[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.