Why, oh why did you leave Bryan Singer?

Rating: 3/10 (16 June 2008)

The movie series that started the superhero film boom has unfortunately ended on a tragic note.
Bryan Singer, the genius behind the delight that was the first two films decided to pull out to focus on his new project "Superman Returns."
I do respect his decision, especially since "Superman Returns" was a pretty decent film.
But I, like many extremely disgruntled X-Men fans am appalled at how the finale in the trilogy was handled. This installment has ignored the excellent writing of the first two, which was full of witty remarks, and excellent story-telling, and instead has reverted to sensationalist action, without any semblance of a logical plot.
The painstaking development of nearly every mutant's character in the first two movies has been shamefully cast aside. New mutants like Juggernaut and Angel are treated very poorly, seemingly only thrown in to showcase their abilities with special effects. Not to mention the fact that Juggernaut looks absolutely ridiculous.
The acting by proxy suffers as well. Clearly reluctant performances by Hugh Jackman and Ian McKellen as Wolverine and Magneto respectively are obviously just fulfillments of contract obligations. Nightcrawler, who was played by Alan Cumming in the last film has mysteriously, and without explanation disappeared. A tragedy, since Cumming, who redeemed himself from his appearance in "The Son of the Mask" with a fantastic performance in X2, capturing the isolation and confusion one would expect from such a character.
By the ending battle sequence, what little storyline there was is buried beneath overly extravagant special effects and violence.
This film is a clear indicator that the right movie in the wrong hands (Brett Ratner) is always, ALWAYS a recipe for absolute cinematic disaster.
If only Singer had returned, we fans of this engrossing series would have received the satisfying conclusion we were all aching for after the end of X2.