A shame if you enjoyed the first two...

Rating: 4/10 (27 February 2008)

Imagine if Michelangelo only completed 2/3rd's of the Sistine Chapel. Now imagine if the Pope handed a 5 year old boy a box of crayons and told him to finish it. Thinking it would be "cool," the boy goes on to finish the work of art by scribbling a bunch of random scenes involving monster trucks with lasers and robots fighting each other. That pretty much sums up how I felt when I left the theater after seeing X-men 3. Singer did such a wonderful job building up the characters and atmosphere in the previous two films only to have the series finished by Ratner, who only seemed concerned with fight scenes and special effects.
I would write a plot summary, but that clearly wasn't the selling point of this movie. Rather, Ratner's approach to making X3 seemed to be, "Okay I've got some really cool ideas for fight scenes and special effects. Now let's build a movie around them." Consequently, there was scene after scene in this movie with no other purpose. For example, what was the point in moving the golden gate bridge, the most expensive special effect in the movie (and yes I know it was to reach Alcatraz, but think about it)? What was the point in the fight scene between Wolverine and the Juggernaut in Jean's house? There was none. If you would like plenty more examples of scenes that were completely pointless read any IMDb review with 5 stars or less (there are plenty).
And so much for character development. This flick introduced about 2 billion new characters to the trilogy. Rather than develop any of them individually, Ratner paints all the sub-villains as "Goth" and doesn't even bother trying to develop the rest. The only characters I felt any emotion for were the ones that Singer developed in the previous films and by emotion I mean utter disappointment for what could have been.
The director also seemed to assume his audience was a bunch of complete idiots. Gone were the subtleties that enhanced the plot of X2. Gone were any opportunities for the audience to reach conclusions by themselves. In place, the characters often explained/narrated everything they did like a bad episode of Thundercats. This movie also had the largest continuity error I've ever seen (i.e., the change from day to night when Magnito moved the bridge followed by another continuity error where all the cars remained on the bridge after magneto threw them at the police). Not to mention that entire scene was just plain retarded. Rather than Pyro lighting the cars on fire as magneto hurled them why didn't magneto just hurl everything at the police while Pyro, I don't know, burned the people directly?
Normally I would say to avoid this movie like it came with an airborne form of herpies (and most of the people I saw the movie with would agree). However, one of the guys I went to the theater with thoroughly enjoyed X3. Why? Because he loves action flicks and wasn't in the mood for a movie that made him think. I suppose that's true; if you can turn your brain off it is a decent action flick. Therefore, if you're planning on viewing this, be aware it isn't anything like the first two movies.