Take this is a warning, if you watch X-men 3 The Last Stand and are a fan the x-men be prepared for your favorite character to either: 1. be
mysterious and inexplicity absent in the movie. 2. die pointlessly, 3.
lose their powers as a cheesy plot device, 4. have zero character
development and almost no lines in the entire movie, or 5. prove to be
completely irrelevant during all combat scenes in the movie.

And many characters experience multiple of these afflictions. The
*only* character that comes off ok is everyone’s favorite Wolverine. So
unless the only character you like in the series is Wolverine you will
probably be woefully disappointed in this movie. I apologize for any
minor spoilers I might provide, but I feel it is absolutely necessary
that you be warned. This movie is not just the worst of any of the
x-men movies, it’s one of the worst movie stories I’ve ever seen. This
isn’t just about going against the cannon, even ignoring all of the
established literature of the x-universe this movie just flops on its
own rights. It’s StarWars Episode II bad. Maybe even worse.

Ok, maybe’s that’s a little too harsh. There are some good points. They
did a better than expected job with Beast. Iceman does get to shine a
little and Shadowcat does do something although it is a rather
unrealistic victory for her. Pyro proves to have grown some strength.
Storm has more of a role, well at least more lines. But she still is
woefully underpowered compared to her comic book incarnation as are
many of the other characters as well. But everyone else? Irrelevant or
worse than irrelevant in many cases.

The casting as always is superb. The acting of characters like Magento
and Wolverine are still just as convincing as always. The dialogue is
well put together and of course the special effects are impressive. The
subtle humor of the first two movies is also still present and quite
well done as well.

Where he movie fails almost entirely on plot alone. It is unfulfilling.
It will leave a bitter taste in your mouth. The more you think about it
the more you’ll wish the movie had never been made in the first place
rather than be such a poor vehicle for the development of the
characters you love. It would have been better to imagine what was
going to happen after the second movie then to know what happens and
know that it is… this!

The movie builds up your expectations so much and there’s so much going
on at the beginning that you will probably start off being impressed.
There are some early scenes that are good enough to stick with you.
They even excite you about the direction the series is going. This only
makes the eventual let down all the worse. When you come to realize “no
that character you like isn’t coming back”, and “no their death isn’t
going to have served any purpose” and “no your favorite character isn’t
going to contribute to the battle when the fate of the world is at
stake”, and “no your favorite character isn’t going to have more than
the two lines he’s already spoken in the movie” that you start to
realize that something is horribly wrong here. So many minor changes
could have been made to drastically improve the quality of the story.
So many plot leads could have been fulfilled in interesting and
impressive ways at the end to make the whole thing worth while.

But alas it is not to be. There will be no twists. No surprises.
Everything will be resolved in the simplest way imaginable making you
wonder why you even bothered to watch. The villains will prove to be
hardly a threat at all really and the good guys who are left will
really never be in any real danger since the movies uber threat really
isn’t all that bad after all. And numerous elements of the plot will
just remain completely unresolved as if the writers didn’t have any
time or inclination to explore those elements of the story in depth or
even give us one incling of what is going to happen.

I would have expected more from the story of the phoenix. I would have
expected more from a plot revolving around the discovery of a potential
cure for the so called mutant epidemic. Maybe the problem is that they
tried to put both of these elements in the movie at the same time and
thus failed to do either justice. OR maybe the writers just tackled a
story beyond their ability to write. Understandable, but sad as that
means we have to accept this garbage as the third movie in what was
otherwise an excellent series.

I’m not saying that this movie cannot be enjoyed, but to all x-fans out
there I highly recommend you don’t watch it immediately. And when you do watch it. Lower. Your. Expectations. Set your
expectations at the very pit of low. Spend some time imagining the worst that could
happen, how terribly they could possibly screw it up. Then watch it, preferably
when it becomes on television, and then just maybe you’ll be pleasantly
surprised that it isn’t as bad as you had feared and you’ll be able to
see the few good points in it. Or maybe not. In any case at least you
will not have wasted your hard earned money on a movie that is
altogther unworthy of remembrance.

By the way if you ignore my advice you should stay and watch until after the credits end if you can stomach it. There is an extra scene. I didn’t stay. I was too disgusted but I read about it and I doubt I would have cared.

Now below I’ll detail more of the specific problems for those who have been foolish enough to watch the movie as I was.

DETAILED SPOILER WARNINGS

Ok let’s just go character by character shall we?

