A travesty, not worthy of its predecessors

Rating: 4/10 (26 May 2006)

As a fan of both the comics and the previous two movies, i must say that this film is a travesty of American cinema. Gone is the great storyline with layers of subtle social-political messages, gone are great performances by Patrick Stewart and Ian Mckellan, gone are the great action scenes that keep the audience at the edge of their seats.
Brett ratner, you ended the series with a whimper.
Summary *don't read if you want the movie to surprise you*: Magneto declares war onhumanity because of a newly developed cure for mutation. Meanwhile, Jean Grey returns and goes absolutely crazy, killing much needed characters within the first 25 minutes of the movie and without much explanation as to why her powers force her to do this. Magneto and her team up (well, she just follows him around and does nothing but stand in place until he's been defeated), to create the "ultimate team" of evil mutants on the mission to destroy humanity.
The film goes by so fast that you can't even absorb what's going on. A character dies, then BAM on to the next subject and/or fight scene. There's no character development, something the other two were so good at. Where are the moral struggles that the characters face? I would say that this is just like Fantastic 4, because the diologue style and lack of any good point is similar, but X3 is much worse. The Pheonix is extremely overlooked, wating until the last minute for a scene of chaos and destruction that finally got my pulse to stop flatlining. unfortunately that scene lasts only about a minute and a half. This epic "goddess" (which is what magneto calls her) doesn't have any role in the "last stand" of the title or even any relevance to trhe plot. Jean Grey has become as useless as a poopy-flavored lollypop, and that's really too bad.
Apparently people like this movie. I can't understand why. It reeks of sub-par, typical Hollywood superhero crap from the 80's, where people don't care about acting, story, relevance, or even entertainment value. In the entire movie, only one moment made me smile: Vinnie Jones as the Juggernaut, and his line to Kittie Pryde when she sticks him in the floor ("i'm the juggernaut, b****!!!"). It was a great homage to the fan-made Juggernaut dub-over video found on the internet, and it was tear-inducingly hilarious. That, and one short scene where magnete destroys a cavalcade of cars to rescue mystique, give this movie any stars at all from me, because this mindless "action" movie threw away a perfect, winning formula that Brian Singer created in the first two films. We CARED about those characters, we CARED when Jean "died" there, we CARED about what happened during the action sequences because they were filmed and choreographed so damn well. There's nothing of that nature here... NOTHING.