This movie seems to break the rules - and not in a good way

Rating: 5/10 (25 May 2006)

I've just seen X-Men 3 today.
Given that the first two was great, I was expecting something even better (X-Men 2 was better than X-Man 1 and I expected X-Men 3 to continue this tradition.
I was disappointed.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed some of the movie. With a rewrite of half the story, it would have been great.
The main problem with this movie is that they're ignoring all the rules that should have been laid out to them by Marvel. Let's start with Phoenix. Although I haven't read the comic, I've done some research on the topic, so my interpretation may be incomplete.
In the movie, Phoenix is depicted as the "evil" side of Jean Grey's nature. In the comic, Phoenix is an alien energy force that took the form of Jean. In doing so, it replicated all her memories and consequently, it (or she now) came to believe she was Jean. Therefore, Phoenix should have behaved no differently from the real Jean. And it seems like it was a waste of an actress. She just spent most of the movie standing there and being pointed at. At the end of the 2nd movie, it seems like Jean's return is a good thing (even though it's hardly mentioned). In this movie, it's represented as being a bad thing.
Two minor aberrations are Leech and Multiple Man. In the movie, Leech's suppression power is uncontrolled. In the comic, he can choose whether or not he projects his power on another mutant. Multiple Man is not a villain in the comic, he's one of the X-Men and somewhere around the age of Iceman and Rogue.
Juggernaut is the next problem. In the movie, he's a mutant. In the comic, Juggernaut is not a mutant. He got his power by touching an enchanted gem.
And what about Jubilee? She's a major character in the comic version. But (in the last two movies), her material seems to end up on the cutting room floor (I only discovered it by watching the deleted scenes). Why bother filming it at all? And her name is in the credits of this movie, even though I didn't see her. A hint for everyone else, if you see her, she's Chinese.
There was a X-Men computer game released that preceded the movie. In the game, Sentinels (mutant killing robots) featured quite heavily. The Supreme Sentinel (known as Master Mold) also made an appearance. He's seen from a distance in the course of the game (and from inside later). He's huge, the size of skyscraper or a city.
It was a source of disappointment that these robots only featured in the tiniest way in the movie. You see the eyes, laser beams and the head only. And it's only a simulated one in the Danger Room.
The most significant disappointment was that three major characters were killed (Cyclops, Professor X and Jean Grey). You can't do that, no matter what. It's a rule.
To me, it looks like because the movie was the last, they didn't bother putting in all the effort they should have. Or maybe someone was using "dog-in-the-manger" philosophy. Because it was their last film, they wrote it in such a way that it would be marked in all future versions by what they did in this one. Or maybe they didn't want a sequel at all.
It would have been better if they'd taken out the Phoenix stuff (with the exception of her return) and replaced it with a Sentinel storyline instead.
It's a fairly horrifying concept that the action scenes are the best part of this movie. The only non-action scene that is good is the ice-skating scene with Iceman and Kitty Pryde.
So, my verdict is that it's a good movie as long as you ignore the Phoenix part of the story. Really, it's only half a movie.