Late to the party: X-Men 3.

[bluestarultor]

I just have to say this:

http://i42.tinypic.com/t7n1ux.jpg


I mean seriously, this movie is a train wreck in slow motion. It manages to be at the same time short (1:44), plotless, and boring because of too little action. The action sequences are all criminally short for a fucking action flick, yet there's enough of it to keep jack-all from happening for half the movie, the other half being boring, dragging conversations. Also, I get that it makes sense for Cyke to die if Jean's going to die, but does it have to be the first Goddamn thing they do with the movie? Seriously, Scott appears with a beard from his heroic breakdown, drives a motorcycle out to the lake where Jean died, kisses her, and poof. Killed offscreen.

On top of that, what the fuck made the writers think I'd give a flying fuck about the B cast? I get that you have all the same actors in all the same roles, but short of staring out a couple windows and showing up for the ending, Anna Paquin as Rogue is literally not in this movie. Instead, there's this huge focus on Iceman and Shadowcat, who were respectively only important in the second movie and never before this point, along with Colossus, who's only around so they can whip out the Fastball Special a couple times. There's jack for characterization for the new additions because they get jack for screen time, the whole movie pretty much following Wolvie and Storm on the good side, just so Wolvie has someone to disagree with (politely this time), plus a healthy dose of Beast just to show the government bullshit that those two don't have access to, and Magneto on the bad side. This is especially disappointing given how much fucking emphasis was put on Archangel only to have him show up a grand total of FOUR FUCKING TIMES the whole movie, one of which is as a kid in the very beginning to lead you to believe he's actually going to matter.

The only decent bit of this is surprisingly not Patrick Stewart, but Kelsey Grammer, who does some great work as the Beast. It's impossible to think of it being Frasier under the blue makeup because he just does it so damn well. Out of the new cast, he easily gets the most screen time and the man works it.

The worst part is that short of screwing over half the cast that matter and all the cast that don't (Scott and Jean die, Wolvie has to kill Jean, Rogue chose the "cure" in the official cut, Mystique is de-powered and left to rot for her sacrifice, all the new additions to the baddies are killed), the ending and hidden ending drop everything essentially back to the status quo, with the "cure" apparently not being as permanent as everyone thought, because Magneto is shown moving a bit of metal with some concentration, and Professor X decides to possess some random guy's body in a hospital somewhere where, in the ultimate vestigial addition, Moira MacTaggert happens to be working just so someone can recognize him.

The movie could have been great. It really could have. I was excited about the large cast way back when it came out because I expected them to all come together in a huge, epic brawl. But the epic battle is literally SIX GOOD GUYS against Magneto's army of faceless goons and what isn't devoted to Logan and Storm, Beast and the government, flashbacks, Magneto and crew, or Rogue doing fuck-all as Bobby and Kitty grow closer just because they had to crowbar some teen drama in there somewhere is either unsatisfying and short action sequences equivalent to having one potato chip or long, boring conversations where the writers seem to have founded an art of making witty banter shallow and boring and utterly pointless just to fill in some foreground noise to pad the time before they're forced to make someone say something relevant.

Looking at the deleted scenes, they HAD some footage that could have improved this thing by extending the action, just so you could say it was a good action flick, and an alternate ending scene where Rogue couldn't bring herself to take the cure, and a couple changes, like Scott, y'know, surviving for a bit longer than three minutes, and this really could have been great. As it is, it's an utter disappointment.

[Meister]

Late to the party as you may be all of this is completely accurate. At least the first two movies had characters that were a little more complex and ambiguous than "good guys: blond, angel wings, shiny fur, bad guys: goth convention, ugly." To say nothing of how they made sure to ruin a perfectly good and somewhat surprising moment (showdown, Iceman) with a generic one-liner and catered to the meme crowd and ugh terrible fucking movie.

[POS Industries]

It's impossible to think of it being Frasier under the blue makeup because he just does it so damn well.
Though seeing as how Beast has always mostly just been a big blue fuzzy Frasier Crane I don't really see what the big deal here is except the most perfect casting ever. Which, once again, is still the only good thing to come out of that movie and it was naturally and woefully underutilized.

Anyway, I would say that Superman Returns was probably the main reason this movie ended up being so bad, as it took both Bryan Singer and James Marsden out of the equation. Thus, instead of Returns being unsalvageably terrible and X3 having ended up possibly being good, both ended up unsalvageably terrible.

