So I took the afternoon off from work and saw X-Men 3 with all my friends on the day of its release. Yes, I’m that big of a geek. Duh. Anyway, here are my general, spoiler-free thoughts on the film.
They packed it with mutants. Many of them you never encountered by name until the rolling credits, but they were there.
Lots of action.
The score sucked. A film score can make or break a movie, and this one really dropped it down a notch for me. It was much too grandiose in places when it should have/could have built tension. Instead of letting the action on screen speak for itself, it shouted out “Look! Right now! See? This is a Big, Emotional, Moment! Got it? It’s right here!” Blegh.
There were some big moments that should have packed a lot more emotion than they did, and I do at least partially blame the score. However, in all fairness the acting was flat in some places and melodramatic in others. Mostly from the Big Name Stars. The “kids” did the best job.
There were some “But why didn’t they just do this?” moments. Maybe I’m just trained to look for those kind of plot holes in 12 to Midnight’s titles now, but because I hold ourselves to high standards I don’t think it’s asking too much of a mega-million dollar movie to plug the holes.
Brian Singer, why have you forsaken us?
Edit: Although I had my problems with the film, overall I still give it three stars. It was entertaining and action packed. It’s still our favorite characters out there doing their thing. I’m just disappointed because they really did have a great plot concept for this movie that wasn’t exploited to its fullest potential.
And where was Nightcrawler for crying out loud. Introduce a popular mutant in X-Men 2 and then don’t even mention him in the next flick. Huh?
And Phoenix should have looked even more powerful and seemed more of a menace to the Earth.
There were a few problems, but overall, I wasn’t too disappointed. It’s really going to be hard to satisfy XMEN fans to begin with, but they did a very good story line. I agree it could have been better. The acting was a little worse than what it has been in previous movies, and that is probably the director’s fault, along with how the plot moved.
However, I really enjoyed the action and watching mutants kick the snot out of each other. My wife’s favorite character was Nightcrawler as well, and there was much disappointment at his absence. Grammer did a good job with Beast, though. A better director would have helped there, as well.
I’m enough of a fan that I enjoyed it, regardless. Would I have rather Singer have done it? You bet. But that’s what we were given.