Original Desmond

I feel we need a separate thread just for member's reviews

SPOILERS IN THIS THREAD, you aint seen the movie, look away NOW ! If you have seen the movie, post your review with NO spoiler tags
















Just got back from seeing it, was a little disappointed, i didnt leave the theatre with the wow factor that i did with no 2. Prof X dying just sucked the life outta the movie. They tried to do too much in too short a time, the phoenix story just didn't work. And what was with Magneto getting a little discouraged when he found the soldiers had plastic guns ? he could have simply extracted nuts and bolts from the nearby cars and shot them like bullets at all the soldiers ! he didn't need his mutants to bail him outta that situation!

The Special FX of the powers were good but uncreative except for Magneto's rescue of Mystique. I hated seeing Rogue show weakness by taking the cure and Mystique as a powerless snitch. Kitty pride (shadowcat) was a cutie and was my favourite new character. Colossus was quite cool, beast was great in combat, Wolverine was tiresome and storm was a pain. Liked some of the morlocks. Vinnie jones as juggernaut, i love Vinnie, i love the juggernaut but it just didn't quite work

DrRingDing

I saw it. I didn't expect very much and was still left cold. That is to say, I entered with middle-to-low expectations and I still left disappointed.

Ratner is not Bryan Singer. He (along with the screenwriters) tried to stuff so much into a movie with a running time of 104 min. incl. credits. Ratner also makes the most uncreative decisions when directing - obvious camera placement or stereotypical "cool" camera placements. No style. I'll stop complaining about him now though.

The movie never got going for me. It was too busy; it tried to mix a lot of the debate in with a modicum of action and none of the set pieces seemed to fit in, except for maybe the school. That is to say that the sets didn't seem appropriate for some reason. The characters, even Wolverine IMO, merely got basted with the character brush but they were left out of the oven. (Heh. How do you like that analogy?! )

Plus, the deaths of some of the major characters in the series... I wouldn't be upset if they were done decently, but... Eh. Grr....

In the end, I don't think a single character was used effectively, let alone developed. A sad end to my X-Men viewing experience and I read the comic books when I was younger - X-titles were my always my favorites. I hope they don't make another one for a long time or, if so, they bring in a better director who actually understands character development and who will do justice to the source material.



I've got another request to go with this thread,

Can we name the characters from the comic books that we spotted and/or whom we saw use their powers?

First, the obvious:

The team - Wolverine, Storm, Iceman, Colossus, Kitty Pryde, Beast, Angel, Rogue, Prof. X, Cyclops

The brotherhood - Magneto, Pyro, Mystique, Callisto, Juggernaut, Multiple Man, Flea, Arclight

The others - Jean Grey/Phoenix, Leech

These are listed on IMDb, but I don't remember seeing them:
Jubilee, Psylocke, Siryn

Who was the evil mutant with the porcupine ability? Also, the guy who threw bones at Wolverine was...?! (The list above is partially based on a guess who falls into which category.)

-ringding-

DrRingDing

I just read in the other thread that there's a scene at the end of the credits. What was it?

Original Desmond

yes i want to know what that scene is too

Original Desmond

Psyclocke was the asian girl who could sense mutants and move fast i believe, she fought storm

bigsoos

That was Calisto

Matthew Chmiel

It's a fun movie and it's not as lackluster as I was expecting, but it's not a good movie. Does that make sense? In a nutshell, X3 is an extremely fast paced and very energetic film that has brass balls to pull no punches with major characters deaths and some very nice action sequences, but it's not the type of film we're used to in this series. Whereas the previous two films put the characters up front first and foremost, this series pretty much shits over whatever legacy Singer tried to create with X-Men and X2.

I agree with DrRingDing and his thoughts exactly. The film goes a little bit too fast and unlike other summer films which benefited from a frantic pace (ala Poseidon and Over the Hedge), the faster than lightning pace brings the film down a few notches. We never really get to know or even acknowledge any of the returning players or brand new characters, it seems as they're pretty much placed within the film for the ability to be placed into some high-octive action sequences.