Absentees:

Nightcrawler -  So apparently after all the stuff in the last movie, Nightcrawler just kinda went home and didn’t come back. Even with a world wide threat he doesn’t even show up for a cameo appearence. What’s he doing?  It’s not like he can’t get there fast enough.He can teleport!

Sabretooth – Well I can’t remember whether he was supposed to be dead but I find it hard to believe anything they’ve shown can kill him. He would have been a better villain to have then some of the chumps Magneto recruits. Heck Toad would have been better.

Jubilee – she had a cameo in movie 2 but doesn’t show up in movie 3. I guess she’s just in classes….

Siryn – also still in classes I guess. Ummm. why would the x-men go off to fight a war against an army of mutants and not at least try to find something other mutants with combat skills to help out either in their school or their friends in the world. We at least know they could have went and grabbed Siry and Jubilee since we know they’re at the school, gave Nightcrawler a call, not to mention dozens of other students or friends of the x-men in the universe.

Lady Deathstrike – ok so maybe its a good thing they didn’t find some cheesy way to bring some characters back….

Characters that Could have been it:
Quicksilver, The Scarlet Witch -  brotherhood of evil mutants and all these two might have created a better villain squad then we are left with.

Gambit – I’m kinda glad they left him out so they couldn’t ruin him. Same goes for nightcrawler really. But they DID have his file in the second movie. I guess it was just to get our hopes up.

The New -
Juggernaut – “I’m the Juggernaut!” Please. This is no juggernaut I know. No character development whatsoever. He just runs through walls and gets easily defeated by Kitty Pryde somehow. Yeah right.  This is a villain powerful enough to deserve his own movie and they just made him into a waste of space. At least he didn’t appear to die which would have been absurd. Juggernaut is not supposed to be a mutant and he’s supposed to have significant connection to Charles Xavier. But not in this movie.

Angel -  They build him up at the beginning. One of the only characters to have a flashback scene. So why is it that he does NOTHING! He contributes not at all to the fight at the end, flies off the screen just so you can look at his wings. Big deal. Would it have been so hard for him to contribute just a little itsy bit? Character development but no combat? What’s up with that? I don’t like Angel that much, but again this is a case where a character didn’t even need to be in the movie.

Multiple Man – He’s extremely powerful, why on god’s green earth would Magneto just leave him behind as a decoy? And why a decoy with no purpose. Magneto doesn’t ambush the guys. attacking him or take them hostage. No he just lets Multiple man get captured. Unbelievable.

Spike – Nice death. Excuse for Wolverine to fight  somebody. You were irrelevant.

Arclight – Nice death. Irrelevant.

Kid Omega aka that Quill Guy – Nice death. Chump. Irrelevant

Psylocke – I read that she was in the movie, was she really in the movie? I didn’t notice. She must have done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.  Probably died with the other chump villians. In that case, Nice Death. Irrelevant.

Jimmy/Leech – well it’s neat that this character is the source of the cure and all but you’d think that’d mean he I don’t know might have some kind of a role. But no alas. Irrelevant. At least he didn’t die.

Callisto – Ok, I guess they did this character ok. I don’t know much about Callisto. Her fighting Storm was appropriate. It should have been trivial for Storm to defeat even with the new power set she demonstrates in the movie. It’s not like fighting the Flash. Still at least she was a villain that did something.

Trask – He didn’t die but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t irrelevant. A shame too, had they played up the whole humans versus mutants thing with the cure and all, he might have had a bigger role and they could have even lead into the sentinel saga. But no. They were too busy screwing up the Phoenix to be bothered.

The Beast – He had a cameo in movie 2 really so not that new. Anyway he’s the best of the new characters. They actually did his character perfectly. I have no complaints here.

The Established Characters -

Mystique -  What an awesome character. She’s very evil and very well done at the beginning. I was getting pretty excited about her role in this movie. Then. Oops, let’s completely remove her from relevance in one foul swoop. The writers must have said, “What will Mystique be doing in the last battle? I don’t know. Ok then I guess we’ll just have her lose her powers that way we don’t have to be bothered.” What a cop out.  Still, overall in the movie world between the three movies she isn’t badly done. The comic book character is more interesting though.

