Disappointing

Rating: 4/10 (4 March 2008)

I am a big fan of X-Men, the comic books, the cartoon in the 90s and the first two films. I was looking forward to X-Men 3 when it came out and I had high hopes, unfortunately they was dashed after the first half-hour. This film has a number of problems. Firstly the lost of Bryan Singer. He gave the film character development, the society context and made it as realistic as possible. Brett Ratner came from an action background and he just focused on the action. They was no character development and they were too many characters in the film, so it was hard to care for some of them. The lost of Singer's writing team was also an important factor and Simon Kinberg was brought in to write the third film. He writes with major plot holes and under developing many aspects in films. Examples of his work are XXX: 2 State of the Union (a very bad film), Mr. and Mrs. Smith (a good film, but I think it ends too abruptly) and Jumper. If I was a producer of the film I would have fought tooth and nail to keep Singer and his writing team.
My other major criticism is that X-Men 3 strays too far from the comic books and the first two films. Cyclops and Xavier were both killed off very early in the film, which never happens in the comics. Cyclops was only killed off because James Marsden ended up being in Superman Returns which ironically a Singer movie. Mystique was also removed from the film with little screen time. This was because Rebecca Romjin ended up in Ugly Betty. She ends up giving up Magneto to the US government which I don't see as realistic because I can't picture someone like her changing ideology that easily: it would be like a senior member of Al-Qaida walking into the headquarters of the FBI and telling them where Bin Laden and everyone else was. Rouge also had little screen time in the film and hardly featured in it at all. Nightcrawler was not present in the film which was a shame because Alec Cumming played the role very well and the storyline of him and Storm together could have been built on from the second film. Characters were added but I wonder why with some of them. Angel was added and in the advertising for the film he was set up as a major character. He added NOTHING to the film. Juggernaut was also in the film, but he was played by Vinnie Jones, who just can't acted. I also felt X-Men 3 was not loyal to the first two films. At the end of X-Men 2 the Dark Phoenix story was set up as the major storyline for the next film, but it was just regulated to a side story in the third film. The whole point of the Dark Phoenix story was absolute power corrupts, but again this was not shown and she was shown to be a schizophrenic. I also felt that the way they were going to set it up was the machine in the first film made Jean Grey more powerful because it was shown slowly in the second film that her powers had growth, and it was even mention at the beginning of the second film.
They are many other criticisms of the film and many other people have already mentioned them. The only one that I will add to is Haile Berry demanding more screen time, I personally would have casted another actress to put her in her place, because I don't think she's anything special.
The film is still fun in places, Beast and Colossus were good additions and the actions was good, especially Wolverine in the forest.
I personally think that the third film should be ignored and redone by the studio to give the fans what they need. I would have also liked to have seen more of the mutant discrimination on the ground level of society (i.e. normal people), or seen a storyline involving groups like Friends of Humanity. I would have like to see Gambit in the film because he is a more dark and complex character and the film-makers could have added a love-triangle story involving him, Rouge and Iceman.