bad sequel

Rating: 4/10 (29 August 2008)

I was a fan of the original X-men comics in the 60's before the addition of a lot of the characters which made it into the movie versions. That aside, I enjoyed the way Brian Singer explored the psychological complexities of his mutants and actually created fleshed out characters with depth and humanity. For that reason, I enjoyed the first two movies immensely, particularly the second. It became obvious after watching about 10 minutes of the third movie that Singer was no longer the director. Character portrayal took a back seat to action shots, explosions and destruction, and the dialogue was full of clichés and embarrassing one liners. Ratner took characters which one grew to genuinely care about in the previous two movies and reduced them to comic book drawings, with no apparent sense of how they could have been further developed. Sad how important players were quickly killed off, and others introduced with no sense of why they were there or what motivated them. Again, cartoon characters given one or two frames in the comic book. The ending scene had sequel written all over it. Hopefully, Ratner won't be given the opportunity to further ruin what were two very good movies .. Singer deserves another chance to restore some humanity and quality to the story.