X-cruciating!

Rating: 2/10 (4 June 2006)

In film, seeing the dreaded digit three in the opening credits of your movie more often than not means very bad things are about to unfold before your eyes. Being the third child of a franchise just ain't easy. Just think of the tertiary tat that was the third Jurassic Park, Jaws, Terminator or Star Wars, to name but a few.
Simply put, third films suck, Yet, like a moron, I always forgive and forget. I went into this one with the usual wide-eyed optimism. It's X-Men, it's the end of the trilogy, it's gonna be awesome! It was shite.
Incoming Director Bret "I'm not Bryan Singer" Shitner seems simply overwhelmed by both the legacy of the franchise he is expected to bring to a climax and also, rather depressingly, the ensemble cast of players he has been left to shuffle the pack with. Character arcs built over the previous 200 minutes of mutant movie menagerie are either dealt with in an excruciatingly inept manner (Cyclops take off your glasses! Oops...) or simply ignored altogether.
Worst off surely must be Halle Berry. She is like a $10 million dollar extra. With her perma-angst expression and a nonsensical rivalry with some random Asian chick (all Asian people in this movie are evil by the way) she seems to serve no other purpose than to occasionally flare her nostrils vacuously until the inevitable final-reel slap-down.
Running her close is Paquin's Rogue, contending with the ideological theme of the movie, the idea that her genetic gift could in fact be a curse. In her particular case this means having the touch of death, something she seems to have passed onto everyone else involved in the movie. She disappears for ninety minutes, turning up only in the last few minutes of the film. I wish I could have joined her. Only Ian McKellan seems to realise the sheer turgid banality of the enterprise he is contractually obliged to endure, mugging in true pantomime dame fashion throughout his few brief appearances and being about the only entertaining aspect of this otherwise risible, rotten piece of mutant, celluloid drivel.
X-ceptionally X-cruciatingly average in every conceivable way! Avoid at all costs.