Good, but something of a letdown.

Rating: 6/10 (3 July 2006)

**SPOILERS BELOW** I'll be frank to begin with: I have never laid hands on an X-Men comic before. Though after watching the movies, I am very interested in reading the comics, I haven't read any before. Only this year did I bother to even watch the first X-Men movies before going out to see X-Men 3: The Last Stand in theatres.
I enjoyed the first two movies, the second one especially. So I had no objections to going to see the third movie. It, however, left much to be desired.
At first, I was simply confused by Cyclops' sudden vanishing from the cast. Where had this character gone? The worst part about this movie, perhaps, is that of the main five good guys (Wolverine, Storm, Professor X, Jean Grey, and Cyclops), three die, and that the first two deaths are completely anti-climatic. Though main characters actually DO die before final confrontations, the deaths of Cyclops and Professor X seemed just thrown in there. I especially disliked how Cyclops' emotions about Jean's 'death' were so built up and then... BOOM. They switch places, she's alive and he's dead. The only death that really had any drama to it was Jean's second death. As a moviegoer, and comic book fans may disagree considering I have no clue what goes on in the comics, I really was also upset at how Jean was brought back after dying a first time. One thing I usually dislike is an emotional death followed by a rebirth, and worse, a re-death. It's overkill, both on the character and for the poor audience member.
But back to the plot. The film seemed rushed in spots and I was upset at how little Rogue was around for and how much we saw of Kitty and Bobby. Though Kitty is an interesting character, I didn't care as much about her as I did about Rogue. I also disliked that Rogue gave up her powers, voluntarily. Though it's somewhat understandable, considering the nature of her powers, it seemed so... unlike the point of the movies. Wasn't it to have the mutants accept themselves and try and get everyone else to accept them too a main theme throughout the movies? As usual, I enjoyed Halle Berry and Ian McKellan's performances, as well as Hugh Jackman's as Wolverine, and I rather liked Pyro. I thought he was rather well-explored in the second film and then executed well-enough in the third. Jean, who seemed to be somewhat the center of this film, was shunted into the background a little too much. It's a shame we could not see into her mind, between the Pheonix and Jean. But that's the way the cookie crumbles.
The special effects were, of course, excellent, and I have to say I liked the kid who played Leech as well as the man who played The Beast. I would also like to say that I was annoyed at how little we saw Angel in the film. He did all the things a properly developed character would do, except he didn't have any development in the film at all. I would really have liked to seen more of Angel.
On another note, it was also sad to not see any of Nightcrawler in this film, as I really enjoyed him in the second film. It was also rather sad to see Mystique rather thrown to the side after losing her powers. I understand that now that she no longer has her powers she's of no use to Magneto, but she was a character I happened to like and to see her thrown away after she lost her use to her former boss was somewhat upsetting in a way.
All in all, the story was good but it was far too rushed and too much proper development was left out for it to be a fantastic film. It was good, but disappointing after the first two, where the development is done much better.
I'm looking forward to X-Men 4, with the hopes that it rises back up into the ranks with the first two films, especially the second.