[BitVyper]

I can't understand why all the other characters in the movie seemed to be trying to counsel Rogue to not go for the depowering. I mean, Christ guys, her "gift" is literally that she is not allowed to have physical contact with another human being ever unless she particularly wants to hurt them and mind-rape herself. I understand that trying to "cure" the mutant condition is wrong, but this is akin to telling a terminal patient not to take life-saving surgery because clearly god wants them to die. You don't need to go making her feel like she's somehow a weak person for doing it.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Nah the best part is when Mystique gets forcibly depowered and turned into Magneto's perfect propoganda tool but he's like "nuh uh, I'm going to leave you here becasue that is villainous! *twirl moustache*

[Meister]

The best part is how they spent a sixth of the budget on special effects for the Golden Gate Bridge scene and completely missed how it's very obviously the middle of the day at the start and night at the end. The only other movie I can think of that managed that is Plan 9 from Outer Space.

[Marc v4.0]

They should have just ran with a Kelsey Grammer as Beast movie series instead of a Third X-men Movie.

I'd watch 6-7 Beast movies before I could even begin to consider that it might be getting old.

[Arhra]

The best part is how they spent a sixth of the budget on special effects for the Golden Gate Bridge scene and completely missed how it's very obviously the middle of the day at the start and night at the end. The only other movie I can think of that managed that is Plan 9 from Outer Space.
Let's not forget that Magneto did not think of moving the bridge about a hundred meters further and crushing the base instead of having tons of guys charge the defences pointlessly. That is just being lazy, Mr Magneto!

[Sky Warrior Bob]

There was a party?

Really?

Frankly, X3 is one of those movies I will never watch properly. I've seen the beginning, middle & end (it ends up on FX quite a bit), but I have never watched in its entirety. The closest I ever got, was that I did DVR it, and then I fast forwarded through the entire thing, just seeing if anything was worthwhile. (It wasn't.)

Well anyway, thanks Bluestar Ultor. I now understand the plot. Thank you ever so much for that. {/sarcasm}

SWB

[bluestarultor]

Though seeing as how Beast has always mostly just been a big blue fuzzy Frasier Crane I don't really see what the big deal here is except the most perfect casting ever. Which, once again, is still the only good thing to come out of that movie and it was naturally and woefully underutilized.

It's partly that, but the disconnect is that this was a much more serious role and he does an amazing job with it. Yeah, he's already been typecast as the intelligent guy, and his voice is basically made for the part, but his career was entirely comedic up to this point and you don't really associate him with this kind of material. On top of that, in the final battle, he pulls off ferocious like a motherfucker. The man has talent and range.

I can't understand why all the other characters in the movie seemed to be trying to counsel Rogue to not go for the depowering. I mean, Christ guys, her "gift" is literally that she is not allowed to have physical contact with another human being ever unless she particularly wants to hurt them and mind-rape herself. I understand that trying to "cure" the mutant condition is wrong, but this is akin to telling a terminal patient not to take life-saving surgery because clearly god wants them to die. You don't need to go making her feel like she's somehow a weak person for doing it.

No, totally. If anyone has a right to the cure, it's her. On the other hand, they shot an alternate ending scene literally back-to-back with the final one where she was going to and couldn't bring herself to do it, and while Paquin is great in both, showing what a travesty it was she wasn't in this movie, the cut version is much more powerful because it shows she's finally coming to terms with who she is, rather than curing herself just so she can bone Bobby. Granted, it's implied that that cure isn't permanent, but only after everything else is wrapped up and just before cutting to the credits. The idea is that it's totally understandable that she'd do it, but by not doing it, she becomes all the more badass.

It's just one more example of the cast being dropped down holes to try to give a sense of finality, which wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't so damn depressing and everything wasn't essentially reset just in case they wanted to do a fourth movie. It's like they couldn't decide whether to end it or not and tried to do both, in a schizophrenic paradox where you've lost half the cast and couldn't make shit out of what's left (and there was barely enough left to make shit with this time around), yet there's some sort of obligation to slap "OR IS IT?" onto every movie just in case.

