Friday, May 26, 2006

X3 review


Let's get some disclaimers out of the way. I'm a nerd. A huge nerd. I owned and ran a comic book store for two years. My son's name is Anakin. I'm a nerd. I like nerdy things. Disclaimer #2: There are spoilers in my ranting.

I loved the first two X-Men movies.

The fact that I love them forces my heart to break when I have to say the following: X3 was preposterous tripe.

Everyone was on autopilot. The story was filled with lame gimmicks. The script was filled with holes, one-liners and bad structure. The film was without drama or life. I don't feel like there was a soul to the movie.

In X2, when Jean dies, you feel a lump in your throat. In X3 (oh, sorry, I mean "The Last Stand") when people die you feel nothing. When Scott dies you don't even know it. Characters just start talking about it as fact ten minutes later in the movie. When Xavier dies, you doubt it happened it looked so silly. When Logan kills Phoenix, you've been laughing at the preposterous one-liners in the movie so hard it just doesn't matter. When they bring Xavier back to life and give Magneto hints of his power back, you want to laugh, because it's stupid.

When you see Juggernaut, you want to cry. He really does look like Ram-Man from Masters of the Universe. When you see Beast, you wish they had made him CGI...

I felt Storm was overused in the first two movies and in this movie, my God, she's actually in more of the movie. Why couldn't they have killed her? Why did they have to ruin any chance of future X-Men movies? And where the fuck was Nightcrawler?

My God. I spent 15 minutes outside the theatre tonight talking about how bad this movie was. I know a couple of people disagreed with me, and they are entitled to their opinion, but I think this movie was unforgivable. It's almost as bad as the Schumacher treatment of the Batman movies. No lie.

I raised my fist in the air as the credits rolled and cursed Ratner. But maybe that's not fair to him. The people at fault are the executives at Fox who rushed this movie through production in a year. This movie needed another year of script development and a few weeks of rehearsals. It also needed more time in production and more time for effects work.

Don't get me wrong, some of the visuals in the film were really amazing. Ratner knows how to handle action sequences and they are cool. But it feels like the movie is just special effects without a good story. And, one wise man once said, "A special effect is a tool, a means of telling a story. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing." *

Man...

When I left the theatre from X2, I felt like I had to go see it again and again. I saw it three times in it's first week. This movie will probably not make another dime from me until DVD, when I will buy it just so I can have all the X-men movies. I might not even do that though... I don't own the Schumacher Batman movies. In fact, I've boycotted Shumacher completely for what he did to Batman.

Don't get me wrong. I wanted to like this movie. The powers that be made that impossible.

Anyhow, let me know what you guys thought.

*That was George Lucas for those of you who aren't as large a nerd as I am.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well said. I agree completely

Anonymous said...

I just got back from seeing it and you'er reviw is dead on...

Man.... there was none of that magic or sensibility from the first two movies in this one at all...

the narrator said...

I agree with everything except..

It's almost as bad as the Schumacher treatment of the Batman movies.

Schumacher REALLY fucked up the Batman movies. I don't know if a comparison is possible.

Unknown said...

I said almost. I mean, let's be fair, Batman Forever was almost reasonable. I didn't mean to make a literal comparison between this and Batman and Robin though.

That movie was balls.

Anonymous said...

Thank God! Some one with a decent review. X3 made me so pissed that I wanted to walk out of the movie theater when the were about to kill Xavier!

For Christ sake! Xavier! I'm with you. Kill Storm. She should've died in the first X-Men movie. I think X3 was her best performance out of all of the X-Men movies, but it was still piss poor. All she did was act like a damn teenager with mood swings throughout the entire movie.

Hearing that Scott died later on in the movie pissed me off as well! What the f*ck! I could've found that out while it was happeneing. Why leave it so open to speculation and shoot it down soon after.

Jean being a victim of multiple personality disorder, brought about by Xavier. Lame as hell.

I'm not a nerd. Hell, I never really read the X-Men comics, but I did watch the cartoon. That was enough to know that this installment was a rushed piece of crap!

I remember them talking about making two X-Men at the same time, right after the second one, which led me to believe that's why this movie took so long to come out. I was pissed to find out that this one was "the last one" and that it didn't even make it to 2 hours long!

Leaving this movie so open for a sequal tops me off! Why say it's the last movie in the series, killl off everyone worth keeping, and leave it open for another sequal. Greedy bastards. You shot the damn horse already! Just let the thing die. Don't make it go for another sprint after you killed everything good about the series.

To end it I say Thank you Stan Lee for selling out my favorite superhero series. Thanks for shooting the horse.

Anonymous said...

Thank God! Some one with a decent review. X3 made me so pissed that I wanted to walk out of the movie theater when the were about to kill Xavier!

For Christ sake! Xavier! I'm with you. Kill Storm. She should've died in the first X-Men movie. I think X3 was her best performance out of all of the X-Men movies, but it was still piss poor. All she did was act like a damn teenager with mood swings throughout the entire movie.

Hearing that Scott died later on in the movie pissed me off as well! What the f*ck! I could've found that out while it was happeneing. Why leave it so open to speculation and shoot it down soon after.

Jean being a victim of multiple personality disorder, brought about by Xavier. Lame as hell.

I'm not a nerd. Hell, I never really read the X-Men comics, but I did watch the cartoon. That was enough to know that this installment was a rushed piece of crap!

I remember them talking about making two X-Men at the same time, right after the second one, which led me to believe that's why this movie took so long to come out. I was pissed to find out that this one was "the last one" and that it didn't even make it to 2 hours long!

Leaving this movie so open for a sequal tops me off! Why say it's the last movie in the series, killl off everyone worth keeping, and leave it open for another sequal. Greedy bastards. You shot the damn horse already! Just let the thing die. Don't make it go for another sprint after you killed everything good about the series.

To end it I say Thank you Stan Lee for selling out my favorite superhero series. Thanks for shooting the horse.

Anonymous said...

I'll probably piss you all of with this, but I find it funny that George Lucas made that quote. I like his movies and Starwars, don't get me worng, but Attack of the Clones? Comeon...

And I like Batman Forever, favourite movie as a kid, B & R is the balls though, can't deny that one.

I haven't seen X3 yet, so I'll reserve judgement. It sound pretty skuny though...

Unknown said...

I've got a few simple statements in defense of Attack of The Clones:

Count Dooku vs. Yoda.

Jango Fett.

The Geonosis Arena Battle.

Mace Windu.

Natalie Portman.

I could go on like this for WEEKS but this is just a taste.