X-Men 3

[Shiryu]

Ok, this area is for Avengers movies, but since there isn't one for the other comics movies I'll post it here.

What do you think of the X-Men 3 trailer ? looking forward for the movie (in about 3 days) or not ? and did you watch (and enjoy) the previous two X-Men movies ?

[dlw66]

I have enjoyed both of the first two X-Men movies, and it's a shame that (if I'm not mistaken) that this will be the last one. I hear the Wolverine solo will be a prequel to X1.

The trailer looks great -- I haven't seen the one with the Beast in action, but from what I've seen of Angel, Juggernaut, and Madrox, this one will have a ton of action and looks to be very fun. I hope to catch it early in the next week (after the weekend rush).

[Shiryu]

I agree with your comment, and I especially liked X2 (even though Cyclops had little screen time).
I don't know if this will be the last X movie, but I've heard that Hugh Jackman won't be Wolverine anymore after X3, so perhaps the solo Wolverine movie idea has been forgotten.

[Van Plexico]

Hey, the Beast is in it! It qualifies! ;D

Here's my spoiler-free review:

Saw X-MEN 3 this afternoon.

Sophisticated movie people here (you know who you are) may say what they will. But, frankly, this movie was not made for you.

This is a superhero movie for superhero fans. Period.

Non-comics people simply will not be able to appreciate a lot of what makes this movie so great, so much sheer *fun*, for the fans. So much of the stuff that was missing from the first two movies shows up here. Time after time, I grinned at the screen and thought, "Yes!!" (And a couple of times, there are spoken lines that you really, truly have to be a hardcore comics fan to even grasp-- and those had a few of us in the theater whooping for joy. You'll know them when you hear them.)

So, yes, this was one of the great comics-fan movies ever. In fact, I will go so far as to say that, IMO, this was THE "superhero-vs-supervillain" movie of them all.

What I mean by that is, of all the comics-based movies, many feature superheroes, and many don't. Of those that do, some feature super-villains and some don't. Of those that do (such as the first two X-movies and Spider-Man movies), I liked the "super-action" in this one the best. Far and away the best.

A quarter of the way through it, I was thinking, "This isn't as bad as I'd heard, or expected, it to be."

Halfway through it, I was thinking, "To me, this is better than the first one, and I think better than the second one, too. But surely it will tank in a few minutes."

Three-quarters of the way through it, I was thinking, "This is so much better than the first and second films, it's not even close. This is a great, fun movie. And it has so many of the *little things* I wasn't expecting-- more than Singer ever put in."

By the time it was over, I was in awe, my mouth hanging open. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. I wanted to cheer. I wanted to run around and tell people to go see it. I wanted to get back in line again.

The last reel of this movie just *looks* so cool, I want to see it on the big screen again, a time or two, just to soak it all up again.

Now, certainly, I can understand how some big X-Men fans may dislike what happens in it. I really can understand that. And that's fine for them. If similar things happened in an Avengers movie (and let's just say Bendis has done roughly the equivalent to this in Disassembled and New Avengers), I would be pretty bent out of shape, yeah.

But as someone who's always liked the X-Men "from a distance"... mostly for their *stories* ... and not been in love with the *characters*, like I am with many of the Avengers... I had nothing but joy in my heart after seeing this movie. Okay, well, and some agony toward the end, as the events all play out, of course.

This is a grand hoo-ha of a comic book superhero movie, and a grand send-off for the X-franchise. It's not quite in LOTR territory for me, but will definitely find a spot in my Top Ten Movies list.

Van's rating: ****1/2 out of five

[Shiryu]

Sounds great ! Now I want to see it even more than before !
I'll be hopefully going early next week, when there is less people around and it's possible to find tickets. Looking quite forward to it.

[Shiryu]

I've finally seen it, and I enjoyed most of it, even though I think that the previous one was a bit better. Some events surprised me quite a lot (now I can see why Van compared it to Disassembled), a couple of characters were badly underused and it was a bit too short (just 104 minutes, many movies are about 120 in these days), but overall it was good fun and definitely worth a watch.

I'd rate it about **** (like X1, while X2 for me was 5 stars)

[Black Knight]

Lets start with don't read my post if you havn't seen the movie because I am going to spoil it seriously.






First, the death of Scott was crappy cope out way of making sure it was wolverine that had to handle Jean. And it was off screen as well, total garabage.

Second the multi-personality thing for Phoenix was stupid, that is not what Phoenix is remotely, it was like, lets come up with something totally different and slap the name Phoenix on it, to get the fanboys to come to the movie.

Now taking all that into account it was a great action flick, not much in the depth department, since the places they could have had depth (rogue takening the cure, Angel not) simple where glossed over in favor of more pretty pics of Storm and Wolverine.
On the whole when taken as the movie history, it is a great movie, if you apply any knowledge of comics to it, the movie falls apart.

