X3... Major spoilers.

Agent Subterfuge on 29/5/2006 at 15:48

This was Rush Hour: The X-Men Edition. Fallen a long way since x2, which was the apotheosis of fucking cool.

From the blatantly obvious setups that have most characters literally standing about til it's their turn to...do something, to the fact that the kids in the movie did a better job acting than half the grownups, it was disappointing. And the pacing was riding some sort of malfunctioning mechanical bull.

It's hard to explain without sounding like some self inflated fucknut. There were fairly neat portions to the movie that eventually left a very confused me walking out the theatre.

Agent Monkeysee on 29/5/2006 at 18:33

Quote Posted by Agent Subterfuge

It's hard to explain without sounding like some self inflated fucknut. There were fairly neat portions to the movie that eventually left a very confused me walking out the theatre.

That's more or less how I feel about it. I've never had any particular vestment in the XMen movies but I've enjoyed all of them on some level or another and this one was pretty fun. But there were just so many noticeable inconsistencies, confusing directing choices, and the script had this weird affection for awkward and inappropriate one-liners; it gave this surreal sense that everyone in the X-Men world had poorly developed social skills.

From what little I've read about the production I heard it was a badly organized mishmash of rewrites and studio shakeups and I think it shows on screen. But on the other hand it was a neat action movie so... I dunno.

BEAR on 29/5/2006 at 18:59

Words cannot portray how bad that movie was. It was the biggest steaming heap of shit you can imagine. The first I thought was good, and I was really surprised that the 2nd didnt get the curse that infects all sequels out of Hollywood, but it got it for the 3rd, it was classic sequel shit^3. Corny jokes every fucking second, every person sassier than the next, and oh god the speeches.

If you liked movies like Shanghai Knights, resident evil 2 and other such fuckups, you might like X3, otherwise it will make you sick. If I hadn't been with 4 other people and just the logistics of getting us all to walk out I would have. The story sucked, but just the way they went about it was so fucking retarded it defies logic. I really hoped they could keep it up and finish strongly but alas.

If you liked it, I guess my post is pretty insulting. I'm just Marjory pissed to have payed 6 dollars for that (matinée no less :mad:). I like a few jokes here and there and a sassy comment or two, but what they always do with sequels is take every funny/sassy moment of the first 1 or 2, and multiply it (in this case, exponentially). I just hate to see it, could have been good too.

Taffer36 on 29/5/2006 at 19:35

Such a dissapointment. Why the hell did Bryan Singer decide to go work on Superman instead? He should have finished out his trilogy, not let the Rush Hour director do it for him.

The pacing in the movie was awful. The movie wasn't suspensful because it simply went too fast. The storyline was uninteresting and unimaginative. This is the "war" that the first two kickass movies were leading up to? It wasn't an all out war between humans and mutants. Hell, there wasn't even the whole "humans discriminating against mutants" ordeal going on. Wasn't that the whole theme of the series? Sure you can say "that's what the cure was", but there wasn't really any hostility towards the good mutants, just the bad ones. Who cares? We don't like the bad guys anyways. That's what gave the first two such depth, because the X-men had to help those who despised them.

Somebody remind me, were there any human villains in the movie like William Stryker from X2? We could've used a character like that to add more depth and give it a three-sided fight instead of the not-so-complex fight of magneto and his street bums versus a handful of soldiers and five X-men. That's right, you heard me. Five X-men and soldiers against a bunch of homeless people. Yay! Fight of the century! Not to mention that the fight had nothing to do with discrimination and prejudice against mutants, but it was just against the bad mutants who were (surprisingly) doing bad things to begin with.

This makes me sad because I loved the first one, and really loved X2. And now Ratner just screwed up any chance of a good ending.

WingedKagouti on 29/5/2006 at 20:14

Quote Posted by Hier

Also, I thought it was kinda funny how quickly Logan is able to get from the school (in upper NY, right?) out to Magneto's mountain hideaway, and then to San Francisco, without using the jet. That's one fast motorcycle.

