Unworthy of the X-men name

Rating: 3/10 (27 May 2006)

So long X-men I'll miss you. Brett Ratner did more to kill off the X-Men than magneto and the Government could have ever hoped to. The movie is such a disappointment that by the end I was hoping Ratner would just decide to kill off (literally) the remaining X-Men that choose to stay alive for the this movie (which sadly isn't nearly enough of them, or Ratner killed off his best actors on purpose). The plot of the movie is convincing enough: A pharmaceutical develops a cure to block the mutant X-gene, making all mutants human. The government predictably weaponises the cure, proving right magneto's fears that the human government intends to forcibly cure them. While the idea behind the plot is great, when the producers hit the execute button the whole thing froze up with incompetence.
The First Problem in my idiot director crap list: The script is a definite downgrade from X-2 (the writers left with Singer to make Superman Returns). Since Ratner and the writers choose to leave out or simply kill off several lead characters early in the movie (a horrid decision! Ratner, for some reason, feels the need in this movie to kill people frequently and without apparent reason. He doesn't quite understand you don't win Oscars or fans on body count alone.) it would have only made since to develop the new characters they introduce, but no, they are just thrown into the movie with basically no introduction.
Second on my idiot director crap list: The whole movie feels like a long series of loosely connected 30 second commercials. I don't think any scene lasts longer than a minute which makes it nearly impossible to identify with any of the characters.
Third on my idiot director crap list: Ratner chooses to have the characters act out of character in order to solve some of the problems he created with the movie. Magneto is the best example. Ratner must have figured out that by the final battle most of the audience would be on his side (I know I was kind of hoping he'd kill all the X-men just so we wouldn't have to worry about another Ratner directed X-men movie!). So he had Magneto do and say some things that were out of character to try and push the audience back to the X-men's side...who then also do things that are way out of character to defeat Magneto.
It was very clear that Ratner didn't know much about the story or the characters, but was much more interested in making a movie where he got to kill people and blow things up. This all may sound harsh, and its not like I hate Ratner...I just think he should burn in hell for this travesty.