Finally why in the world did they not recast storm, Halle Berry is simple not an action star, let her go back to movies like Gothica, where she actually acts instead of dailing in her performance, hell you could have put a cardboard cut out of her on the set and then had someone who can act read her lines and it would have been better.

[Abe]

Okay here's my take, with minor spoliers



What I don't like about the film is several fold. Firstly, it seems like it was made too much for fanboys. Characters were created and then did things against character in order to do something comic related. Classic example is Beast saying "Oh my stars and garters." Its an old statement that feels out of place, just like, "It's clobberin' time" felt old in the FF movie. This sort of stuff breaks the fourth window too much for my own enjoyment. It hurts my suspension of disbelief. The worst offender was the juggernaut's line, when I hadn't noticed a curse word the entire movie, and then they just stuck in it, and it seemed out of place.

Character development was atrocious. Singer was great and this. X2 had the scene where Wolverine, Pyro, Rogue and Iceman are at Bobby Drake's house, and you get character development on them all, from the relationship between Rogue and Bobby, how Wolverine handles the kids, how Pyro handles the police, how they each respond to the conversation with the family, and so forth. It was a great scene that developed four characters simultaneously while also having a great combat scene and nailing the alienation that mutants everywhere felt. X3 has poor character development. Bobby with Kitty on the fountain. Bobby and Pyro in the crowd. A bit more Rogue, a bit more Logan angst. Nothing was new, nothing was really developed.

With the overly fanboy nature of the movie which violated the fourth window several times for me, along with the poor character development, I'd be gracious to give it a 50% rating.

-Abe

[Shiryu]

Another post with some spoilers

I actually enjoyed the "Oh my stars and garters." line, it was a classic
I agree though that Scott's death was bad. He didn't have much screen time ever since X1 and it would have been interesting to see him as in field leader of the X-Men after Xavier's death.
As for Phoenix and Juggernaut, I've read they are based on their Ultimate selves. However I don't read UXM so I can't confirm it.

Besides that, a friend told me that, at the end of the movie, after the closing credits, there is a final scene with Xavier. Has anyone seen it ? I left when the credits were on the screen.

[Van Plexico]

I'll point out that I did state in my review that I wouldn't be surprised if real X-Men fans didn't like it (and justifiably so), and that seems to be a big portion of the complaints. But since I didn't care about that stuff at all, I loved it.

I think Ratner gets too much of the blame for things people don't like. Singer didn't write any of the scripts, AFAIK, and Ratner didn't write this one. And the Dark Phoenix stuff was already set up to pretty much work this way, going back to X2 (a Singer movie!) I doubt Singer would have tried to shoehorn an entire "Phoenix/Dark Phoenix" backstory into X3.

IMO, the "dual personality" thing worked fine. It resulted in Jean behaving almost exactly the way she did in the Dark Phoenix Saga, but for a lot less complicated reasons. And I mean, come on, how much did Singer change about the early X-stuff in the first two movies, to make it fit easily and understandably into those movies? A whole lot.

Shiryu-- I went back and saw it a second time, mainly to catch that last scene you mention. SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!!!!
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It lasts about five seconds. Moira has someone in a hospital bed, all bandaged up. He wakes up, and Moira says, "Charles?!" and that's it.

Speculation I've seen is that this was a body with no mind in it (remember that scene earlier where Charles is talking about just this?) and Charles's mind flees to it when his body is destroyed.

Basically, they were setting it up so Charles, Magneto, and co. can all come back for the Magneto and Wolverine movies that are already being written. We also never know for sure what happened to Cyclops...

[Shiryu]

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Oh, interesting ! The final scene before the credits hinted that Magneto still has his powers too, so may be there WILL be a "4th in the trilogy" (possibly without Wolverine, since Jackman doesn't want to be Logan anymore).

Thanks for letting me know, I hate these scenes hidden after the closing credits since I don't usually stay and wait

[Black Knight]

shiryu said:

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Oh, interesting ! The final scene before the credits hinted that Magneto still has his powers too, so may be there WILL be a "4th in the trilogy" (possibly without Wolverine, since Jackman doesn't want to be Logan anymore).

Thanks for letting me know, I hate these scenes hidden after the closing credits since I don't usually stay and wait

Unless they change there mind there will be no fourth X-Men film, instead we are getting the Wolverine movie staring Huh Jackman, who love the charater of Logan, I don't know where you head he didn't want to be him anymore, but it is not true, and a young Magento movie.

[Black Knight]

admin said:

I'll point out that I did state in my review that I wouldn't be surprised if real X-Men fans didn't like it (and justifiably so), and that seems to be a big portion of the complaints. But since I didn't care about that stuff at all, I loved it.

