prequel to X Men 4 - The Apology

Rating: 3/10 (3 June 2006)

What a convoluted mess! The plot to this movie was very weak. Trying to mix the Phenix and "mutant cure" plots was a mistake and the whole film felt clumsy and almost plain stupid. I don't mind killing of characters if it helps the plot and makes the movie more dramatic but X3 had way too many key people either die or be "cured" way too fast. Cyclops dies in the first ten minutes and with next to no fanfare or explanation, they don't even show what happens. Only later do you hear Wolverine say that he is dead and even then I wasn't really convinced, the movie made it seem like he was going to come back in the end with some sort of explanation. Professor Xavier get blown up shortly thereafter with a dumb smile on his face, then we cut to a ridiculous looking bust of his face on the side of his memorial. The body count picks up from there and gains momentum. I think one of the things that made the first two movies work were that they felt episodic. Characters were introduced slowly and developed over time. The stories were self contained and left just enough possibility at the end that you felt that even if there were no more movies the story still had someplace to go. In X3 they were trying to make it a final climactic ending but they failed miserably. No sooner was a potentially cool character introduced they were killed or cured. As an example I am told that Psyloke was in the movie but if she was she certainly was not recognizable and apparently she dies too so there is no hope of that character ever getting a fare amount of screen time. Another problem was that the characters just didn't seem to act the way they were supposed to. Wolverine lost almost all of the edge he had in the first two. By the time the last battle rolls around his fierceness just isn't believable. Up until the part were he is incinerated Prof. X is a real jerk to everyone, Magneto seems more like a fanatical brainwashed terrorist than the visionary leader he is supposed to be, and Storm ... well just wasn't very good.
At this point I get frustrated because I keep thinking of ways in which this film is just so wrong and I don't want to be here all day. I gave this film a 3 because it wasn't a terrible movie. If it wasn't an x-men movie I might have given it a 5 or 6 but the feeling of sheer disappointment I felt leaving the theater (that's $8 and 2 hours I'll never get back) and the fact that this mess of a film is the third and final chapter of a previously awesome series warranted a 3. I am going to try really hard to forget that this film exists so I can still enjoy the first two.
PS: Where is Sabertooth? Where is Nightcrawler? Where is Gambit?