A swing and a miss

Rating: 3/10 (31 May 2006)

I have to give Brett Ratner some credit. He tried. Sure...he failed miserably in almost every way....but he "tried". I'm sure it wasn't easy for him to step into Singer's shoes on the third film, I'm sure it was hard to keep up with the rushing of the film to beat Superman Returns to the punch, but he made blatant mistakes that have left fan outraged. First off, this is not an X-Men film. It's actually a rather generic action film that just happens to have X-Men in it. What we find on the screen is a massive jumble of characters and plots that never add up to anything. Ratner took 5 or 6 different plot lines from the comics and attempted to mold them all together into one film. The stories don't mesh and so you're never really sure what you are watching. And so much potential was lost along the way! Second, from a X-Men fan's point of view mind you, you don't just come into a series and start executing characters left and right. It's not fair to the fans or the characters. Cyclops shouldn't even have been considered as part of the cast. Sure Cyclops was never given a chance in the series, the leader of the X-men barely has any screen time in any of the films. But this was just embarrassing!! And if that wasn't bad enough, Ratner starts taking out major characters one after the other, with almost all of the deaths (or cures for that matter) are completely meaningless. My biggest complaint was the lack of screen time for so many big characters. Colossus alone should have had a major battle. I mean come on, Colossus vs Juggernaut, who DIDN'T want to see that happen?? Then there was the iceman vs. pyro battle that didn't even really happen. What was that? It was the setup we've all been waiting for and they just stand there and blast each other for a couple of minutes and it was over. What?? Did I miss something?? No fireballs, flaming creature, cool ice blasts that would leave the audience cheering...NOTHING!!
I could keep going on and on....and on. But I'm know what I'm saying now has been said before over and over....and over again.
But alas, the pinnacle of the film. YOU DON'T MAKE A FINALE AND THEN LEAVE SUCH A BLATANT OPENING FOR A SEQUEL!! Anyone who stayed through the credits knows EXACTLY what this means!! All in all, a shameful way to kill the franchise. Soooooo much potential for an amazing comic book movie was flushed down the drain.
Ratner, as well as 20th Century Fox, should be ashamed of themselves!!