While I enjoyed the action sequences (they're better than that of M:I-III's earlier this month) and the film is an extremely fast 104 minutes, there's not much else to praise about the film.

The actors do what they can with the rushed and sometimes weak material, but the director and screenwriters don't elevate the source material they have at hand. Ratner, like always, is a fairly lackluster and incompetent studio director who tries his hardest to imitate Singer whereas the screenplay by Simon Kinberg and Zak Penn just isn't as engaging or smart that David Hayter brought to the table with the first two films. Where was Michael Dougherty or Dan Harris (the co-writers of X2 with Hayter) when you need them?

If this is the end of the series, like mostly every film trilogy, it ends on a rather weak note compared to the first two outings. While I am game for an X4, I'd personally want Fox to wait for Singer or a competent director to become available to bring their A-game and a screenplay that might contain the charm and wit the first two had.

Overall X3 is an enjoyable and mildly entertaining ride, but the sad thing is after you watch the film you know how great it could've been, but what we get is something different that doesn't fit the feel of what we're used to. I'd give it 2.5 out of 4 stars.

I didn't stay after the credits, but I'll remember to stay when I go with a bunch of friends to the film this weekend.

Peep

The other thread also reveals in detail, behind spoiler tags, what happens in that final scene. The scene reveals the (surprise!!) resurrection of Professor X. The fact that Scott was supposedly killed offscreen (Wolverine accuses Jean of this, but I don't remember her ever admitting to it) bodes for a potential resurrection of him also, especially if they have trouble signing any of the more popular cast members for X4.

I was left cold multiple times during X3. The potential was so great, yet I felt that it mis-fired almost every time. Still, it was probably one of the above average action films that will come out this summer.

Kal-El

Co-writing Superman Returns with Bryan Singer.

raven56706

Newsday just gave the movie 3 out of 4 stars....

Matthew Chmiel

Sons of a bitches. I shake my fist at them!!!

DrRingDing

How was he resurrected? Does it give that answer or is it merely him rolling into the mansion (or something similar)?

And you are correct, Jean never admits to killing Cyclops.

I said in the other thread that we'd see a competent film but one that mimics Singer's style. I was wrong about that, Ratner can't mimic anybody it seems. He's doomed to subpar direction, methinks. Oh, and the competence went out the window when Ratner agreed to direct such a miserable script.

Damn, I think I've got a real issue with Ratner.

-ringding-

McHawkson

It's possible that Jean did not kill Scott - it could be Phoenix itself.

According to X-Men comic (I collected whole series that Phoenix was involved - from her first appearance to her death), Phoenix was struggle with her emotion, it seems like she was fighting with real Jean inside her.

devilshalo

Which is why Hank and Prof. X came up with that dampener.. but Wolvie let his emotions take over instead of killing her like she asked.

UKingdom

This is what happens.

The movie starts off 20 years ago with Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), who is not in a wheelchair, and Erik Lensherr (Ian McKellan), arriving at the Grey residence. They are there to meet a prospective student, Jean Grey. The CGI done on Stewart and McKellan is awesome as they do look very much younger.

Jean's parents are a bit apprehensive about their daughter attending Xavier's school and her father sees her mutation as a kind of disease but Xavier asks to meet Jean alone. They talk and he tells her she is special and just like them. She seems doubtful about it and levitates the cars parked outside her home with her mind. Stan Lee and Chris Claremont make cameos as a guy who's watering the flowers but the water flows upwards out of the hose instead and a guy who's lawnmower levitates, respectively.

Cut to 10 years later and we see a young Warren Worthington III attempting to cut something out of his back with a variety of knives. His father knocks on the door and ask him what's wrong. Warren hastily stows away the knives before his father forces his way in and sees blood, feathers and a reflection of his son's back in the mirror. You can see the wings that are about to sprout out.