I mean if they wanted to, and there's even justification in the comics, they could do the "WHOOPS, JUST KIDDIIIING!" thing and have the Phoenix be not really Jean and bring her back for a fourth one for Wolvie to snikt into, or hell, even pull the same shit with Scott and throw him under the damn lake along with her, have Magneto, Mystique (who can form her own faction like in the comics), and Rogue's cures wear off, bring back whatever actor they can find for a new Xavier, since you never see his new body clearly, throw in MacTaggert for the hell of it so Charlie has something to do with his new body, drag back maybe Nightcrawler and definitely Beast, give Angel an actual role, get back the guy who did Sabes in the first movie (just because I refuse to equate that awesome representation with the half-assed dirty nails approach in the spin-off, which is supposed to be alt-universe anyway), and have a big, jolly jamboree, and it could be totally awesome, but the public would invariably bitch because of how the third one ended, despite it being a poor ending, and it would largely be seen as milking the franchise and probably not do well.

[The Sevenshot Kid]

Ratner should die. First this, then Rush Hour 3! He should be blackballed from anything movie related.

[Bells]

X-men movies started wrong when they forgot that Cyclops is supposed to be their god damn leader!

Now, i'm no particular Cyclops fan. But the dude is the leader, period. That's X-men. Not Wolverine.

Actually, the combination of Beast, Storm, Wolverine and Cyclops makes the perfect team to lead a bunch of confuse teens trough the hellstorm they were suppose to be preparing them for.

I honestly think that the movie would be MUCH better if they were to show Scott growing from his childish jealousy, to a broken hero, to a front row leader.

who the hell is Logan to lead young ones? He is no moral compass. He is a hardly a team player, he RATHER be alone but he keeps making people gravitate towards him, even though he KNOWS that everyone around him will be in trouble... actually, it would serve Logan better if he pushed the X-teens to look for Scott as a role model.

Those movies were all pretty Weak (the first one was kinda cool) but the 3rd one was crap. I Mean, Magneto's whole plan was open Warfare? fuck! G.I. Joe had a better plot than that... at least in the end Cobra Commander had control of the White House!

[BitVyper]

rather than curing herself just so she can bone Bobby.

"Just so she can bone Bobby?" How about "just so she can have any physical contact with any sentient being ever without killing them or putting them in a coma?" This is not about accepting herself no matter how much they tried to push that line. She has a choice between living a life of absolute physical isolation with the only between her and Ardat Yakshi territory being her own constant vigiliance and willpower, and y'know, not that. Other versions of Rogue might have some reason to keep their curse, but this one isn't into heroism or villainy either, so there is literally no reason at all for her to not take the cure - and I say that without quotations because for her, it is a cure. I mean, if she had some big drive to go be a superhero or villain, then fine (although her particular power doesn't really lend itself to heroism), but she doesn't. There is nothing her power can do except cause her and others endless trauma.

It's not about whether or not she's justified in doing it because there is nothing to justify it against. It's like being asked to justify yourself for getting out of the water when you see Jaws coming and then being told "I didn't want to get killed and eaten" isn't justification.

I'd have less respect for her if she didn't take the cure, as that'd have just been caving to peer pressure and doing something completely retarded.

And everyone in the movie thinks it will be permanent, so whether or not it is doesn't really matter.

[bluestarultor]

"Just so she can bone Bobby?" How about "just so she can have any physical contact with any sentient being ever without killing them or putting them in a coma?" This is not about accepting herself no matter how much they tried to push that line. She has a choice between living a life of absolute physical isolation with the only between her and Ardat Yakshi territory being her own constant vigiliance and willpower, and y'know, not that. Other versions of Rogue might have some reason to keep their curse, but this one isn't into heroism or villainy either, so there is literally no reason at all for her to not take the cure - and I say that without quotations because for her, it is a cure. I mean, if she had some big drive to go be a superhero or villain, then fine (although her particular power doesn't really lend itself to heroism), but she doesn't. There is nothing her power can do except cause her and others endless trauma.

It's not about whether or not she's justified in doing it because there is nothing to justify it against. It's like being asked to justify yourself for getting out of the water when you see Jaws coming and then being told "I didn't want to get killed and eaten" isn't justification.

I'd have less respect for her if she didn't take the cure, as that'd have just been caving to peer pressure and doing something completely retarded.

And everyone in the movie thinks it will be permanent, so whether or not it is doesn't really matter.