Cyclops – Nice death. chump. You were irrelevant. Hey wait just a frickin minute. This is CYCLOPS we’re talking about. Signficant character in just about every single x-men plotline in which he exists. Now’s he’s the broken down wreck who dies just so Jean can have something to regret. Indeed if you told me the plot of the x-men movie would involve A. a mutant cure (something cyclops more than most characters would want) or B. Jean’s transformation into the Phoenix the very last thing I would expect is for Cyclops to have almost NO role. I’m not a big fan of cyclops but come on. That’s just absurd. An entirely pointless death after having almost no role in movies one or two. Poor cyclops gets the total shaft in the movie universe.

Iceman – One of the better done characters. I like that he develops his ice around his body ability, gets to defeat pyro AND actually has some small amount of character development outside of combat. His relationship with rogue is rather unresolved. He kinda just gives up and goes back home when he went out to look for her. What’s up with that?

Rogue – This was just terrible. She just goes off and gets cured and that’s ALL she does in the entire movie. Her friends are fighting and dying out there and she never shows up to help? She was even training with them early on. Did that mean nothing? What a waste of a powerful and interesitng character. It’s again like the writers and directors were thinking “How do we incorporate Rogue into the final battle? Beats me. I know,let’s just have her leave and get her powers removed then we don’t have to be bothered by it. Great Idea!”  Ugh. Yuck. Rogue would have been a great character to use during the final battle. She would have given them both a more realistic out with either Magneto or Phoenix. Or she could have just contributed to the fighitng any of the other villains such as Arclight or Psylocke. Nope she does nothing. Why was she even in the movie?

Pyro -  I kinda like the evolution of this character in the movie. He’s kindof a neat lieutenant for Magneto and they did make him pretty darn strong. Magneto considers him a substantive enough weapon to hold him back until the very end. That’s cool. Then he wastes him by sending him off to fight a man made of ice. Nice battle. Should have never happened though. But still it makes sense for Pyro’s pride and arrogance to cause his defeat. I just expected better use of his troops by Magneto. Sigh.

Storm – Yay! They gave Storm a bigger role. But wait. She still does NOTHING. She’s there sure. Fighting with everyone else. She beats up on Callisto. And she’s theoretically in a leadership position like she’s supposed to be. She takes control of the school which makes sense given the loss of Scott. However… During the battle she doesn’t issue commands, she doesn’t take charge and her only singificance during the battle with Magneto is that she creates some cover. Come on! This is one of the most powerful characters in the x-universe. She can do better than that. Trying to pur her on par with Callisto is lame.

Xavier – I felt in physical pain with the way they portrayed this character. Now don’t get me wrong. Xavier’s hard to do. There’s the whole fact that he makes many of the battles too easy so they constantly have to remove him from the picture. However, this wasn’t one of those easy battles. Magneto AND Phoenix? No need to remove him from such a conflict. There’s also the whole moral ambiguity of Xavier’s existence.  There’s always that question of conscience in the comic books. How far will he go for his morals? Does he play god with people’s lives? Yes that element was well represented here. Too bad there wasn’t anything else. Xavier does nothing cool in this movie. He might as well have not been in it at all. He exists long enough to have a disturbing death but in the end Jean doesn’t remember his words. He doesn’t contribute to Jean’s defeat not in astral form and not in memory. Rather he’s pretty much just the cause of the problem and that’s about it. This fact makes it even worse that he returns at the end of the credit. If we were about to be willing to forgive him for his overly arrogant manipulation of people’s lives when he locked Jean’s subconscious, no point in speaking poorly of the dead and all, but he goes and does something equally quetionable in taking over another person’s body. It would have been different had he done this to contribute. Had he appeared in the end in his new body and helped to defeat the now out of control Jean. But no. He does nothing.There’s no resolution here. No forgiveness. They just let him live to serve as a kind of fan service at the end. I would have preferred they just killed him.

Wolverine -  ITt’s hard to mess up wolverine when they’ve already got the ideal actor for him. His introductory scene in this movie was really cool in the danger room with the lighting of the cigar and all. Unfortunately that’s where his coolness ends. Oh don’t get me wrong, he is relevant throughout the entire movie. He plays a signifcant combat role in defeating all of the major threats and there’s character development for his character as well. Well… more like character continuity. No real new ground with his character is established except that maybe he’s a little more loyal to the x-men. Maybe a little too loyal to the x-men really. He’s supposed to be the loner character. Going too far from that is bad news. He’s almost a little on the wimpy side in this. Nicer than he’s supposed to be. And yet…. he totally just stabs and kills Jean. WTF. He’s not supposed to be able to make himself do that. They made it a little tough for him but he still does it. It’s pretty screwed up. He doesn’t try to knock her out first or talk her out of it. He just kills her. No time left in the movie. Stab. Dead. The End.   Oh wait a minute Wolverine, we had these mutant cure vials lying around that we would have used to suppress Jeans power and thus not had to kill her. Shhh! No one’s supposed to realize that.  No more than they are supposed to realize that demolecularization probably can’t be stopped by awesome regeneration.