Now we cut to the danger room sequence and you see Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), Storm (Halle Berry), Bobby Drake/Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat (Ellen Page), Rogue (Anna Paquin) and Peter Rasputin/Colossus (Daniel Cudmore). Lasers are flying everywhere, zapping everything and the X-Men are ducking around. Colossus and Rogue hide behind a car and he touches her and she turns to metal just in time for a huge boulder to bounce off them and hit Wolverine in the face. His face is scratched badly but it heals and he is pissed. A missile is heading straight for Iceman and Kitty and he freezes it. But he is caught off-guard when another missiles launches for him and Kitty grabs him and the missile passes through. Rogue sees this and she is clearly jealous.

Wolverine and Storm take cover behind a car they talk a bit about the situation and she grabs him and spins off just as the...wait for it...SENTINEL!!! attacks. Storm calls for a retreat but Wolverine wants to face the sentinel, he gets Colossus who "metals up" and they do the Fastball Special where Colossus swings Wolverine towards the sentinel. We see the sentinel head drop on the ground and Wolverine walks out from behind it and goes, "Class dismissed."

Next we see Bobby and Rogue in an argument about her not being able to touch him.

From here on my memory of the sequence of events might be out of place so just bear with me.

The next shot shows Beast reading a magazine and like in the cartoons, he is sitting upside down on the ceiling when an aide comes in and tells him that the meeting is ready. We then go to the president and his aides who are watching a footage of Mystique, who was captured. They are questioning her about the whereabouts of Magneto and she refuses to answer. The president hands Beast a file about Worthington Labs developing a cure for the Mutant X Gene. It seems that this was what Mystique was after when she was captured.

Sometime around here we see Cyclops (James Marsden) who is still very distraught over Jean's death and he keeps hearing her voice calling his name. He packs his back and decides to go to Alkali Lake. On the way out Wolverine stops him and trys to talk some sense into him but Cyclops won't listen.

Beast pays Xavier a visit and talks about the cure. Storm is against it but the Xavier tells her that they're already announcing it. Flash to Alcatraz Island which is one of the bases for Worthington Lab that is developing the cure for the mutant gene. This is also where they are keeping the boy Jimmy AKA Leech who is the source of the cure. Warren Worthington II announces the cure on TV. Rogue sees this and she confronts the others but Storm tells her that there's nothing to cure because nothing is wrong with them.

Magneto attends a mutant meeting of sorts where they are debating the cure. Magneto takes to the stage flanked by Pyro and talks about the humans forcing the cure on them. After his little speech he is confronted by some mutants, Arclight, Callisto and Quill. Callisto can sense the powers of other mutants and he asks her to find one for him. We see a convoy transporting some mutant prisoners, Mystique amongst them.

Cyclops gets to Alkali Lake and he still hears the voices. He looks into the water and the voices get too much for him so he rips off his ruby quartz glasses and shoots his beam into the water. Suddenly a huge whirlpool is created a the force from it throws him to the ground. There is a bright light and as it clears we see Jean Grey. The 2 embrace and she asks Cyclops to take out his glasses, he is reluctant but she tells him she can control his powers. He does and she holds back the beam and they kiss but then her face turns dark and menacing and we hear a shout and the screen fades back to Xavier's school. A shockwave of sorts ripples through and everyone feels it and Cyclops is killed by Jean (damn!). Storm and Wolverine run to Xavier and he instructs them to go to Alkali Lake.

As the convoy is driving on the road, Magneto stands in their way. He flattens the first two cars and tosses them out of the way, tosses the back two and rips the container holding the prisoners. He goes in and frees Mystique, Multiple Man and the Juggernaut (Vinnie Jones, who is so hilarious in this movie). A security guard that was knocked out wakes and aims a gun at Magneto, Mystique takes the bullet but it turns out to be the cure. She is cured and Magneto leaves her, telling her, "You're no longer one of us."

