I hereby predict that X3 will be retconned out of existence (either substantially or entirely) by the next X-Men movie.
I don't know what the hell they were thinking, but unless they are deliberately trying to kill the series off (and we know they arent because the wolvie movie is in pre-production), there is no way the continuity established by X3 can stand.
Ok so the wife and I went and saw X3 last night. If taken as a single individual action movie it was jsut fine. Not good, not bad, pretty, lots of explosions etc...
If taken as part three in a series of otherwise very good movies it was AWFUL.
First of all there was no character developement or progress in any way. None of the interesteing story arcs raised were followed at all. We never even caught the names of any of the secondary palyers and SOME OF THE PRIMARY PLAYERS.
They introduced a BUNCH of new characters, many of them with no naems as I said, and then had them around as scenery.
There were tons of fanboy cheap pops etc... but really nothing solid there.
Oh and if you are going to use the characters, and base a lot of your fan appeal on fan knowledge of said characters, you HAVE TO GET IT RIGHT.
Theres a rather critical scene towards the end of the movie where (this isn't a spolier really) Shadowcat (Kitty Pryde) and Juggernaut (Cain Marko - Excellently played by Vinne Jones BTW) are racing through a building to find a mutant whos power is to deactivate other mutants powers.
Kinda cool eh? And true to the marvel universe.
Now they are both able to run through walls. Kitty phases through them, and Jug' well he just runs THROUGH them; because after all, he is the juggernaut.
Now heres where fan knowledge gives you a bite on the ass. Actually in two places. First, Juggernaut is actually Charles Xaviers half brother, BUT when Charles sees him earlier, neither of them acknowledges the others existence.
Talk about missed opportunity.
Second, the key point in the scene here is that mutant powers don't work, and therefore juggernaut gets himself smashed into a wall hard, knocking him out.
Only one small problem. The Jug' AINT A MUTANT.
The seat of the Juggernauts power isn't in the Mutant-X gene (like all mutants), it's in his the Gem of Cytorrak which is imbued with "Cosmic Power" (much as the silver surfer channels from Galactus or the Green Lantern has in his ring). This cosmic power and the curse/gift/function of the ancient gem are to make one super strong, super fast, and essentially indestructable.
And a mutant who cancels other mutants powers would have absolutely no effect on it.
Beast is there, but he's reduced to the toekn minority type role; who's sole purpose seems to be reaction takes "My god"! "We MUST STOP IT!!!" ETC...
Now as to the missed oportunites.. well lessee theres Warren Worthington/Angel/Archangel who they do nothing with; Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat who they do very little with, Piotr Rasputin/Colussus who is reduced to dumb muscle with no lines and no character at all (and that's a sin right there because colussus is a VERY cool character); Jubilation Lee/Jubilee nothing; Moira MacTaggart, nothing; Betsy Braddock/Psylocke nothing...; Callisto is there and has an actual role, BUT WE NEVER EVEN GET HER NAME. I mean they put in Arclight and then made her into... NOTHING.
And then, after doing nothing with all of these extremely interesting and often critical characters THEY KILL THEM.
How in the hell are you supposed to have any mreo (and hopefull by god better) movies in this universe if YOU KILL ALL THE CHARACTERS OFF?
There were no side plots. NONE.
There was almost no dialogue at al in fact, and what there was, was hack level writing.
There were no scenes longer than about 30 seconds. Not just shots, I mean whole scenes. It was like watching a music video on fast forward... Oh wait, might that be becuase the cirectors primary job has been as a RAP MUSIC VIDEO DIRECTOR for christs sake.
I have been saying I was worried about Brian Singer not being there for this one, and man I was so right. Look at the director Brett Ratners portfolio and you'll understand why I was concerned.
Oh and tellingly, there IS NO WRITING OR WRITTEN BY CREDIT; probably because THERE WAS NO WRITING. I'm assuming the director pulled the entire movie striaght out of his ass and then lit it on fire.
The only thing I can think of is that they are going to do the next movie and start it off with a revalation that all the events of X3 were on Earth 295, in the alternate universe timeline.
If you played it right, it could be very cool actually, but I'm not going to get into that now.
Anyway, as a standalone movie it was perfectly fine mindless action movie. If youre' a truefan or fanboy, it's jsut going to piss you off, but you're going to see it anyway.
