Please note that this post contains extreme spoilage. If you haven’t seen X3, and you don’t want to be spoiled stop reading now.
For the most part, I enjoyed the movie. However, it seemed a little bit rushed. I think the best way to describe how I feel about this movie is “it could have been so much more”. According to IMDB stats X2 was 133 minutes long. This was a half an hour longer than X3. Why did they decide to make it shorter than the last one? IMHO the movie actually desperately needed that extra half an hour to actually do some proper storytelling.
Good example here is Cyclops. There was a good story to tell here about leadership, grief and etc.. Here you have a former leader of the group, becoming an emotional wreck. He is slowly rolling toward self destruction, and everyone around recognizes this. But no one knows how to help him. He is unable to cope with his loss, he refuses to move on, and thus he becomes danger to himself and his team. But all of this is barely hinted at in the movie. He is hardly in the picture at all. We learn about what he is going through, from conversations between other people. When he finally shows up he bickers a little with Logan, and he gets killed two scenes later. Downfall of a hero is usually very cinematic. Especially with someone like Scott, who was always a little head strong, and stuck up. Can you say: wasted potential?
I have yet to see a single person who actualy felt anything when he died. Most people had the same reaction: “Eh… He was kind off a jerk anyway…”. So sad…
But there’s more wasted opportunities like this. When Wolverine learns that Charles built up “barriers” in Jean’s mind to keep Phoenix at bay he is outraged. You can see that he has very difficult time accepting this. You can see a little light bulb popping over his head. If he was abe to alter Jen’s personality to contain her wild side, what would stop him from doing the same to others! What if he is screwing with everyone’s mind? What if he is no different than Magnetto?
When Jean wakes up, she fuels those doubts by claiming that Xavier “tamed” Wolverine. Logan is obviously confused. This is another great piece of character development that begs to be explored. It’s a great opportunity to allow him to question the methods used by professor and his teammates. Make him think about the reasons why he joined Xmen in the first place. Make him have to choose who to trust - Charles or Jean. But no…
Jen becomes Phoenix and starts demolishing the room before Logan can even fully process what she said about him being tamed. The whole trust-crisis buildup goes straight to trash. Once Logan sees what she is capable off, he immediately realizes that Xavier was right. What a waste…
Mystique gets totally shafted in this one. It’s really sad because she is a really great character. She sacrifices herself to save Magnetto from the “cure” shot, and she gets brutally rejected by him. This is an amazing setup to say something interesting about humans, mutants, loyalty and rejection. But alas, after she sheds the blue skin we do not see her at all until the very end of the movie. And even then, we see her rating out her felow mutants to the US government. This was a total WTF moment for me.
Would Mystique really turn on Magnetto this way? Even if he totally dissed her, I find it hard to believe that she would instantly stop believing in his cause. She seemed to be one of Magneto’s strongest supporters. She wholeheartedly bought into his philosophy. Even if she was pissed off at M, would she really betray her own kind? Sure, she is technically no longer a mutant. But could she really shed her identity, as easily as she shed her blue skin?
I think that she still was working for the cause, and knowingly lead the feds to a decoy camp. But I guess we will never know for sure. This is another really good story left untold. The biggest believer in Magnetto’s cause makes the ultimate sacrifice, only to be rejected by her own people. Eh…
Rogue’s dilemma is also only glanced over. She was facing a very big decision. Would she be willing to sacrifice her identity as a mutant? Would she be concerned how others at school would react to her decision? Would she be willing to give up being part of the school, and part of X-men that easily? Is she doing this for the right reasons?
