[Hanging around, working on this and that, thought I’d try my hand at movie reviewing while I had a moment. Here goes. SPOILERS FOR X-MEN 3 BELOW.]



The good thing about making an X-Men movie – well, any comic movie, but especially the X-Men - is that you have a lot of backstory to go with. Just pick a storyline; there’s already hundreds to choose from within the canon. Any one of them could make a decent movie, and some of them are almost tailor-made for it; X-Men stories are typically high on emotion, drama, and action. Follow the comic and you’ve got everything you’d need for a solid flick.

For X-Men 3, they picked the Phoenix Saga. While the Phoenix Saga is normally more complex than what you’ve got here, the basic gist remains the same: Jean Grey, telepath extraordinaire, was supposed to be dead in the last movie. She’s back, and she’s crazy as her inner emotions run wild. Magneto uses her craziness to recruit her to his side, and fight the final battle against the humans, who have created a medicine that cures mutants and makes them 'normal'. Simple plot, not quite true to the original storyline (Would have loved to see Jean in her Hellfire costume) but keeps the basic elements. You want to attract fans; you give the fans what they want…right?

Well…yeah. But they didn’t. Sort of.



Take Wolverine. Wolverine is popular. He sells comic books. I understand featuring him prominently in the movie. Don’t like him, yeah, but it makes sense. However, there are other X-Men on the team and the movie has this bad habit of neglecting them/taking them way out of character. Examples?

Colossus. Major player in the X-Man universe. Saved everyone from the Legacy virus by sacrificing his life. Had a sister named Magick. Joined the Brotherhood for a while. Deep, deep character.

His biggest role in the X-Men 3? Throwing Wolverine into people for their ‘Fastball Special’ teamup attack. That’s it. He appears so rarely in the final battle that you can forget he’s even there, and he has maybe two lines in the whole movie. Maybe.

Rogue. Lover of Gambit. Many connection with Mystique. Had the personality of Ms. Marvel inside her. Was technically an alien for a little bit. Even led the X-Men for a stint. Also deep character.

While it’s not out-of-character for her to jump at the chance to get cured of her powers, it is out-of-character for her to be a total bitch. She runs away, doesn’t help them fight, is cold to her boyfriend, Bobby Drake, for no good reason, and is surprised when he starts to hang around the much nicer and saner Kitty Pride.

Now, with Rogue, this would’ve been a good time to bring in Gambit. She’s hurt. She’s confused. What better time to start up one of the most famous comic couple in history?

WHY WON’T THEY GIVE US GAMBIT?

I could understand maybe not letting him in, really, if they were trying to keep cameo appearances to a minimum. But that’s thing: X-Men 3 literally has more cameos than it knows what to do with. Juggernaut, Beast, Pyro, Maddox the Multiple Man, Callisto, Psylocke, Jubilee…you mean to tell me they had enough gumption to put flippin’ Jubilee in, but they couldn’t fudge a Gambit cameo? Come now.

And the sad thing is, half of these cameos aren’t even near being faithful. From what little we see of her, Psylocke seems to have the ability to walk through walls. She can’t do that in the comics. I didn’t even know it was her until I watched the credits. Lame characters such as Quill (I have the power to make little spikes come out of my skin!) and…ugh…Arclight.



God, that woman is hideous. I wasn’t even aware she was a woman until she said something and sounded like a woman. I looked up some pictures of her, and she’s actually pretty nice from the neck down, but that face…whoa. Beauty’s only skin deep, but there’s a point…

Anyway.

All these X-Men make an appearance, but are they put to good use? Hardly. You’ve got Colossus and you’ve got the Juggernaut, two of the most famous bruisers in the MU, well-known for their little rivalry. Common sense would tell you that a knockdown, drag out, hardnail fistfight should happen between them. Does it? Nope. Juggernaut is too busy chasing little girls and quoting internet phrases (“I’m the Juggernaut, BITCH!”) and Colossus is…I dunno where Colossus is. He’s around. I guess showing Wolverine kick somebody in the crotch is more important.



Wolverine, Wolverine, Wolverine. It’s all about Wolverine. He saves the day. He goes here. Wolverine does this, Wolverine does that; he makes the speeches, he comes up with the plan, he leads the time despite the fact that he’s supposed to be a ‘loner’. he’s always at the center. Which, again, makes sense, but his role in X3 is just too much. Cyclops is the leader of the team and is the one who, really, played the bigger role in the Dark Phoenix Saga. He barely appears in the first fourth of the movie, and spends the rest of the time completely absent. As a matter of fact, the X-Men movies have been extremely unfair to Cyclops. In the first, he spent most of it being a dick and making Wolverine look good. In the second, he had a three second fight and spent most of the movie kidnapped. Here…well, I won’t say, but he gets screwed royally.



They could’ve done so much with him, had such awesome ties with him and Jean, brilliant interplay…just like the rest of X-Men 3, it’s squandered potential. Maybe the fourth time will be the charm.

PS: Halle Berry sucks, but that goes without saying, really. I would’ve thought Catwoman taught her to stay away from superhero movies, but I guess not.

