The More Things Change, The More They Stay the Same...

Rating: 5/10 (1 June 2006)

I was very disappointed. Perhaps I was expecting too much. Perhaps it was too much hype. But at the end of the day, I walked out of the theatre and thought, "That just plain sucked." A few years back, a studio exec walked into a boardroom and proposed a notion to his bosses that must have seemed revolutionary at the time. "Let's make a comic book movie." "Sounds great," they said, "but what's the catch? What'll be the draw?" Raising a finger, the young revolutionary said, "We're going to make sure it doesn't suck." And so came X-men. And Spider-man. Batman Begins. Audienced raved and were amazed. Then came X-men 2, and Spider-man 2, again, just as good, if not better than their predecessors. Remember Batman Forever? Batman & Robin? That's what X-men 3 is. Schlock. People rave about the special effects and the "pulse pounding excitement." Great. I liked the Matrix, too. The first twenty minutes of set up had me hooked. I was interested. Then suddenly character development left the building. Iceman has girl issues. Wolverine throws out a few quips. Cyclops, who could have been a contender, was never given any material to work with. A character that has lasted over thirty years in comics, could not even be given a chance in the movies. And I'm not slamming the movie solely on the poor use of one character. The dialogue was horrible. The old, "we all stand together" line in the hallway before the final fight might have come from a Saturday cartoon. The storyline, which could have grown into something as good as Joss Whedon's original from his line of comics, basically set up the end piece of action on Alcatraz. The ending was a video game, of one boss fight after another, with nothing being fleshed out or accomplished. People are killed with the wave of a hand, Wolverine saves the day, credits roll. Brett Ratner owes me 12 bucks and I'm going to file this movie with Highlander 2. People wanted more mutants and more action. The studio gave it to them and didn't bother with a fully fleshed out storyline and sensible dialogue.