We see a group of people lining up for the cure and Dr Kavita Rao is talking to Warren Worthington II about his son getting the cure. Warren Worthington III/Angel (Ben Foster) comes in and he is strapped standing up. As Dr Rao is about to inject him with the cure he stops her and pleads with his father who is unrelenting. He struggles and frees himself, speading his wings in the process. He tells his father it's not what he wants and breaks out the window and flies away.

Wolverine and Storm get to Alkali Lake and it's all foggy. Storm clears it up and they see stones floating around. Wolverine spots Cyclop's glasses floating when Storm yells for him. She's found Jean unconscious and they take her back to the mansion. Xavier explains that Jean survived X2's drowning because her powers enabled her to be cocooned in her telekinetic energy. He also talks about her being a very powerful mutant with split personality. One is the Jean Grey we know and the other is the Phoenix. He explains that he's put a series of mindblocks in her head to prevent the Dark Phoenix from emerging but Wolverine argues that that's not ethical.

Phoenix awakes and Wolverine is with her. They talk and start kissing passionately before Wolverine realizes that something is different about her. He questions her about Cyclops and she freaks out and tells him to kill her before she kills anyone else. He tells her that they can fix it but she switches to Phoenix mode and flings Wolverine away before escaping. Xavier is teaching a class about something to do with transferring one's consciousness into another body as he shows them a video of his good friend Dr Moira MacTaggert with a catatonic patient (IMPORTANT LATER!). He is interrupted by Storm and Wolverine and the 3 of them go back to Jean's old home. Callisto sense Jean's powers too and Magneto and his cronies go there as well. Magneto and Xavier go in to confront Jean while Quill, Callisto, Arclight and the Juggernaut stand guard.

Xavier tries to reason with Jean but she wouldn't listen, her face turns dark and scary and all hell breaks loose. Wolverine can't wait anymore and he charges in but is confronted by the Juggernaut. Storm faces off with Quill, Arclight and Callisto. Jean uses her powers to lift Xavier up from his wheelcar and to throw Magneto through the wall. It's a very powerful scene as Wolverine and Storm are getting their asses kicked. Xavier tries to reason with Jean but her powers are getting stronger and he is slowly getting vapourized. Magneto yells at her to stop but she doesn't and she blasts Xavier into ashes. Magneto is well and truly shocked but nevertheless he takes Jean with him. Storm and Wolverine finds Xavier's empty wheelchair and they break down and cry.

A funeral is held for Xavier. The X-Men are debating whether to close the school when Angel comes in seeking refuge and Storm tells them that the school will remain open. We see Kitty in her bedroom crying and Iceman comes to comfort her. He freezes a fountain and they go ice-skating. Rogue sees this and gets jealous again. She is preparing to leave the next day and Wolverine tells her to do what she wants for herself. Iceman can't find Rogue and he goes to where the mutant cure is given out. He is confronted by Pyro (Aaron Stanford) who eggs him on in a fight but Iceman walks away. Pissed off, Pyro blasts the mutant cure centre.

Wolverine goes off to find Jean because he is also hearing her voice. Magneto has gathered an army of mutants and they're hiding out in the forests. Wolverine rages through the forest before Magneto controls him and sends him flying out. We see the army swapping their metallic weapons for plastic guys fitted with the cure darts. Mystique now human has given them intel on Magneto's whereabouts. The army closes in but all the "mutants" turn out to be replicas of Multiple Man.

