The ruin of a great series

Rating: 1/10 (7 June 2006)

First let me say that if this had been a generic action film instead of being associated with the X-Men (and the two great films that precede it) then I may have scored it slightly higher. As all of the elements are there: decent action, dodgy one liners and some interesting characters.
However, even for those people who know nothing of X-men other than the previous films this should come as a major disappointment. The series started off by grounding the X-men in the real world and the stories came across being gritty and imaginative, as they were presented in a way that made you believe mutants could live among us. The interaction between mutants and humans was spot on. In this film that is removed as the makers seem to have gone down the same all out comic book style that the Batman films started to suffer from.
Gone is any meaningful character development, as all of the new characters are woefully underused and seem like they've been tacked onto the film for no reason. Whereas Storm, who was the weakest character in the previous films, has suddenly been thrust into the limelight and simply comes across as very annoying. The fact that Halle Berry demanded more lines is no excuse, especially when it came at the expense of Nightcrawler who made such a great impact in the second film. As if people go to see an X-men movie for Halle Berry anyway, if anyone should have been dropped it should have been Storm as her character just didn't translate from the page to the screen.
The unbelievable leaps the story takes also grate. As even a casual viewer would know that the likelihood of Jean going on a killing spree (especially including Scott and Charles) is slim. So she can't stop herself killing the man she loves and her oldest mentor, but manages to restrain herself from blitzing Wolverine? Any dedicated fan will no doubt realise that major characters tend not to stay dead for long, but that's no help to people approaching the X-men universe for the first time and it just means they would have to create a ludicrous explanation to dig themselves out of a hole they should never have been in.
This film suffers from having far too many ideas and characters thrown at it in the hopes they would stick. The script isn't the greatest and the whole thing feels like it his been dumbed down into just another brainless action film. I just got the feeling that unlike the first two films it was made be people who didn't share the viewers passion for the comics and films that had gone before.
I recommend re-watching the first two films and pretending this one never happened.