I think she jumped on the chance to be “cured” a little bit to easily. I know this is not the Rogue I remember from the comic books I used to read as a kid. That Rogue was strong, fierce and independent. And she did not resent her powers the same way as the movie Rogue does. She did not pity herself, nor did she allow anyone else to do it. But again, that’s a different Rogue. This one gave up, and chose to be “cured”. But we really did not see the internal process that lead to this decision. Sure, it kinda made sense in this context. But it felt a little empty. There
The whole Iceman/Shadowcat/Rogue thing was not explored well either. It needed more depth, and more screen time. Besides, shouldn’t we expect Kitty and Colossus becoming an item? Seriously. Where the hell is Gambit? Is it because he is French? Were they afraid that he will steal the show from Wolverine as the local bad ass?
Another downside is that most of the Brotherhood mutants have no personalities to speak off. Only Calisto, and Pyro are fleshed out a little bit, and have their own driving motivations. The rest is just an army of expendable, interchangeable just stand-ins. Most of them don’t even have cool powers. They look like bunch of punked out, or goth junkies from some backwards ghetto. And they are about as effective as they look - totally useless cannon fodder. Magneto could really just storm Alcatraz with only Pyro, Calisto and Juggernaught alone. Because these were really the only mutants that actually did anything during the battle scene.
Speaking of the “battle scene”, I found it really stupid. How come X-men were able to hold off a whole army of Magneto’s “inner city” mutants all by themselves? I know they are powerful, and experienced but come on. What were the odds in that battle? 20 to one? More? Ridiculus!
Just picture this scene. On one side you have a horde of mutants. On the other side you have Wolverine and Beast (Storm is busy fighting with calisto, and Iceman is tied up with Pyro). And somehow these two guys are able to stop the whole throng from entering the facilty. Why couldn’t they just go around Wolverine? He is just one guy!
Sure, being heavily outnumbered like that adds to the drama. I understand this “last stand” mentality and all but it is just silly. Why didn’t X-men bring along some of the upper classmen with them to beef up the numbers? Why didn’t they recruit mutants that don’t approve Magnetto’s methods? I find it hard to believe that only a handful of X-men were willing to defend the cure from the Brotherhood.
Let me shut up about the bad things though. What was good in the movie?
Hugh Jackman was great as Wolverine, but that was to be expected. He is Wolverine. Although in this movie he actually kinda had to play a dual role. He had to be both himself, and also a little bit of Cyclops. It should have been big C doing all the talking and reasoning with Jen. But still, he pulled it off.
Haley Berry was also good as storm, and the Chiana style wig looked really good on her. She finally got some more screentime. This is still not the storm from the commic book, but definitely an improvement. She was almost there. They still needs to work on her leadership skills - Storm was a born leader.
I never, ever expected to see Kelsey Grammer to look cool in a combat scene but he was incredible. I have to give him allot of credit for this, because he pulled off Beast perfectly. This was a really strange casting choice, but it really paid off. Hat’s off to the casting director for doing this.
And of course Phoenix! She was powerful and scary just the way it should be. The special effects for her vere really spectacular.
It might seem that I’m complainign allot, but I’m not. The movie was decent. In fact, the only reason I’m able to complain about those things, is that they were there. The script had all these good ideas in it. It just seems that they did not have enough tme to explore all of them. I’m willing to attribute this story-telling efficiency to the choice of director. They should have really stayed with Bryan Singer. But oh well…
Here is the breakdown on my highly scientific Script Monkey scale. As usual, a scriptwriter monkey starts with a basic 3 bnana meal.
+2 
for “I’m the Juggernaught Bitch!” fan service
+1 for Wolverine being cool
+1 for Haley’s Chiana style wig
+1 for Kelsey “Beast” Grammer
+1 for developping Shadowcat some more
+1 for awesome Phoenix effects
-1 for failing to tell Cyclops’s story
-1 for failing to explore Wolverine/Xavier/Jean dillema
-1 for failing to show what happened to cured Mystique
-1 for glancing over Rogue’s dilemma
-1 because they still didn’t introduce Gambit
-1 for weak “last stand” scene with X-men holding the line
4 TOTAL SCORE
Perhaps I should have started off with GW: Factions. But oh well…
