Quick Hit: X-Men 3 A Wasted Opportunity

The first X-Men movie was darn good. It set up the motivations for Wolverine, Rogue, Professor Xavier and Magneto. The second installment in the series was not as good , but was still enjoyable enough. However, the third, and final, movie simply was a lazy venture. Brett Ratner, the new director who replaced Bryan Singer, traded in character development and a coherent storyline for more action scenes and cheesy dialogue. The crappy lines given to quality actors like Ian McKellan(Magneto) and Patrick Stewart(Xavier) was simply a waste, and made the Star Wars prequels seem Oscar-worthy.

It's worth one watch, but anyone who is a fan of the comics or the cartoon programs would not exactly enjoy this movie. It is anything but canon, sometimes simply creating completely false histories of characters, and haphazardly introducing several of them. Kelsey Grammer was a good pick for Beast, but VASTLY underutilized. It, as well as Angel and other new characters, simply seemed like throw-ins for X-Men fans because NOTHING was done to explain them in the proper context.

Finally, plot points from the other movies were simply dropped, and storylines ignored. Rogue, Iceboy had a few token scenes, but nothing was done to wrap up any of their places in the trilogy. The idea of Jean Grey as the Phoenix was simply introduced without any explanation or reason, and it must have been tough for non-X-Men fans to understand. Simply ignoring true character development, a storyline resembling anything in the comics, and making no attempt to integrate the new characters was a weak, weak attempt. It is understandable that the trilogy would not be canon, because there simply are hundreds of characters and storylines, but simply slapping together a movie from popular characters was lame and lazy.