Jean -  The focus of the movie and yet sooo poorly done. One the phoenix is supposed to be more powerful than that. But that didn’t bother me so much. The real problem here is that the pheonix is supposed to be more INTERESTING than that. She starts off doing some stuff, you know demolecularizing people and all, but after those couple of scenes of getting rid of excess characters for the lazy writers, she just STANDS there the rest of the movie. Unbridled emotions are pretty boring these days I guess. She’s more of a zombie than person. She doesn’t seem all that conflicted nor all that passionate. I’d expect her to be taking pleasure is fighting at the end contributing to the battle. Laughing or at least I don’t know Saying Something. They could have given her a child like personality and had her take childish glee in the things she did. Or they could have given her the truly evil witch like personality and had her explore her hatred and disgust and be blasting people to smitherines enemy and ally alike. But no. She does nothing. Until the very end when they are about to shoot her, then  she starts demolecularizing people and things again. How boring we’ve already saw that. How very convenient that she kills the other villains that the writers didn’t have time to get rid of.  But then after all that, she just gets stabbed by Wolverine. She should have just flicked Wolverine have way across the globe with her telekinesis even if she can’t demolecularize him. She could also have created an impenetrable force field rather easily. If she’s going to let him through so that he could stab her they would have made it more difficult. They should have shown much more of her inner emotional and mental conflict. Heck she could have been struggling the whole movie to control her powers. She could have remembered Xavier’s words or Xavier could have appeared to help or Xavier could have appeared in astral form to help. Or Scott could have returned to contribute. Or Rogue could have touched her and stolen some of her powers. Or should could have been stabbed by the ‘cure’ and thus been weakend but we could have learned that her power is so far off the chart that the cure could not suppress her. Or leech could have confronted her and she would have faced the moral dillemma of having to kill a child, a child who conveniently would have weakened her powers helping Wolverine get closer. Any or all of those things would have made it more realistic in my mind. A flashback. Anything. Anything at all. All we get is the characters eyes to hint at the conflict within. It’s not enough for me to suspend my disbelief. Also if the Phoenix really is just a subconscious manifestation of her power in this movie, why couldn’t the professor have jumped in Cererbral magnified his powers by I don’t know how much and then re-established the lockdown on her mind. Can it really be that hard? Why couldn’t we have had scenes where Jean is herself for extended periods of time and the the phoenix during others? Why couldn’t the whole thing have been more subtle and interesting? Why did I feel as if the phoenix was never all that dangerous in this movie? Why did I just not care what happened to her by the end of it? Why? Because the phoenix is a chump in this movie. Nice Death. You should have just stayed dead after the second movie.

*************************

Overally I hated this movie. I am bitterly angry at the creators and directory.

The movie has the style but not the sensibilities of the first two movies. Whereas the first two movies are all about paying homage to the characters, making you care about them, bringing them to life on the big screen, this movie is about bang boom special effects with no substance. The first two movies elegantly give each character a scene in which to shine. Xavier freezes everyone in the mall. Nightcrawler beats up on the secret service. Jean holds back the water. Wolverine fights lady deathstrike and sabretooth and has the bullet pop out of his head when shot by the cops. Storm brings lightining down when being chocked by sabretooth. Rogue steals pyro’s powers to prevent him from killing the police. Mystique’s solo entry into the facility takes out the guards and lets everyone else in. Magneto’s escape from his plastic prison. The scene where Magneto turns all of the guns on the police while Charles controls Sabretooth’s mind.  You don’t forget these scenes. They stand out. their memorable. They matter to you. In this movie the characters exhibit their powers but they aren’t center stage. It doesn’t really matter. It’s just a series of brawls and street fights. Could have been any other mutants.  Could have been just normal people. It would have been largely the same. You don’t get that sense of wonder and awe. You don’t feel that glee and jubilation. You don’t think yes! now that’s how that character should be portrayed!  Character use their powers in this movie, but I just can’t bring myself to care.