Magneto now sets his sights on Alcatraz and the destruction of the source of the cure, Leech. The best part of the movie now begins as Magneto storms the Golden Gate bridge, ripping a part of it off in order to connect the mainland with Alcatraz. The X-Men are getting prepared to face Magneto even though there's only 6 of them against his whole army. Magneto sends his "pawns" towards the army guarding Alcatraz and they shoot the mutants with the cure. Magneto's powers are useless against the plastic guns so he has Arclight send out shockwaves to destroy the guns. He then levitates cars from the bridges and Pyro lights them up and rains them down on the soldiers. It is now that the X-Men arrive! Awesome arrival by each one of the X-Men and they form a line in front of the army. More Brotherhood mutants charge and the fight is on. Juggernaut is sent to kill Leech and Kitty goes after him. She jumps him and pulls him down into the ground and that's when Juggernaut goes, "Do you know who I am? I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!" Kitty gets to Leech but her powers won't work and Juggernaut knocks his way in. He charges at them and they jump out of the way as he knocks himself unconscious on the wall. His powers don't work either. Storm faces off with Callisto and she throws Callisto down on a metal fence and electrocutes her.

Quill, Arclight and Pyschloke take Warren Worthington III and Dr Rao. Quill kills Rao and Arclight and Pyschloke throw Worthington off the building but not before Angel swoops down and saves his father wearing a pretty cool outfit (not the X-Men uniform though) looking smug. Wolverine sees some cure darts on the ground and he has a plan, he looks at Beast knowingly. Wolverine tells Iceman to go get Pyro, who's been itching to face off with him. The fight is awesome and Pyro gains the upper hand, blasting a huge fireball at and around Iceman. Iceman goes full ice mode and he grabs Pyro's wrists, freezes his arm and knocks him out. Wolverine and Colossus do the Fastball special again and Magneto controls Wolverine and throws him on the ground saying, "Do you ever learn?" Wolverine replies, "As a matter of fact I do," and Beast jumps out from behind Magneto and stabs him with the cure darts. Magneto falls to the ground, shocked. He is cured.

This is when Phoenix unleases her fury and the buildings around her start to vapourize and ash. Everyone is retreating and Quill, Arclight and Pyschlocke are ashed just as they are getting away. Wolverine tells Storm to go first as he is the only one who can stop the Phoenix. He walks up the steps to her as his uniform starts to ash and his skin peels off but re-heals itself again and again. He confronts her and tells her he loves her before stabbing her. She dies and he cries over her.

We see Kitty standing in front of the memorial to Jean, Cyclops and Xavier as Storm comforts her. Rogue returns and she is cured. She can touch Iceman now. We then see Angel flying over the Golden Gate bridge as a kid looks up.

The camera moves to a bunch of people playing chess and Magneto is by himself. His chess pieces are metallic and he moves his hand over one of them and it moves ever slightly. A blink and you'll miss it scene.

THE END

After the credits...we see Dr Moira MacTaggart and the catatonic patient. He wakes and says, "Hello Moira," and she says, "Charles?". As Xavier had explained earlier on, he has now put his consciousness into the catatonic patient.

McHawkson

Yes, that's correct. What a great story (comic)....

Original Desmond

The biggest problem i felt the movie had is there was no real villian

Magneto, you want to root for him. jean grey/phoenix wasn't really a villian


Hell i was rooting for as many humans to be killed as possible !

Next movie needs a common enemy like Apocolypse

Dr. DVD

For those of us who don't want to play the video game, can anyone enlighten us as to what happened to Nightcrawler?

Peep

Nightcrawler was a no-show with no explanation given.

And how is it that Sentinels exist in the Danger Room when they haven't been built yet? I was hoping that we were seeing the glimmer of their birth when President Flip-flop tells Trask to stop them by whatever means neccessary. Later, of course, he's appointing Hank to the UN!?!?

Maybe in X4 we see that Trask never stopped his work, despite the fact that the Prez about-faced. Ho-hum.

Original Desmond

The X Men or associates have travelled back and forth through time so it is assumed that the data about the sentinels was gathered from the future and used for training in the present

Original Desmond

Sentinels and Apocolpyse as villians in X4 would be the way to go

CGI bill might be huge

Shilex

I was VERY disappointed with this. My friends, however, were entertained. I'm a film lover, & a comic book lover so this movie pissed me off. I can't put all the blame on Ratner (although he has absolutely no vision), the script was piss poor also.

