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May
27
2006

CANFIELD REVIEWS X3

Posted by Canfield at 11:32am.

Posted in Film & DVD Reviews , Cult, Action, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, USA & Canada.

x3hank.jpg

I was conflicted to say the least. I’ve long since stopped expecting greatness from comic book movies even though I continue to collect and enjoy them. But X3, which I really enjoyed visually, hit a sore spot. How did this happen? Right at the time when we have the technology to bring our greatest heroes and villains to the screen and understand the profound nature of their struggles, their tragedies and triumphs when it’s more possible than ever to, like Hank McCoy The Beast feel engaged fully head and fully heart in the battle between good and evil, we end up with bread and circuses. It’s enough to make a grown man attack the next studio head he sees as if they were a soulless sentinel.

So far Poseidon and Da Vinci Code have disappointed with MI III continuing to labor under the “I’m sorry I just can’t take Tom seriously anymore” curse despite being a pretty good action flick.  So as the summer movie season rolls out the enemy of geeks everywhere is the feeling that once again we should prepare to be underwhelmed. How can it be? But it is. Once again the summer movie season prepares to come and go offering few reasons to go to the movies except that if we don’t go this year we’ll be admitting defeat, and be forced to examine whether or not geekdom is really all it’s cracked up to be. Of all the big budget tentpole type films only Superman Returns or Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest 2 have hopes of becoming the stuff of geek legend and even they aren’t sure things . That’s bleak folks. Safe bets on smaller films that might do the same would be A Scanner Darkly, Nacho Libre and Snakes on a Plane. In fact they probably have a better chance at this point.

Where does X 3 fit in that spectrum?

Fans are going to gripe that this should have been the “Return of the King” of comic book films. And they have a case. X Men 2 is, arguably, the greatest single movie based on a comic series ever made begging the X Men series to be closed out on a higher note than they get here. X2 juggles umpteen characters, several plotlines and does so with an elegance not usually associated with it’s fellows. X2 is also epic in scope switching our focus from one perilous possible outcome to another without making us feel the film has too many endings. In point of fact it tells the single most complex story of any comic book film to date.

But I think I smell a Ratner. No match for Bryan Singer this workmanlike director barely makes it through X3 without demolishing an already shaky reputation. A career as a fixer is only a good thing when you’re fixing something that is actually broken. Singer’s departure from Fox and the franchise is one of the great geek tragedies and one can only hope that after he makes Superman someone at Fox will have a lot to answer for. Word is Singer was jacked around pretty hard and whether you like what Ratner’s done with Wolverine and company you should wear a black armband on any repeat visits to the theater.

And you may want to make a repeat visit. Though Ratner is workmanlike and clearly in the position of having to clean up after Fox’s meddling he produces a film that might exceed fans lowered expectations. It’s awfully fun. It’s gutless fun, resolving only the storylines of characters we knew weren’t coming back anyway, but it does an entertaining job of introducing a myriad number of well-cast characters that can be spun off, boding well for the future of superhero film.

The main problems are that the simple, mostly unimaginative direction, short circuits sequences that should have more impact. Character’s die, lose their powers, burst into action and mostly provoke a reaction at the effects which should driving the scenes instead of being the focus of them. None of the human moments in this film have much weight at all. Nothing about this film is elegant. It’s big and bright and cartooned threatening to become an entirely CGI film at almost any moment.

The basic plot revolves round the discovery of a human cure for mutation. Some mutants view this as a godsend others as the ultimate threat. And, predictably enough, Magneto and Professor Charles Xavier find themselves at serious odds over how to handle the possibilities opened up by the drug. Meanwhile Jean Grey has reappeared with strange new, potentially apocalyptic powers. 

The effects not the plot, or the performances are the star here. And in that department the film is as mentioned, a lot of fun. Kitty Pride, has a great sequence involving herself and Juggernaut. You will believe a girl can walk through walls. A fascinating sequence shows Magneto and Xavier twenty years younger. It was done digitally but you can’t tell and it’s very eerie. And all the scenes with Mystique are wonderful.  But that’s where the wonder stops.

