The Million Mutant March
Saw X-Men 3 this weekend. It was entertaining, but not nearly anywhere as good as the first two in the series. This one was an action movie, whereas the others were movies about the X-Men that happened to have some action sequences in them. Also, there is a palpable difference between seeing a movie on opening day or opening weekend and waiting a few weeks for the buzz to die down. Usually I don't like seeing a movie the week that it opens, but with eye-candy action movies it doesn't bother me as much. I'm a movie-shusher, ya know, I shush the people in the theater who chit chat through a movie. That's why I don't like opening weekend shows. But with movies like X3 it doesn't matter as much since the dialogue is not the crux of the story.
Anyhow, back to the movie itself. It wasn't bad. It wasn't great. It was a satisfactory to ending to what had been a rather fantastic franchise. Starting all the way back in the 1960s X-Men has has both interesting and exciting storylines. Created during a time of severe social and political upheavel the X-Men are symbols for any and all minority groups in the U.S. In the 60's they showcased the racism and discrimination of the Civil Rights Era, and now they can be seen as representations of everyone from gays to Muslims. Bryan Singer's movies, and the scripts by Zak Penn managed to capture the essence of the comics. These movie X-Men are outcasts, and the mutants of the their world are protested against and hated as much as anyone in America.
The first two movies in this series could almost be watched in a high school social studies class on race and class relations in modern America.They are stories of xenophobia and acceptance, of hate and love, and of course good versus evil. This third installment touched on these topics, but hardly to the depths that either Stan Lee or Bryan Singer did. X3 begins with the announcement of a cure for mutation, (this obviously distresses the mutants) that has been developed by the father of the mutant Angel. We come to find out that the "cure" comes from the DNA of a mutant boy. This boy, his name is Leech, has the ability to quell the powers of other mutants. Leech is played by 13-year old Cameron Bright, just coming off a brilliant performance in Thank You For Smoking. This immediatly brought to mind the plot of X2; which saw a father (Brian Cox) using his son's mutant powers to kill all the mutants. Considering that Zak Penn wrote the scripts to both X2 and X3, it is not surprising that he reused that formula for this story. Especially since the plot of X3 is not the main focus of the movie. The action is.
Penn and director Bruce Rattner ( Rush Hour, Rush Hour 2, some others) get the plot over with pretty quickly then go about killing off popular and mainstay characters until the final battle, when only cannon fodder mutants are killed. Before going into it I knew that some of the characters were going to die, but I was surprised by who died. Also, almost every character who dies in the movie is killed by one character: Dark Phoenix. Famke Janssen returns to the franchise as the reincarnation of her dead Jean Grey. As any fan of the comix knows Jean Grey died and became Phoenix, Phoenix became evil and became Dark Phoenix. In the movie, she stays Phoenix for about 5 minutes, then flips out. She does have some pretty cool powers though. Though sometimes it seems to me that any of the 7th years at Hogwart's School of Magic could have taken her down pretty quick.
Overall I rather enjoyed the movie. The person that I went to go see it with was rather disappointed and told me she wanted to leave after one of her favorite characters was killed. I thought that the action scenes were well done, with pretty cool special f/x. The dialogue was standard comic movie fair, and the direction was very passable. Ratner has gotten a lof of grief for taking over this movie from a much better director, but he did what he needed to. This was an action movie, and Ratner is an action movie director.
A final note: All three of the X movies have fantastic visual f/x, they are used to enhance the story, and obviously the story could not be told without them. Since this movie was bigger than the first two the f/x are bigger. However, there is not much that really looks fake. Especially the new powers of Dark Phoenix manifest themselves in very cool ways. The opposite of this is true in the preview for the movie of Ghost Rider, which looks cheesy and terrible. See the preview and you'll know what I mean. The final thing that I really loved about all of the X movies was the instances of truly inspired casting. Captain Picard as Xavier is obvious, and although I always thought that Glenn Danzig (of the Misfits) should have been Wolverine I am happy with Jackman's performance. In this third movie they added one more simply genius bit of casting. Vinnie Jones (Snatch) as Juggernaut. This has always been one of my favorite villians, and Jones was the perfect choice. Before he became an actor he was a rough and tumble football (soccer) player known for his dirty hits and kicks. Here he shines as the movie's strongman.