Whoa, way to jump on me there. Like I said, yeah, if anyone deserves the cure, it's her. On the other hand, she pretty clearly takes the cure because she feels she's losing Bobby to Kitty. The girl leaves in the middle of the night after seeing the two ice skating in a frozen fountain and the two didn't even hug, much less kiss or have any skin-on-skin contact. She's got some real insecurities and the only screen time she gets is showing them as blatantly as possible, starting with getting all pissy that Bobby and Kitty ended up working together in the simulation at the start of the movie. Also, in the canon ending, Bobby says to her, "this isn't what I wanted," meaning he felt she did it for him, to which she replies that it was what she wanted and then has her first physical contact with him. That can be taken as either "I know, but my life will suck less now" or "I know, but we can bone now," and with all that led up to it, plus the physical contact, plus her apologizing for it, it's pretty clear she did it for the latter, because she knows it's going to hurt their relationship initially, but now she can offer the physical aspect that she feels was making him lose interest, which wasn't even the case.

In the alternate, when she says she just couldn't do it, it's a much more positive response from him where he hugs her and they essentially kiss and make up, because all that matters to him is that she's safe, and she's over her inability to have a physical relationship. It didn't matter to him that they couldn't do so much as make out. The overall effect was more that she was over her own issues and didn't feel the need to default to trying to save their relationship with sex. The line is "this is who I am," with the implication that she WAS going to do it for him, but she valued herself too much to do it and wanted him to accept her for who she was, which is what he'd been doing all along.

The character is decidedly not like other versions and in my opinion suffers from it. Even comics Rogue struggled with decisions to nullify her powers, and hers are a lot more damaging, at some points literal instant death. Granted, she also has one extra power set or another to back it up most of the time, but that generally comes with the threat of multiple personality disorder. What they could have ultimately done was give her control over her powers like they finally did in the comics, which would have both been a happy ending for her love life and for her ability to fight crime, which would in turn have made a fourth movie slightly less impossible. The opportunity was right there with the cure being mutant DNA, and her powers being to absorb mutant powers. One injection later, a line of dialogue, and boom, instant off switch.

The fact of the matter is that she was going to be giving into peer pressure either way. On one side, the mutants were all saying that there was nothing wrong with being a mutant, regardless of whether they were good or bad in this case. On the other, you had normal humans calling it a disease and pressuring people to get a cure. I'd say that at least the mutants were more supportive of her situation, but can you honestly tell me that normal humans would up and welcome someone who even used to be a mutant? Classifying it as a disease creates even more of a stigma and the people who took the cure aren't going to live happily ever after. I pose this question: without her powers, where will Rogue go? She has essentially no business staying at the school, because she's no longer a mutant, and while I wouldn't expect Storm to kick her out, chances are good she'd become an object of ridicule, but damned if she can go home after putting a guy in a coma, and doing so would lose her Bobby anyway. She just forsook her support network on the naive assumption that either she'd stay where she no longer belonged or that she'd take Bobby out into a world that would see her as an object of pity at best and would still hate him outright.

In her case, the cure caused more problems than it solved, and it could have been done better. A better solution was already filmed and cut, where she still had her powers, but also still had a home. One solution better still would have taken one line of dialog to explain away and would have opened up multiple possibilities with the character. If she hadn't run away from home in the first movie and still had somewhere to go back to and live a normal life, I'd agree with you, but literally her whole life for the past couple years has been tied up in the school and she doesn't have anything else.





@Bells: Yeah, but you also have to consider that Cyke in all forms is pretty unarguably a dick. In the comics, he married Jean and was so inattentive that she basically was holding back from jumping on Logan and then, regardless of justification, snatched Emma right out from under Hank after the guy spent every waking hour for months cataloging and reassembling her shattered, crystalline remains to revive her. And then made out with her on Jean's fresh grave. He wasn't much better in the cartoons or reboots and the movie version got turned into a sniveling brat. On the other hand, they didn't even have the decency to shit on him properly by making him see Jean die a second time by having Jean kill him offscreen about three minutes in. I agree that the movie could have been MUCH more emotionally charged had he survived through it, but Wolvie sells and I guess they didn't want anything getting in the way of that.

That said, Wolvie was surprisingly disappointing in this movie in large part because there was nobody for him to fight with. It just felt like they were wanking the character, only instead of the normal wank that Wolvie always gets, it was more of a wank that was both blacked out from the neck down and pointed at by several neon signs. By which I mean it was incredibly blatant, yet ineffective if what you're trying to sell is the wanking.