X-Men. Out with a flush.

Rating: 2/10 (26 May 2006)

What a depressing experience.
The big final showdown of an epic story...and I felt NOTHING. Not one little stir of emotion. This film was exactly what we all feared it was going to be: No tact, no style, no substance. It's just sad that such a wonderful intelligent series had to deteriorate into a hollow studio FX show. Mr Ratner, you certainly lived up to our low expectations.
Every frame of this film feels rushed. A slew of characters were killed and cured, and I didn't even bat an eyelash. Ideas are barely explored and none of the characters get any real focus. Aside from Wolvy, Storm, and Magneto, every mutant feels like an obligatory cameo. All the actors, save for Ian McKellen, act out-of-character and hurry through their lines like they just want to get out of the movie.
To be fair, this isn't entirely Ratner's fault. It took everybody working together to screw this one up. The script is atrocious. The dialogue is flat out embarrassing - it's almost all composed of badly-timed puns and quips, and some unintentionally hilarious lines ("She was sealed up in a cocoon of energy."). The mutant cure is barely explored and nothing that was set up in the previous two films ever really amount to anything.
There's a sense that Fox controlled everything here and used everyone involved as their puppets to milk the fans of their cash. This is not the X-Men we know and love.
I saw this with a packed house at the Mann's Chinese in Hollywood. The theater was full of screaming X-fans and the excitement level was over-the-top. Five minutes into the film, it was dead, as if a giant vacuum had sucked all life from the theater. The "Snakes on a Plane" trailer (which was more brilliant than anything here) got a bigger cheer than anything in X3.
'Nuff said.