A common mistake people make is assuming the healing factor is Wolverine's primary power. In fact it is the ability to appear where and when -ever he will help increase profits. This does include the ability to be in multiple places at the same time and having different relations to the same people.

godismygoldfish on 29/5/2006 at 22:05

Quote Posted by Taffer36

Such a dissapointment. Why the hell did Bryan Singer decide to go work on Superman instead? He should have finished out his trilogy, not let the Rush Hour director do it for him.

Agreed that this was a wretched movie, but don't blame Singer. He was going to come back and do X3 after superman, but the Fox execs got pissed that he didn't do X3 right away, and decided to make it into some weird 'bigger cock' contest where X3 was in competition to get done and out before Superman.

In almost every interview with Ratner and the Fox execs, including a really weird one in Entertainment weekly (A friend's copy) they always refer to the movie not as a story or a great idea, but as a product. It's worth reading just to see this corporate mentality that Fox has.

(Frankly I'll be pushing to get my films made at Warner Bros. or Warner Independent, they really seem to be putting out a lot of very inventive and interesting stories/films.)

Fafhrd on 29/5/2006 at 22:33

It was better than it should have been given its production history, but still not great overall. And if you want to talk about wacky logical gaffes, The X-Men proper took the jet from the school to San Francisco, and Angel shows up maybe twenty minutes (movie time) after them. Where was Angel's rocket booster pack? I'm also rather disappointed that the redesigned Colossus from that sort of iridescent blue colour he was in X2, to a straight silver colour in this, and there was no fiery corona around Jean when she went all Phoenix.
And the "X-Men: The Last Stand" nonsense was used in the opening credits, unlike for X2 where marketing added the "X-Men United" subtitle, but the opening credits were just "X2"

And given the $120 million opening weekend, chances are this isn't going to be the "Last Stand" at all.

BEAR on 30/5/2006 at 02:13

That explains alot. No wonder the movie seemed so out of flow with the others. That makes it even more too bad though, concidering that it REALLY could have not been back, fuck you fox :mad:

Cookie Dough on 30/5/2006 at 07:46

The first thing that made this movie kind of good was the fact that I sat about one to two rows away from the huge screen, which is something I'd never done before. If I had been sitting in my usual mid-theatre seating, it probably would have rubbed off on me badly, and I would have noticed more flaws.
Next, it's quite obvious they left the ending open for a sequel, if they want it. The movie advertises as "the last stand", but then they go and turn it all around at the very end. Surprise, it's not really over! Mkay but surely most everyone saw that coming though, yes? So no big disappointments/surprises there.

Overall though, I really did enjoy it. It was a very fun movie. As with most movies such as X-Men, there will be certain mistakes and flubs and such, but that's to be expected, so just sit back and enjoy the movie. C'mon people don't pay six to eight dollars and then "get mad and walk out", that's just silly.

And, if they should ever make a System Shock movie, the actor who plays Jean would be great as Shodan... I think.

Printer's Devil on 30/5/2006 at 12:06

X3 had a bit more potential than was there on the screen, even if you discount its pulpy nature. The structure was there, but was frequently obscured by awful dialogue and the uninspired use of special effects (nothing like the Nightcrawler introduction or Magneto jailbreak from X2).

[SPOILER]Despite all of that, they did manage to include an interesting viewpoint through Rogue and Beast, that mutant powers and brawling do not necessarily allow one to lead a meaningful life. Both Magneto, his brotherhood and Xavier's X-men seemed dead set against the cure (which was only weaponized as a defensive measure) for fairly petty reasons. Only one villian bothered to venture bank robbery and the heroes only train to further their prowess in combat. None were concerned with criminal gain (if Magneto's tin can HQ and shabby minions were any indication) or humanity's welfare (Xavier's private school was his biggest concern).[/SPOILER]