A Cinematic Abortion

Rating: 2/10 (30 May 2006)

I'll be the first to admit that I didn't have high hopes for X-Men 3. Bryan Singer did a fantastic job on the first two movies, but with Singer's departure to helm Superman, and his replacement by hack director Brett Ratner, things didn't bode well from the outset.
The premise of The Last Stand is interesting. A cure has been found for the mutant gene, and those mutants who wish to be ordinary will be able to go to a clinic, get a shot, and instantly fit in. Some mutants (notably Rogue) are eager for the "cure", others, led by Magneto, see the cure as the first step towards a future in which every mutant is forced to lose their powers and conform. This is a situation rife with potential. What is a mutant? Can they really be "cured", or is there nothing wrong with them in the first place? There are obvious parallels to the abortion controversy, with long lines of mutants eager to be cured facing down angry protesters and attacks by extremists. None of this gets explored. It's all just glossed over on the way to fight scenes and explosions. The X-Men don't do any soul-searching; even after they learn that the government has developed weapons whose bullets permanently rob mutants of their powers. Magneto is portrayed as the extremist, but shouldn't this be setting alarm bells off for our heroes? Apparently not, as they rush to defend the facility where the cure is manufactured, improbably located on Alcatraz Island.
Meanwhile, Jean Grey, killed at the end of the last movie, has returned. This time she has become the Phoenix, and off-the-charts powerful mutant barely capable of maintaining control. Professor X and Magneto struggle over who gets to keep her, and meanwhile, the audience yawns. The Dark Phoenix story from the comic books was a lot more interesting. Here Jean becomes a ping-pong ball bouncing from good to evil and back again in the space of an hour. It's fair to say that this entire plot line could have been dropped and no one would have missed it.
As the movie went on, the audience started laughing at the incredibly cheesy dialogue and weak writing. I heard one patron muse that the dialogue sounded like a bad 80's action movie. This was a real disappointment after the last two movies. As X-Men 3 dragged on, the plot incongruities mounted up. Why did Cyclops have to die off-screen? Where did Nightcrawler go? Where were the Sentinels that fans longed to see? How is it in a school full of powerful mutants, the X-Men can only rustle up six team members for their "Last Stand"? Why did Magneto, a master of metal, need to bend the Golden Gate Bridge to get to Alcatraz? That part really made no sense. It was obvious Ratner wanted a neat special effectI doubt the Bridge could even reach the island, no matter how it was twisted. Angel shows up in the finale just so he can be there with a last-second save when the villains throw his father off a roof. Huh? How did he reach the battle in time? He wasn't in the jet, and he can't fly from New York to San Francisco that quickly. He would have really been out of luck if the villains had decided use their powers to kill his father instead of throwing him off the roof in a dramatic way. It was all just so nonsensical and lame, with one explosion-filled fight after another. The death of Professor Xavier at Jean's hands felt emotionless and dull. Don't worry though, because if you sit through the credits, Professor X isn't really dead! Even Magneto's reaction when his cohort Mystique takes a mutant gene-removing bullet for him felt very out-of-character. It didn't help that random mutants were used as plot devices every time the writer needed to overcome some script problem.
Fundamentally X-Men 3 is about what would happen if someone invented a cure for being different. If there was a "cure" for being a minority, what would that mean? It's a shame that such a fantastic premise is wasted on a hack director, weak script, and cast of characters so large that none get enough screen time (except Halle Berry who I've had more than enough of). I know X-Men 3 did gangbuster numbers at the BO, but a lot of that was on the strength of the last two movies. I predict a big dropoff as disappointed fans spread word of mouth. Ratner and co. burned us here. We won't be so quick to see another X-movie next time.