Naboo
Step 5) After 10 years where nothing of note has happened, there's an assassination attempt on Padme
Step 6) Wait a sec, the assassin is also involved in a clone army being built for the Republic?
Step 7) Trade Federation alliance (The Separatists) are creating a civil war and Palpatine wants more power to control things better
Step 8) Palpatine is given more power
Step 9) Clone Wars begin
Step 10) Clone Wars end (what, already?)
Step 11) Palpatine refuses to step down
Step 12) Jedi are set up to look like they're traitors and Palpatine becomes Emperor

With some tweaks and showing some different things on screen, this could have worked just as fine. For example, there should have been a more definitive declaration of war at the end of the first film. That way, Anakin's training takes place during war time, which is a pressure-cooker environment. He's just been uprooted from his home, fallen in love, and told that not only does he have special powers he'll have to train to use, but that he's going to be the person that the entire galaxy depends on to be the one to solve an entire war. Hey kid, remember when you were a slave and life totally sucked? Well, now you need to become our ace in the hole and learn how to be a soldier who can kill the bad guys despite the fact that we're telling you that Jedi never use their powers for attack.

In the James Bond film Casino Royale, Bond asks M if she wants him to be "half monk, half hitman" and that's how Anakin should feel. He's being pulled in both directions.

Why would Anakin be sent straight into war? Well, it's like Vietnam, where the draft was taking young kids all the time. Plus, it could be justified that Kenobi is too valuable not to have on the front lines, and since he needs to be an active participant because of how important he is to the Jedi Order, then his Padawan has to tag along by default and basically be thrown into the deep end of the pool to learn how to swim.

The pod race setup is all about the politics of slavery, and while I think that needed to be a big plot point, it needed to be focused on more in the second and third films regarding Anakin's perspective on life but not eat up screen time to dawdle. This could be more of an overall arching theme with him that pays off over the course of three films rather than hitting us with 85% of the bulk of it while we wait for the pod race to start.

Between the first and second films, Anakin should develop a bond with Palpatine over their political ideas. There's a great set of lines in Attack of the Clones where Anakin says that if people can't sit down and agree on a solution, they should be made to. Padme expresses her concern that this is more of a dictatorship than a democracy, and he simply says "well, if it works." Palpatine should be manipulative enough to have planted the seed in Anakin's head that a dictatorship isn't slavery if you have the right person in charge who knows better about what people need than what they can do for themselves. After all, the Republic trusts the Jedi to have control, and the Jedi Council has Yoda at the top, right? Why can't there be an Emperor who controls all of the regional governors but has final say to veto anything? Otherwise, if people have too much power, things get out of hand because the smaller ones that get overlooked will turn into corrupt sectors like Tatooine or problems like Naboo's enslavement can happen.

The assassination attempt on Padme in the second film shouldn't have just been her. There should have been coordinated attacks on anybody who was a potential threat to Palpatine amassing more power, including Senator Bail Organa. A few of these politicians should have been killed, but Padme is assigned (more-so requests) Anakin as her protector while Obi-Wan is partnered up with Organa (to help establish a friendship that plays off with them splitting the children up later on.)

That takes us into another whole issue...

Core Problem #4: Building Relationships

As mentioned above, setting up a stronger friendship between Obi-Wan and Bail Organa makes sense. I also love the idea of Anakin being the Jedi protector of Padme and giving them time to spend alone with each other, but I think there was a giant misstep in this direction.

With the way the films stands now, 10 years go by where Anakin and Padme don't see each other, yet they fall in love super fast. Since we've already established with these fixes that they're closer in age now and 10 years haven't taken place between movies, I'd suggest that Padme and Anakin have been seeing each other in secret for the past few years. Anakin goes off to war while Padme delegates with the Senate. Whenever their paths cross, they shack up in private. The only person who knows about this relationship is Obi-Wan, who is like a brother to Anakin and is willing to bend the rules a little bit. However, there should be a discussion where Kenobi warns him that he's playing a dangerous game and that this could end badly. What were to happen if Padme got pregnant? Anakin, the careless and selfish person that he can be at times, would just say that if he had a son, he'd pass on his lightsaber to him and train him like Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon before him. He clearly doesn't take the warning seriously, and when Kenobi suggests that he could be expelled from the Jedi Order and Padme could be driven out of the Senate, he just says there's more to life than bureaucracy and he's spent his whole life living as a slave, so the rules don't really apply to him, do they?

Anakin and Palpatine's relationship as father/son would need more time to develop. Again, as previously mentioned, by the time the second film comes along, Palpatine should already be heavily in Anakin's ear as a charismatic leader who actually looks out for him and he can look up to. He buys into what Palpatine has to say, even more than Padme's ideas at times. After all, Anakin's never had a father and when the father of the galaxy takes a shine to you, that's special, especially when the #2 on the Jedi Council, Mace Windu, is a total dick and never trusts you. He didn't want you to be trained in the first film, he doesn't listen to your battle plans in the second film, and by the third film he's going to try to kill Palpatine. Screw that, man!

One lack of a connection that has bugged me for 10 years now is the one between Leia and Padme. In Return of the Jedi, she states that she remembers images and feelings of her real mother, but we see Padme die immediately after Leia's born. There's clearly not time to establish them living together for years or anything, but would it have been so hard for Leia to have been born first, Padme to hold her for a few minutes and kiss her on the cheek, and for Padme to kick the bucket while Luke's emerging? That way, there's never been a real bond between Luke and Padme, which would explain why he has no memories of her. It's sad, but it covers up a plot hole.

