A mess

Rating: 1/10 (25 January 2009)

Hard to fathom how this scored a 7. It's also hard to say which is worse, SPIDER-MAN 3 or this turkey. I'll call it about even. Both feature shoddy plots and poor characterizations with dubious motivations.
The most egregious example in X-MEN 3 is the Jean/Grey Phoenix character. Jean Grey died in the 2nd movie and is reincarnated here as the Phoenix? Why? Because it happens in the comics, I guess. But what's missing from the comics is the story behind it all. I'll admit, I missed the first 20 minutes of this movie so I missed the actual resurrection but I somehow doubt I missed enough that it would have made any sense in this movie. Killing Cyclops and the Professor sure didn't make any sense. In short, the idea of the Phoenix is poorly realized here (for starters, the Phoenix-Force manifested itself as a bird of fire, not some sort of bug-eyed vampire queen). The filmmakers simply have no idea what to do with it. At the end, the solution is for Wolverine to stab her. Yay. (As a brief aside, Wolverine, it seems, is the only one who can approach the Phoenix because, while she is able to disintegrate everyone else, she can't do the same to Wolverine because he can instantly heal any damage done to him? How does this work exactly? Where does he get the biological material to patch up such terrible injuries? Is it magic?) Other characters hardly register. The new characters are just there, though admittedly there isn't enough time to develop their characters. But the established characters hardly fare any better.
I'd like to comment about the look of the film. The effects are nice but I'm finding less and less reason to give a movie good marks because of them. Good effects should be a given. Of course, so should a good story but I would suggest maybe it's not as easy to craft a good story as it is good effects.
Anyway, the characters all wear fancy leather uniforms in these movies because, supposedly, "spandex" would look stupid on film. But the movie outfits look stupid in their own right, with a few arguable exceptions, and lack the pizazz of the comics. Magneto looks sillier than most, certainly a ways sillier than his comic book counterpart, and would look silliest of all if it weren't for the film's Juggernaut character. I mean, were they serious about this? Did they really think this is an improvement over the comic depiction? I'm beginning to believe that it's not the comic book costumes that look silly, it's the filmmakers' inability to bring them properly to life. So we end up with these ugly "leather" uniforms. Blah. Meanwhile, Wolverine's hair looks atrocious. Storm's hair is actually an improvement over the banged wig but it's still not a style that works for the character. Lastly, I was never much of a fan of the casting in any of these films. Magneto, for instance, was never a wrinkled, joweled old man in the comics.
Anyway, to sum up, the movie lacks in just about every area except special effects but so what? I can only hope this really was the "Last Stand."