Disrespectful To Fans

Rating: 4/10 (3 June 2011)

X-Men: The Last Stand is a tragedy of a movie. It managed to overshadow The Phantom Menace as far as disappointing follow-ups to successful movies. The first two intelligently set up a terrific and complex universe. This is anything but.
Like far too many bad movies that had potential, the movie suffered because the studio decided to get involved. Singer left the project for Superman, and honestly I think he recognized what was going on and jumped the sinking ship. Ratner gets a bad rap for this, but he came in so late that there was no chance in saving it. For whatever reason, studios seem to think that bigger is always better despite the majority of such movies showing otherwise.
The biggest problem is that far too many characters are added. The first had about ten main characters. The second about fifteen. This has about thirty. Having a bunch of cameos is fine, but this movie tries to give time to everyone so that essentially no one has any time. Forget character development, there's so much trying to go on that no one has any real memorable moments. There's a couple of special effects moments, but not character.
The worse problem is that the returning cast is given the shaft except for Storm and Wolverine. Wolverine had a good story arc in the first two but X2 finished it. This was the time to move on, but still he is front and center despite not having much to do. Storm was only elevated because Berry couldn't handle being a supporting character anymore, but again she doesn't have much to do. Cyclops is killed early on and no one cares. Xavier is also killed about half way through but there's some half-hearted feelings at his funeral, and it's especially terrible that his good friend Magneto doesn't seem to care for more than two seconds. Whatever dynamics Magneto had in the first two is abandoned as he simply becomes a bad guy. Mystique is depowered and tossed aside without any fanfare. Rogue's character changes completely for no apparent reason other than some semblance of development. Jean turns into the Dark Phoenix but basically stands around while other people do things around her. The love triangle set up in the first two is torn to shreds.
Instead we're asked to care about the new characters, most of which are bland and one- dimensional. Juggernaut is his bland Ultimate version rather than dynamic main comic self since he's just a brute rather than Xavier's step-brother. Callisto is basically there for Storm to fight and to stand at Magneto's side. Fan favorite Colossus literally only has one line. Angel is nothing but a plot device. We're asked to accept a second love triangle between Rogue, Iceman, and Kitty but it's forced and unemotional, probably cause Rogue becomes so one- dimensional this time. They try to touch our heartstrings with Leech, but again there's so little of him that audiences just can't care. Beast is usually quite interesting, but for whatever reason you loved his comic and/or animated self is gone here.
The action is merely okay, but without character development it's just flashy special effects to distract us. The special effects themselves are good, and it seems the producers had fun coming up with different powers for all the cannon fodder. Since the characters are uninteresting it's hard to get into caring about them in the action. In pretty much every action sequence, there's little rhyme or reason besides showing off powers and special effects. Again, the studio seemed to think that having bigger and louder scenes was better than having intelligence.
The love and care from the first two movies is completely absent, almost to the point of disrespecting the characters and fans. The whole film screams money grab as if putting time and care into the third movie would have somehow degraded the box office results. This was certainly the low point in the series. Wolverine was bad but tolerable, and First Class got it back to being interesting. It's a terrible follow up and I sincerely hope that they simply reboot the franchise so we can see Wolverine, Cyclops, Jean, etc. as comic fans truly know and love them.