I think Ratner gets too much of the blame for things people don't like. Singer didn't write any of the scripts, AFAIK, and Ratner didn't write this one. And the Dark Phoenix stuff was already set up to pretty much work this way, going back to X2 (a Singer movie!) I doubt Singer would have tried to shoehorn an entire "Phoenix/Dark Phoenix" backstory into X3.

IMO, the "dual personality" thing worked fine. It resulted in Jean behaving almost exactly the way she did in the Dark Phoenix Saga, but for a lot less complicated reasons. And I mean, come on, how much did Singer change about the early X-stuff in the first two movies, to make it fit easily and understandably into those movies? A whole lot.

Shiryu-- I went back and saw it a second time, mainly to catch that last scene you mention. SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!!!!
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.
.
.
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It lasts about five seconds. Moira has someone in a hospital bed, all bandaged up. He wakes up, and Moira says, "Charles?!" and that's it.

Speculation I've seen is that this was a body with no mind in it (remember that scene earlier where Charles is talking about just this?) and Charles's mind flees to it when his body is destroyed.

Basically, they were setting it up so Charles, Magneto, and co. can all come back for the Magneto and Wolverine movies that are already being written. We also never know for sure what happened to Cyclops...

I agree the ending was interesting, and for someone who is totally not versied in X-Men history I could see it being a great show, but even my friend who just watched the cartoon found the death of Cyclops and the Jean as a multi personality bad. Oh well each to there own.
As for jugernaut I understand why they made him a mutant but would have found the scense with Kitty and Leech much cooler if Jugernaut did not loss his powers and kitty had to get away.

[Shiryu]

blackknight said:

Unless they change there mind there will be no fourth X-Men film, instead we are getting the Wolverine movie staring Huh Jackman, who love the charater of Logan, I don't know where you head he didn't want to be him anymore, but it is not true, and a young Magento movie.

Really ?
This sounds new, they said that Jackman didn't want to be Logan anymore in the Italian news shortly before X3 came out, giving quite a lot of space to it.
I definitely hope you are right, would be good to see more of Wolvie Jackman.

[Van Plexico]

I've heard that sort of talk, too, Shiryu... but the Wolverine solo movie is already being written, soooo...

Maybe he doesn't really want to be Wolverine anymore, but he likes cashing those big checks even more...

[Shiryu]

Yep, the Internet Movie Databes confirms Jackman as Wolverine in the solo movie, so I clearly was wrong.

[Van Plexico]

Shiryu-- WIZARD this month has a two-page interview with Jackman, where he just gushes over the opportunity to do more movies as Wolverine. So... there we go.

He also talks about how he's read lots of the old comics and so forth.

[Shiryu]

More movieS, so possibly more than one solo Wolvie movie and even another X-Men. Good, hope has not fled

[Yellowjacket]

Hmm, seems I´m the only one around here who´s dissapointed from X3. Honestly, I think it´s the weakest one of the three films with a descending order X1/X2/X3 - but nevertheless I see X3 easily stronger than FF.

I have mainly three reasons for my negative rating.

First one is that I did only see the german synchronization -- guys, believe me it´s terrible not to hear these films with the english dialogues.
Gladly, this point will be helped when the DVD is out.

Next point is there were quite a few abrupt scene changes, and they were of a kind that they stand out for me.

Third point is, this film is too crowded, much to much mutants and I really don´t need these mass scenes, at least not that much. Fewer would have been more, that way it´s not much more than an typical (but entertaining, I´ll give you that) Hollywood movie.
That´s the reason I like X1 (and even X2) that much - they have fewer people (mutants) with much more space for characterizations of them.

[Shiryu]

I pretty much agree on that. In X3 some characters like Angel and Cyclops were really underused, and still there were too many people around.
With that being said, I liked it much more than Daredevil, F4 and Hulk (by far my least favorite Marvel movie to the day).

[bobc]

I liked it a lot. Sure there were some glaring plot holes, but I went in with really low expectations. I try not to nit-pick too much these days, and instead try to go in with an open mind to try to enjoy the director's vision. What I really like about the movie was Jean Grey--she was really scary. I also loved Kitty Pryde going after the Juggernaut on her own with zero fear. Storm got a lot more play, which was good, and the Beast was awesome!!

Anyway my only major gripe was the whole thing about Cyclops supposedly getting killed off camera. For something that monumental, you'd think we'd get to see what actually happened there. I loved the eerie floating rocks all over the place though.

The Beasts acrobatics were great, Angel looked great, Mystique was still creepy and scary.

I really liked X3. It's just a comic movie--fun, fast paced, with lots of fights.