I must have gone to some other movie

Rating: 5/10 (24 May 2006)

In my opinion, this was the weakest of the 3 movies. I had hoped for an awesome experience that the material of the Dark Pheonix saga could deliver to the big screen. All the elements were there and ready to roll. It never happened though, it just wasn't delivered.
The story focuses on 'The Cure' which, if thought through and developed could have been a great movie on its own. However, the attempted mix of these story lines detracted from both and failed to keep me interested for the short time it was on screen (1.5 hours).
The start to the movie seemed good and then all pacing was lost and we seemed to just go through the motions to get to the end point with few highlights in between.
This should have been 2 separate movies with much more care and attention given to character development and to telling an actual story.
Various characters are introduced and left as a bit part where there was a greater role to be played. Witness Angel, Moira and Colossus (Yes, I know he was in the second instalment but he's actually part of the team now). There was hardly any point in actually having them there.
The deaths seemed random and I have to wonder why the Scott was even featured at all. They could have just had a big sign at the start saying, "James is off filming Superman". I hope he has more screen time in that.
I can only hope this was an effort to set the stage for further development in the next movies. I'm not sure who is to blame for the lack of enthusiasm I feel for this movie. Do I feel that Bryan Singer would have delivered a better movie? I'm not actually too sure that the script was there to allow any director to make this good.
I will concede that the movie had some nice Special Effects but that does not begin to make up for the shortcomings of the story telling.
The X-Men franchise could have done without this. It felt rushed and unfinished and there was no real reason for it to be this way. I'm sure it'll do well in the box office but the introduction of many unexplored elements will leave a bitter taste in the mouth of X-Men fans.