Better than most people think

Rating: 8/10 (2 June 2006)

I have seen a lot of criticism for this movie and most of it is undeserved. First this series of movies is inspired by the comics and not intended to be a direct copy and should be viewed thusly. I keep hearing people complain about the death toll and number of characters de-powered. To the latter, I just say pay better attention. The end of the movie implies that the effects of the vaccine is temporary so Mystique, Magneto and Rogue will be fine. Xavier is de-bodied but not dead. You never actually see Cyclops die and as for Jean Grey, well, if they stay true to the idea of the comics, then it wasn't her that died, it was a clone body created by the Pheonix force. They are probably in a hut somewhere in the woods waiting for the sequel. The only character that really got messed up was Juggernaut. Making him a mutant instead of powered by mystical means, lowering his power level and having no mention of his ties to Xavier sucks. Otherwise, while the movie may have been a little rushed, it was exactly what I expected it to be. It forwarded the over plot from the beginning two movies and at least touched on every character in some way (save Nightcrawler). The problem is not the director or the script or the actors, who all did at least passable jobs. The problem is the subject matter. This set of comics is a veritable saga with hundreds of characters and subplots. It is impossible to pay attention to everything fairly and not have the movie run 5 hours. While this would be fine for the die hard fans, most movie goers would get bored or have their bladders bust before the end. So the end result is that in order to have an interesting movie that at least pays a basic respect to the comics but also maintains the average viewer's interest, you are going to have several things glossed over and this is an acceptable loss. Good movie, I will buy it when it comes out on DVD.