X-Men 3 review

[andrewducker]

I don't really care that much about continuity in the X-Men. Well, I care about continuity from movie to movie, but do I care if the plots match the comics? Not a chance. What I do care about is that someone has produced a good movie in its own right.

Sadly they haven't. There are some good ideas in there, there are some nice moments, there are some good uses of CGI, but what they don't add up to is a good movie.

The writer seems to have ploughed through vast numbers of old comics and internet chatrooms looking for ideas he can put into the movie and then just flung them all in with no thought as to whether they add something to the story or not. We have characters who turn up for a scene here and a scene there and then vanish, with no real service to the story at all except to look pretty on screen, while other characters, robbed of their screen-time are left without the character-depth necessary to make an impact.

Coming out of it at the end I had no idea what the central story was supposed to be - was it about Rogue and Ice-Man? Was it about the Phoenix, Wolverine and Cyclops love triangle? Was it about Magneto's battle with Homo Sapiens? Was it about Angel, his father issues and The Cure? Was it about Beast and his choices between the mutant world and the human one? Was it about Storm's leadership role versus Wolverine's rebellion?

Any two of these plots would easily have filled up the movie, put them all in and you were left with a tangled mess and a whole bunch of characters you didn't really care about. In the hands of a good writer there would have been focus - scenes that didn't matter could have been dropped or shortened, scenes that did could have had space to breathe, and people might have come out of the cinema feeling that they'd seen something worthwhile.

They'd still have been arguing that Phoenix "isn't really like that" and that Beast "would never act like that", but that's fanboys for you at least they care about the characters, they don't just want to see a bunch of action scenes and cool CGI.

5/10

Addendum:
Went to see it a second time today (this review was actually written yesterday). I'd upgrade it to a 6, largely because the first half of the movie actually works perfectly well, barring a couple of kludgy infodumps. It's only when they come to tie it all together that it _really_ descends into mawkish cliche and pointlessness.

Comments

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen it yet, but it sounds like X3 has become exactly what the X-titles are like. Mostly shallow exercises in soap and namechecking rather than y'know actually exploring racism / intolerance etc etc. Disappointing.

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

Cyclops and the reason below are my reasons for going to see it (hopefully at some point next week):

"The characters Phat and Spike (Both from the X-Statix comic book) make cameo appearances." (imdb)

I still mourn X-Statix. :-(

[draconid.livejournal.com]

Cyclops was one of my main reasons for seeing it. I was incredibly disappointed. I won't spoil you with what happens to him, but I'll be interested to see your own reactions.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Did you stay until after the credits?

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

No. Was there an extra scene or something?

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Uh, yes..

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Last scene I saw was Magneto playing chess, and he manages to move one of the pieces slightly. Was there more?

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

yeeeeessssss..

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Googles.......oh!

Oh bum, had left the cinema long before that scene. That'll teach me to not stay and find out who the deputy assistant accountant was.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhsAxVIwFDQ&search=xmen

[andrewducker]

Yup.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Ha. I just wrote my review without reading yours and yeh, it is RATHER more fan girlish (well, hey I read the Dark Phoenix saga as it came out..)

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Actually your review helps me work out what was technically wrong. In film theory, the film is about the protagonist, who has a journey and the climax is where he overcomes the obstacles to reach his goal. the protagonist looked like Wolverine most the time, in which case he went on a journey to do what? Get/save the girl? Become a team player? we're not sure and neither was the writer. he succeeds in neither more or less as well, which makes it feel unfinished and unsatisfactory. Or was the protagonist Prof X? In which case we're really screwed cos he disappears half way through. But that would make more sense , because the climax is more about his story - the drive to reconcile humanity and mutants as opposed to Magneto's urge simply to reinstate mutants as rulers and humans as the subdued minority. if either of these possible main story arcs had worked properly , little subplots like Angel and his father could have been slotted in OK. The lowliest script editor should have spotted that script had gone all wrong..

pps

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I also suspect they felt they had to give screen time to Iceman, Rogue, Kitty, and Colossus to get the audience used to them, as they're going to be the core team next time unless Halle Berry, Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart get paid huge amounts more money - and that meant far too many spotlight characters for one film.

[kurosau.livejournal.com]

My main complaint is that I find it ridiculous that the entire movie is supported by the fact that Professor X inflicted horrific trauma on Jean Grey. I can deal with most everything else, but the Prof X that we've seen in these movies is the good, do no wrong Prof X, not the dumbass they've been putting in the comics lately.

[andrewducker]

Also very true - and it wasn't even of the "When I found Jean Grey she _had_ a split personality" kind. Oh, and the infodump there was appallingly done as well.

[dapperscavenger.livejournal.com]

I saw it last saturday but reviewed on a My Little Pony forum instead of my LJ *l* But here's what I wrote anyway:

I saw it today and was mostly dissatisfied.

This I didn't like:

There were too many things going on at once, the result being that not enough time was spent developing the plot in any particular direction.

There were no unexpected twists or turns

It feels to me like they cut a lot of scenes from this movie in favour of more fighting and special effects.

Peoples' motives were weak and their actions sometimes inconsistent with their characters.

Pheonix never manifested in her ultimate form.

No decent explanation of what happened to the boy, the cure, the political repurcussions.

Jean Grey's 'evil' outfits were unecessary.

...

Things I liked:

Rogue's character behaved in a believable and consistent manner.

Special effects were very good

Angel was pretty hot. :p

Couple of decent fight scenes.

Things of note:

The very beginning of the movie was SUCH a giveaway. They describe the cure as 'supressing' the mutant x-gene. At that point I was all like "DUH!" cos it was obvious what was gonna happen. The body's natural equilibrium will generally throw off a medicine that 'supresses' if it isn't administered regularly. So, yeah, way to blow the plot in 5 frickin seconds.

Beasts says 'stars and garters' *snickers*

Why were the mutant captives not automatically 'cured' I wonder? (the ones in the truck).

[andrewducker]

Yup, I'd agree with pretty much all of that.

[spaj.livejournal.com]

Agree with the above.

Felt the core focus of the move was the 'cure', given that everyone and everything was making decisions based on what their feelings were towards / about the cure.

Problem for me; The 'cure' wasn't that big of a deal. It was being administered humanely, the government weren't the bad guys. The corporation weren't the bad guys either. Magneto was an evil c*nt (for no particular reason) but it his motives were clear, and understandable.

There was no 'villain'. There was no compelling struggle. There was very little in the way of heroics either. (By which I mean self sacrifice).

All in all, 2/5. Mediocre, with reasonable action sequences.

Vinny Jones gets a surprising 4/5 stars from me (although it may help that Juggernaut suits a fairly wooden acting style)

Adam

[andrewducker]

I felt the Phoenix story was kinda orthagonal to the Cure storyline - she gets involved in it - but not very.

I totally agree about Vinny Jones - he was great!