First let's start with Ratner's direction. Basically, it was Rush Hour except with mutants. The camera angles were static (it actually began to feel like a daytime soap opera at times), the action scenes were nothing to write home about, and the endless jokes were beginning to piss me off. This is supposed to be epic, not filled with cheesy one liners. I could have sworn I was watching a parody of X-men after the "I'm Juggernaut, bitch!" line. The film was also disjointed. Too many people and plots keeps character development to a minimum. I really didn't care about any of these mutants anymore. That could be in part to the decision to kill them off randomly with no real flair, or consequence. Hey, what happened to Scott? Dunno. Okey dokey. Life goes on.

Also, the film's musical score has got to be one of the worst ever! I don't really know anything about it, but this new score has got to be by the same person who did Rush Hour. I swear I heard some hints of Rush Hour in there. It was like watching a road runner cartoon. It was incredibly distracting and it didn't meld well. I could be completely wrong about who wrote the score, but I still hated it.

Plot - terrible and shallow. Ok, a mutant cure. Let's put it in guns and shoot everyone. Hey, look! A bridge! Let me just show off a little by moving it onto Alcatraz. Ok, that was pointless, but cool! Let's give Storm a bigger role by killing off other characters. Hey, let's have a pointless troop rally speech by Braveheart (whoops, I meant Wolverine). How bout we put some random mutants in a room and call them the New X-Men with no real explanation as to why they were chosen. What we need is more generic "God help us all" speeches by pretend President's of the United States (and more dickhead/bitch jokes)! Let's just take a whole bunch of cool stuff from the comic books that the geeks love, and put em in the movie (like the Fastball Special & danger room). That'll make them love our movie!!

Simply awful. (this could be a bit harsh since I'm really pissed off right now. We'll see if it's the same after I watch it again on DVD)

NOTE: I have nothing against Ratner. I liked both Rush Hour films, & Red Dragon was entertaining. I entered this with high expectations (maybe that's the problem). It's just that everything I saw bugged the hell out of me.

silentbob007

I thought it was decent (know nothing about the stories/characters other than first 2 movies). I'd agree with the villian problem. All sides have valid points, which makes the battle a little less dramatic. Little things bothered me, like the whole "family in the car" minute long setup to the joke of the mother locking the car door. Overall, there was enough that I liked/enjoyed to outweigh the fast pacing and a few spots of terrible dialogue. Oh, and the theater exploded with the "I'm the Juggernaught, bitch" line.

Derrich

I thought it was okay, but too much of a downer to be the last in the series.
Rogue should've been one of the most powerful mutants, but the movies treated her like she was useless. Has she even used her powers since the first flick? Xavier's death was so anti climactic that I was waiting for him to show up again so he could have a real death scene. Same thing for Jean Grey. All it took was one stab? I wanted to see every mutant, good and evil, to attack her.

Kitty Pryde was well done, And Pyro was good, but everyone else seemed way powered down(except for Wolverine's healing ability which is way powered up). Storms big move was lightning. Big deal.

Things I wanted to see, but didnt.
Magneto stripping the admantium from Wolvies bones.
Rogue stealing powers and kicking ass in a dozen different ways.
Gambit.
Sentinels (not just a head)
White Queen
Xavier kicking ass
The students in the School fighting (they all just disappeared in the middle of the film)
And I coulda swore Franklin Richards was in there somewhere.

In the end, this movie seemed like it was 'almost' good, but wimped or fell short.

In contrast, Revenge of the Sith delivered on just about all that was expected. But this finale didn't come close.

D

Peep

What?!? The XMen have never traveled back and forth in time in any of their movies. If you're going to pull some crap from the comic why not just say that they fought some Sentinels two months before X3?

Thank god for movie goers who have no sense of logic. Drek like X3 will do boffo by them.