X-Men 3, The Last Stand

After thinking long and hard about how to write this review, I have decided to just say that this film, in my humble opinion, was not as good as I had hoped, and had a crushing effect on my Friday night.

I'm not quite sure what was the single most powerful letdown with this movie. Let me explain several things, and please keep in mind, this is an opinion article.

This however, is not opinion; tis be fact. Halle Berry was actually not going to do this film at first. She made complaints about its original director, Brian Singer. When the director changed, she pressured the producers and writers to change the script to be more 'Storm' centric. Ever wonder why Xavier chose her to lead the X-Men? There you have it!

Now, on to opinion. This film was directed by Brett Ratner, and to say the least, you can surely tell. Unlike the first two installments of X-Men, this chapter focuses more on how the comic played out, jumping from plot line to plot line, relying on the viewers understanding of the characters, rather than developing. There were so many different characters here that there was little room for any character development. I don't want to write any spoilers here, but where did Nightcrawler go? Why introduce so many characters such as Archangel, and almost never use them in the story? Why why why? It's just a mess.

Now, I love flash cartoons, but changing a script because of something that was on the net, just doesn't work for me. For those of you that don't know, there was a flash cartoon of the Juggernaut saying "Do you know who I am? I'm the Juggernaut Bitch! Well, since this was such a hit on the net, they actually changed the script to include it. Sure, it got a thrill for those net savvy people, but what about the other 90% of the people in the theatre looking around in confusion as 20 people scatters around the theatre crack up? Hmm, not so sure I liked that.

Fatalities... I was fine with that. Can't comment, as they are spoilers. I'll just say that I was fine with what happened there.

My two favorite characters, Charles Xavier and Eric Lensherr lost what they had.... In the first two films, it was a game of chess. One man would make his move, and the other would retaliate. But here, it was just a cluster ---- of action sequences, and characters being thrown across the screen. Did you know that jubilee was in the film? Neither did I until I looked at the cast and the credits. No more than a few seconds screen time, but she was there.

Rouge Rouge Rouge...

Anyway, I think the point that I'm trying to make here is this: The film was 1 hour and 44 minutes long. This needed to be 2 hours and 30 minutes, at least. Like a comic book, it played out page by page, relying on history to carry it. You can be a fan of the series and like this film. You can be a fan of the series and be destroyed by this film. I was one of the latter. I can understand people enjoying this film. Hey, it's the first blockbuster of the season. Just don't set the blocks to high...they might be knocked back down.

4 of 10. Wait for a rental, if that.