Just as much as there should have been relationships built up more, one of them should have not existed at all, and that's the one between Anakin and C-3PO. Talk about making your world too small! There's absolutely no reason to make Anakin the one who builds Threepio other than fan service that suspends far too much disbelief. We had an amazing introduction to R2-D2, which was perfect in showing his heroism and giving him a reason to be so trusted going forward. Why couldn't C-3PO just have been Padme's protocol droid or maybe an interpreter that works for the Jedi Council? It doesn't help that C-3PO appears to have no recollection of ever being on Tatooine when he and R2-D2 crash there in A New Hope.

Core Problem #5: Descent Into Darkness

One moment, Anakin is saying that Windu shouldn't kill Palpatine because he should stand trial. The next minute, he's slicing up little kids. Why? Poor storytelling and a need to cram a turn to the dark side in a few rushed scenes.

Anakin's fall from grace should have happened more gradually with more hints along the way. There should have been less whining and complaining and more scenes showing his arrogance. He takes it upon himself to steal a starfighter and join the attack on the Trade Federation ship without thinking that maybe there's a trained pilot ready to take that for himself. When chastised for it, he should try to justify it by saying it doesn't matter that he rushed into it, because he was the one who destroyed it, so it all worked out in the end.

The prophetic nightmares are awesome and could have been given even more of a focus. When Anakin lashes out in anger and kills the Tusken Raiders, that should have carried more weight. The Jedi should have all felt that intense dip into the dark side and had a conversation with him about how they don't trust him anymore.

Things get even worse when they criticize him for killing Count Dooku, especially if he would have tortured him for information by using Force Lightning on him. The Jedi could tell him that this is another reason why they are suspicious of him and that it was a terrible breach of conduct. He could complain and say that he's just following orders, cause they tossed him into the damn war to begin with and if it's his destiny to destroy the Sith, what rationale do they have for bitching that he killed one?

Imagine how much more it would weigh on Anakin to keep his relationship with Padme a secret if it had been going on for longer than his relationship with the Jedi Order. After all, the first time he bumped into them on Tatooine was when he was interested in helping Padme. They had their connection before he swore any kind of allegiance to become a Jedi, and how can these peacekeepers be opposed to love? Even Obi-Wan doesn't think it's such a good idea. What a jerk, right?

This could be why he starts to buy into what Palpatine says about the Jedi holding him back and not liking his form of justice. When Palpatine has done nothing but help Anakin while the Jedi are always questioning him, eventually it comes down to a point where he has to make a choice. With Mace Windu being the opposition for Palpatine as well as someone who has constantly butted heads with Anakin, it's an easier choice. It might have worked even better to also have Palpatine do something to set it up as though Windu was planning on "arresting" Padme for getting involved in Jedi business. That way, Anakin thinks if Windu is "arresting" Chancellor Palpatine with a lightsaber to the throat, why would he be able to trust he wouldn't kill Padme?

There could have also been some little moments sprinkled throughout other scenes that we've established. Maybe Anakin cheats to win the pod race and tries to justify it by saying that Sebulba cheated first and he was just even-ing the odds, similar to how Qui-Gon cheats at the dice game to win Anakin's freedom over Shmi's. Anakin could have threatened to kill Clieg Lars for what happened to Shmi. Since Obi-Wan was our 100% heroic protagonist for these three films, Anakin should have really dancing around the line as antihero so by the beginning of the third movie, even the Jedi Council knows it's just a matter of time before they completely lose control and he turns to the dark side.

Miscellaneous Extra Flaws

Basically, those big problems above are the things that would have saved these movies and made them better as a whole, but there are smaller things that could have been changed as well. I'm obviously not going to nitpick every little detail, but a few things that stand out to me are as follows:

1. More Darth Maul – Three fights should have happened in The Phantom Menace, not two. The first should have been during the initial invasion of Naboo, the second while he's hunting them down on Tatooine like a Terminator, and the third climactic one.
2. Qui-Gon Disappearing – I would have liked to see Qui-Gon disappear and for that to be the first time it's ever happened, which baffles the Jedi. The first time we saw a Jedi die without disappearing was his death, but the following films didn't explain it well enough. At the end of Revenge of the Sith, Yoda just casually mentions that he knows how to do it from talking to Qui-Gon, which is something we've never seen. That should have been more developed and tied into Anakin's prophetic dreams and the Jedi Council's growing fear that he will turn to the dark side as well as more information on the Sith history.
3. Dialogue – A second writer should have been hired to take care of the dialogue, which was awful at times. "If you're not with me, then you're my enemy" is so on the nose. "From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!" Terrible. "No, it's cause I'm so in love with you." I don't need to mention the sand lines, right? What about Anakin saying "Now this is pod racing" or asking if Padme is an angel? One of the only lines in all three films that is actually good is Padme's where she says "So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause."
4. More Women – I'm far from someone who will bring up the Bechdel Test, but in retrospect, a few more women wouldn't have hurt. There's certainly more in the prequels than in the original trilogy, as we have female Jedi Council members, female pilots, and more, but maybe Count Dooku could have been a woman instead, or Asajj Ventress could have been in the film as his apprentice so we had a two-on-two fight with her and Tyrannus against Kenobi and Skywalker. A reference to Ahsoka Tano would have been appreciated in Revenge of the Sith if they had figured out that they wanted Anakin to have had an apprentice by then.
5. Returning to Tatooine –After the death of Shmi, Anakin should have had such a traumatic experience that he states he'll never return to that entire planet. That would give them a reason to hide Luke there.

Well, there you have it. From my certain point of view, that is how I would go ahead and fix the prequel films if I could go back in time knowing what I know now. What do you think of the changes that I would have made? Do they make the movies better or worse? What changes would you make?

Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!