How did this happen?

Rating: 1/10 (31 May 2006)

How did they mess this one up so bad? This movie is just so wrong in so many areas that I don't know where to start!
I understand that this movie was directed by Brett Ratner instead of Brian Singer but I still don't see how things went so wrong. Even if Ratner completely sucks at directing, he still had the first two movies to use as a solid reference. He also had much of the same crew from the first two films and he was surrounded by dozens of film professionals and millions of dollars that were supposed to prevent something like this from happening.
Why didn't they notice how wrong things were going? Why didn't they notice that they were creating a film that fails to work with the first two films in virtually every way? Why didn't they notice that they were making a pretty darn bad movie?
It's 2006 and they had a $210 million budget .. what the heck is their excuse?