Disappointing, wretched, two-dimensional, and a missed opportunity

Rating: 1/10 (4 June 2006)

There are so many things wrong with this movie that it's hard to decide where to begin and how to keep the word count to a minimum. I will say that the casting was a nice touch. Sticking with familiar and in some cases beloved faces was, for me, the only pleasant element in what was otherwise a painfully manipulative and cardboard film.
The screenplay was fluff, with none of the humor or irony or self-depreciating comments of the first two 'X-men' films. None of the jokes, verbal or visual, were memorable, and all were predictable in the extreme. Important, even vital 'X-men' characters that shared long and loyal histories with one another were killed off or removed from the story line with no more than a few pat phrases of farewell or betrayal.
Characters were flat, given two emotions to work with at most. In Logan's (Wolverine's) case these were frantic concern and dry sarcasm in various degrees. Some characters, such as Hank (The Beast) and Storm were given fewer than that, playing only with various shades of 'determined'.
The story, god, the story. What could have been a true heart wrenching tale of self-loathing and renewal, real Greek-type mythological stuff on the nature of man, which is what 'X-men' is all about after all, was reduced to a constant stream of destruction and killing, though oddly bloodless. True, this is just par for the course these days in cinema, but I take it much more personally in this case, because what went before, 'X-men' and 'X-men: United', while hardly perfect, had such promise and even heart.
I could go on and on, but what's the point? When I heard over a year ago that Bryan Singer was abandoning 'X-men' to do 'Superman' I had a surge of misgiving. Surely no-one could inject the kind of passion into the project that he had. I was right.
It seems odd to give a movie one star out of ten. Could it really be that bad? Yes. It's a miserable, disappointing, failure of a movie. It should have grabbed me and wrenched at my heart, prodded my ironic snicker, stimulated my horror of injustice, and satisfied my hunger for fairness. Most of all, it should have touched a tenderness, that sweetness that is the best in people that the 'X-men' themselves purport to protect. Bah. What a waste.