"Since when did we become a disease?"

Rating: 5/10 (12 October 2015)

Following up the first two excellent X-Men films from Bryan Singer is this mess from the awful Brett Ratner. The plot's about a battle between the X-Men and evil mutants led by Magneto because humans have discovered a way to turn mutants back into regular people...or something like that. There are subplots out the wazoo but these are mostly distractions that do nothing to help the main story; they just add to the confusion. It's a movie built around the premise of a super-powered battle. Everything else is just padding. The action scenes are pedestrian and the special effects are all over the place quality-wise. Ratner's direction is workmanlike, as anyone who's seen his other movies will expect. The reason why I don't rank this one lower is because of the cast. The returning favorites like Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, and Ian McKellen are so good in their roles I would watch them regardless of how bad the rest of it is. The new characters are hit and miss with the standouts being Kelsey Grammar as Beast and Ben Foster as Angel. The worst are the new villains ("I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!). Also, bigger roles for some characters introduced in the second movie is nice. Brett Ratner shoves as many characters into this as he can, no doubt in an effort to appease the fanboy audience. It's too bad they don't have better material to work with. It's not a good movie, although it is watchable for fans. Weakest of the series by far.