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"Excitable" Marvel CEO Avi Arad is apoplectic over the beating his new X3 director, celebrated fauxteur and bon vivant Brett Ratner, is taking on the internets before a single frame of the latest installment of his certain-to-be-ruined franchise (There we go again! Bad internets!) has been viewed. Like a big brother enlisted to stop the unchecked flow of milk money into a bully's pockets, Arad defends the director on Zap2it.com:

"Idiots," he says plainly, before continuing. "Idiots." [...]

"Did you see 'Red Dragon?' Did you see that?" Arad asks, referring to Ratner's reasonably well-reviewed Hannibal Lecter remake. "And you saw 'Family Man,' which is totally different, a very emotional story. Then, you have two giant comedies. What are they thinking? This is a great filmmaker. Do you know how much experience this guy has? Let alone his new Jessica Simpson video? This guy knows what he's doing."

While we're inclined to end with a pithy comment in the "the prosecution rests" family, we'll instead give Arad the last word and a little more rope with which to hang his beloved Ratner: "Brett Ratner came onto this thing and from the get-go, you felt experience. He's made lots of changes in the script that are very good, because he's thinking picture, not words. He's very cinematic."

[Bonus note: Whoever does Zap2it's ad placement has a good sense of humor, as two large ads for Ratner's ex-girlfriend's reality show dominate the page.]