It turned out pretty good.

Rating: 7/10 (26 May 2006)

I liked Bryan Singer before I knew he'd be doing the X-men movies and I really enjoyed what he did with them, especially X2. I think he's a great director. Brett Ratner not so much. And when I heard he'd be taking over for X3 I thought that was pretty bad news. Well he did okay. I mean there are definitely style differences but all in all he got the job done.
I like the X-men. I never really read comic books. But I watched the Saturday morning cartoons from the 90s. This movie I actually thought was more like those cartoons than the first two films. This was basically an action movie. The dialogue was sort of stilted because it was just meant to get the most basic of information in between action scenes. That's fine. Everything doesn't have to be Shakespeare. I know where all the complaints come in and I'm going to address those with massive spoilers.
The deaths. A lot of complaints have been going around about the deaths in this movie and what the cure did and didn't do but I don't understand why. What was done in this film creates no irreparable damage. Is Scott dead? I don't know I never saw a body. Xavier was kinda dead but not really. Jean Grey might be dead but is the Phoenix? Magneto wasn't entirely cured, which Rogue may not have been either. The scene with Beast and the cure kid, forgot who he was, showed that the minute he got away from him his Beastness came back. Well maybe that means that the cure doesn't last for very long. So whether you like what happened in this movie or not X4 could just reset the whole thing.
There were some things in the movie I didn't get at first, but then when you think about it for a minute it does make sense.One example is why Jean looked like a corpse but then I realized she sort of was one. And the Sentinels only being heads in the Danger Room seemed to bother some but I mean they can always come back later. I think the problem is the title of this movie. It's making everyone think it's the last movie when once you see it it really doesn't seem that way. So if you think of everything that happens in this as something in the middle of a series it won't seem as serious as the events of the "last" X-men movie.
Other than that I thought the movie was pretty good, the acting wasn't that great and I'm going to guess that it had to do with the change in direction. It was a short movie and it was entertaining but it's no character study. The action sequences are pretty cool. I don't even know why Wolverine starts with Magneto. But I really like the scene with him and Jean at the end. I thought the Juggernaut/Kitty Pride thing was cute. Um, Storm will the eyeballs and the spinning reminded me of Linda Blair a little bit. Beast I liked a lot. I never would have picked Kelsey Grammar for the role but he was perfect. The story itself was fine. I had no problem with it. Once you have the idea of a cure I think things pretty much had to go the way they did. The same thing could be said for Jean Grey and everything that she did. It really makes sense when you think about it. But their president might be a little worse than ours.
I think most people who like the first two movies should like it, but maybe fans of the comic books will be able to find too much fault with it to enjoy it.