Spectacular, but thin and horribly rushed

Rating: 6/10 (11 June 2006)

Sorry, Ratner, not nearly as good as the first two. You couldn't spit-shine Singer's tap shoes.
That's the short review if you need it.
Ratner, best known for the entire "Rush Hour" series, has about as much respect for the X-Men comics as an African bushman would. That is to say--none.
Don't get me wrong--Ratner's a capable director here. He capably manages a huge (HUGE) cast of leads and extras. Spectacular action sequences abound. These are not the problem. These are the symptoms of the problem.
The problem is he doesn't care about the material. The skeleton of the plot is actually quite good--mutants can suddenly be "cured" by another mutant who neutralizes mutant powers. Get near freak boy and, bam, your power is gone. They plug the keg tap into his DNA to make a new drug which will likewise neutralize mutant powers. Pretty cool.
OK so naturally Magneto freaks and decides to start a war. OK, cool, so far I'm on board. Things are shaping up nicely.
While the setup isn't bad, X3 bounces around like a pinball for the next 2 acts. Dozens of new mutants are thrown at you and none are developed as real characters. Ratner decides 'thin is in' and just throws a bunch of very good but unfulfilling action sequences at you. Unfulfilling because you don't really care about the good guys or even find a bad guy to like. The best sequence is when Jean Grey--nee Dark Phoenix--does her thing. Pretty darn good and amazing. In comparison the final climactic sequence is rather poor and very very hard to believe.
Singer, by contrast, was downright leisurely in character development. He always brought you around to either loving--or hating--the character and for a good reason. He respected the X-Men and made two great "X" movies.
With the "Rush Hour" series Ratner had two built-in characters already--Tucker and Chan. No development was necessary. Write a basic story, plot, let Tucker wise-crack for 90 minutes and let Chan do his chop socky while butchering his Ls and Rs and we're good to go.
With X3, Ratner clearly feels he has the same: "built-in" characters (ie. those from the comics, who will have a huge back story). But it doesn't work that way. With the exception of Storm, Wolverine, Magneto, and Xavier there are no "built-in" characters in this movie. Rather, there's just a parade of mutants across the screen. And even the best developed characters feel thinly worked in this movie, Wolverine--a super Jackman--perhaps being the exception.
I want to like this movie, since I love the X-men series, but if this the end it's not ending on a high note. Yes, the action is excellent but I'm always wary of recommending any movie based solely on how well they've generated action sequences. It still has to have meaty characters and story.