X-Men Hollywood style

Rating: 5/10 (28 May 2006)

As with many in these comments, I have been following the X-Men since childhood. Love the characters, love the story lines, and really enjoyed the previous two movies (of which X2 was the better flick).
That brings us to this, mmmmmm, movie. What the Hell were they thinking? This shouldn't have been about making the biggest best explosions. It shouldn't have been about introducting every character in the X-Men comics in 105 mins, ad nauseum, for a cheap "cool" effect. Ratner take heed of the following: First off the following from another of the comments is dead on "It is painfully obvious that Ratner never read X-Men". Absolutely true, this director came in to make a Rush Hour type crappy movie for a paycheck. At the very least, he has no passion for the X-Men. There was no love of the characters, history, or plot of the comics. I'd be surprised if the dude ever read the books.
Secondly, don't take creative license with your audience's childhood memories. And you don't need to ask them what those memories are. Quite simply, the characters should look as they did in the comics, they should have the right powers, and they should follow the proper history.
Call me a geek, but 1) Callisto with super speed and Caliban's mutant finding power?, 2) Juggernaut's powers weren't the result of him being a mutant, he just had a pretty mystical jem that gave him his powers. And he was a bad-ass, taking on all the X-Men together, not as a sidekick. Also, Hollywood made hobbits & dwarfs properly scaled, why couldn't J-man have been properly 7ft tall? 3)Jean Grey would have wiped out San Fran, had she lost control of Phoenix, not just a 50 foot section of Alcatraz, and in the books, she wasn't undone by Wolverine, but by her own hand. And these are just the tip of an iceberg of power/storyline flaws.
Also, don't kill off or take away powers of main characters that are still alive and kicking in the comics. Professor X, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Mystique, Rogue, c'mon..........tell you what let's kill off Peter Parker in the next Spiderman for comparison. Then we'll have several other main characters lose THEIR powers and, instead of an epic battle, they can have a slap fight, and everyone can go home tired and bruised and with a sense of accomplishment for ruining a movie.
Sheesh.........I sincerely thought the end of the movie would include some kind of "rewind" scene, where we found out the rest of the movie was a possible future or something from the moment of Jean and Scott's kiss early on, not what they were force feeding us as the X-Men reality (why did Xavier give that look of an accepting smile right before he died, if he didn't know something we didn't?) Finally, the X-Men Marvel Universe is an EPIC storyline. On the scale of the Lord Of the Rings movies. How could you think you could fit this into 105 min? You could have EASILY filled 3 hours with GREAT content that wouldn't have felt so rushed and chopped together. You could have explored various characters more thoroughly, and done them JUSTICE as the fully fleshed out characters they are. Follow the Mutant Registration Act story for a movie, why make up this "Cure" farce??? C'mon, you almost had to TRY to screw this series up.
All this said, there really were okay pieces/parts of the movie, parts not explored that would have led to a better movie. The Sentinel fight in the danger room, could have led us somewhere, but no (loved the Sentinels in the comics). Angel's part in the movie and becoming an X-man and later ArchAngel/Death for Apocalypse, but no follow up. Rogue fading away was a missed opportunity in her storyline. The special effects were really quite good, and I believed in the powers that were shown. Pyro's fire, Iceman's ice, Storm's storms, etc. Explosions, bridge relocation, etc. were really well done.
Wolverine was well done by Hugh Jackman, a great Beast by Kelsey Grammar, Patrick Stewart was dead on as Professor X. Iceman: good, Magneto: great, Mystique: great, Jean Grey: good.
Final thoughts: this movie might strike a chord with those uninitiated to the comics and could be enjoyable, but those that love and remember the comic fondly, you might want to reconsider seeing this one. nuf said!