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	joseph_valencia - October 16, 2006 (01:25 PM) Gambit was slated to appear in X-Men 2, actually. He was even cast, but for some reason they didn't shoot his scene. And as far as I know, the reason they wrote Cyclops out of the story so early was because James Marsden was heavily involved in his role as Richard White in Superman Returns. Anyways, X3 was certainly a waste of potential. Unfortunately, it made a lot of money, so the higher-ups at Fox are going to assume they did something right. :(
	Genj - October 16, 2006 (02:05 PM) Wait, wait . . . I thought you liked women that look like men.
	lasthero - October 16, 2006 (02:52 PM) Arclight doesn't look like a man. She barely looks human. And as far as I know, the reason they wrote Cyclops out of the story so early was because James Marsden was heavily involved in his role as Richard White in Superman Returns. Yeah, I heard that, too. Good move on his part; Superman Returns was a much better display of his talent than the X-Movies.
	mariner - October 16, 2006 (05:00 PM) I seem to recall hearing Gambit wasn't included because, character wise, he was to much like Wolverine. Or something like that. I don't know. He and Rogue are the only two X-Men I have the slightest interest in, so the fact that neither of them were on the team was kinda lame. I still thought it was a pretty decent movie though. Then again, I don't follow X-Men at all, so that might help. Then again again, I could complain endlessly about MJ's character in Spider-Man 2, yet I liked that movie as well. I guess I just try not to care too much; it makes the experience more enjyable.
	joseph_valencia - October 16, 2006 (07:26 PM) My beef with X3 is that it was pure, dumb spectacle. In many ways it's like Batman Forever: not exactly terrible, but still brainless. Yeah, the movie is a waste of the characters and storylines that it draws from its source material, but there's more to it than that. The plot is sloppy and poorly though out. For example, what was the significance of Jean becoming Phoenix in context to the main conflict, aside from causing the demise of certain characters who's deaths do nothing to advance the plot anyways? Speaking of the plot, how about the fact that the 'twist' ending renders pretty much every major event in the movie as pointless? Now, I'll admit that the first X-Men movie wasn't quite a masterpiece, but it had a sense of direction to it. The people helming that film had an idea of where they wanted their characters to go in the future. X2 built on what was established in the first movie and also planted little seeds for future sequels. In this sense, the first two X-Men were like a sand castle that was put together with love and care; and X3 was basically Fox strolling up to that sand castle and wrecking it to create a scene.
	Calvin - October 16, 2006 (10:12 PM) My Review of X-3: Masturbation. 6/10
	silverishness - October 17, 2006 (06:38 AM) Whoa, whoa whoa. That A-person that I can't remember the name of was a GIRL? Holy shit! X3 did disappoint me, since I remember watching the cartoon of the exact same saga when I was little. I wanted Jean to turn into the phoenix, dammit, not just watch her eyes dialate and her neck freakamatize. And poor, poor Cyclops. He did get screwed. Gambit? Was he the card dude? I wasn't aware of the romance between him and Rogue, possibly because I don't follow Marvel very much, but I might have noticed it if i weren't too busy wondering why Angel didn't get more screenplay. He's in the trailer. He's marketed for the movie, and yet, how much screen time did he get? Five minutes, tops. What the hell? I think the makers of X3's problem lies with trying to fit too much goodness into one movie. They're trying to cram all of these stories that don't really fit together into one plotline, and it leaves the viewer sad and confused. They should have just saved some of them for the next movie and focused soley on the plot of the Phoenix Saga. Maybe then we could have seen the pretty firebird and not stupid Jean standing there with debris swirling around her. >_O
	joseph_valencia - October 17, 2006 (07:00 AM) I didn't really see why they needed to do Dark Phoenix in this movie. In the comics, Jean becoming all psycho due to her Phoenix powers was a process that developed across multiple issues. A smart thing to have done would have been establishing Jean as Normal Phoenix in X3, not as a central story point, but as a kind of subplot. Then they could've brought The Hellfire Club to the table in X4, where the writers could have made Jean (and Dark Phoenix) a focal point of the story. But no, Fox had to have conclude their 'trilogy'; and now, instead of getting X4, we're stuck with projects like 'Wolverine' and 'Young Magneto'. Great!
	nick_evil - October 21, 2006 (01:00 PM) Great review. I'd expand more on the Juggernaut/Colossus thing though: not only did they not give us that fight, the Iceman/Pyro thing was only five seconds of suck. I thought the first two movies were great, but the third, while enjoyable, needs work to appeal to my 90s nerd sensibilities. And you said it right: if they can bring in a bunch of nobodies and people I barely recognize and whose powers I can't even explain to my wife since I don't really know them, why can't they listen to every fan and bring in Gambit? Who the hell was clamoring for Jubilee appearance? Ant Man gets a movie? What the hell?
	EmP - October 22, 2006 (06:46 AM) I just watched X3. I've had the DVD for months, but I knew it was going to bite so had to work up the courage to watch it. My views will come in poorly-formed bullet points: * Cyclops getting screwed is the common mottif for the X-Men films. In the first he was made to look like a whiny bitch that was given screen-time only to make Wolvy look more badass; in the second, he was quickly taken out by THE ENEMY and turned against his squad. The only highlight the poor bastard ever had was that his girl stuck by him and didn't run off with hairball -- although that was teased enough. I like Cyclops, but he lacked so much charisma in the film, it was like he wasn't there. I don't blame Marsdon for this, seeing as the guy has has some outstanding roles elsewere; I blame the script for relying on him to put over Wolvy. His shades, however, are very cool. * There's lots of talk abour a wolvy stand alone film; X3 may as well have been it. Every single mutant in the film could basically be catagorised as a cameo and they STILL hopelessly messed up some of the team. Rouge was decidly un-Rouge-like, as was Drake. You can assume they got Shadowcat and Colossus right merely because they were given so little on-screen time (the big guy especially) that optimists can believe as they wish.
	magicjuggler - November 01, 2006 (07:03 PM) Fear Jubilee for she has the power of...fireworks...Plus Juggernaut isn't a mutant!