If the worst thing that can be said is that X3 is simply not the film it could have been then I would end with that last paragraph. But the truth is much darker. Yet another great story arc has been manhandled by a bunch of suits and the fact that anything even remotely enjoyable emerges is just short of a miracle. There may be a Wolverine film down the road. Several other characters will continue to live and breath on the big screen. But missing will be the heart and soul. It was sold out for reasons only certain people at Fox know. Me, I don’t really care. I’m just holding my breath hoping against hope that if graphic novels like The Killing Joke, The Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns or Marvels ever get made that they are treated as one shots by directors who are able to avoid the stupid politics and soulless corporate engineering that keep great stories from crossing over from the comic medium into that endangered species- the American tentpole film. 

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Reader Comments

  1. nitty 05/27/2006 @ 1:46pm

    I agree 100% with this review.Watched it last night and it left me depressed.As much as I loath Ratner I blame the studio for this mess.

  2. fiskofury 05/27/2006 @ 2:46pm

    Well I gottah say.. I was pleasently surprized with this one. I went in thinking it was going to suck… and left entertained with a smile on my face. The only thing I REALLY didnt care for was the “Willow” (from the Buffy TV series) “head nod /tip of the hat/RIP-OFF” aspect.. Oh and Storm could have been replaced by any main mutant or actor. Halle Berry’s acting was DREADFUL.

    I did see it opening night with all the other comic nerds (like me) and that made it even more enjoyable. Atmosphere does effect the movie going experience wink I do hope they make more X-men films, but without studio uber-politics, an amazing plot, and a great director who can actually direct actors and succesfully juggle multiple plots. Just so everyone knows if you see X3 make sure you stay till the VERY END, past the credits wink

  3. fiskofury 05/27/2006 @ 2:46pm

    Well I gottah say.. I was pleasently surprized with this one. I went in thinking it was going to suck… and left entertained with a smile on my face. The only thing I REALLY didnt care for was the “Willow” (from the Buffy TV series) “head nod /tip of the hat/RIP-OFF” aspect.. Oh and Storm could have been replaced by any main mutant or actor. Halle Berry’s acting was DREADFUL.

    I did see it opening night with all the other comic nerds (like me) and that made it even more enjoyable. Atmosphere does effect the movie going experience wink I do hope they make more X-men films, but without studio uber-politics, an amazing plot, and a great director who can actually direct actors and succesfully juggle multiple plots. Just so everyone knows if you see X3 make sure you stay till the VERY END, past the credits wink

  4. orien 05/27/2006 @ 3:10pm

    i thought this movie was going to suck. it actually went much lower than my expectations. the film was simply AWFUL. i wasn’t interested in any of the stories and didn’t care for any of the characters (yes, i am a fan of X-Men and used to read the comics for years, when i was a kid). didn’t care for angel’s story. didn’t care about that iceman, shadowcat, and rogue triangle. psylocke and jubilee weren’t featured much and not featured in any way that i wanted them to be. gambit had a shitty cameo role in the background and i’m sure not many people caught him. the film just dragged and was pretty boring. the action scenes weren’t anything special.

    i was surprised with that one juggernaut scene that Ratner threw in to entertain the internet geeks. it was like a “Snakes On A Plane” surprise. i’m sure many of you have seen this already: http://www.yikers.com/video_im_the_juggernaut_bitch.html

    i did stay until the end of the credits to watch that alternate ending. what a waste of time. i can see them going with the Onslaught story, after that alternate ending. but, they’ll need to feature everyone including Spiderman, Hulk, etc.

  5. Sirand 05/27/2006 @ 3:16pm

    As a die-hard X-fan, I was absolutely pissed at this film. No pacing, no skill, no emotion. Two films worth of great ideas were simply wasted.

  6. Au—èeal 05/27/2006 @ 3:24pm

    I can’t agree with you, sorry. I would like to make a few points:

    - Brian Singer is overestimated. He had a few good points but he’s not the wonderful director many want to believe. Oh, and if many call Ratner a mercenary, the same goes for Singer, who took a big fat check to do Superman Returns and fleed to Warner.

    - X2 isn’t that great. You have the great intro for Nightcrawler, the epic ending, the assault to the Mansion… But you have just one fight between mutants (Wolverine/Deathstrike), many of the X-Men don’t even get to fight. And for God’s sake, they were wandering Stryker labs for around 30 minutes! The first pic got some more action… I mean, the Brotherhood wiped the X-Men. And what about the ending? Yes: a fight against a machine. What I’m trying to say is that, albeit been really good, the first two films had their big flaws too. And the frog joke, btw. Whereas X3 wins on the action side showing some true superhero action.

    - Try to make such a big budget movie in less than a year. Blame the producers or whoever, but it could had exploded as a bag of shit. It didn’t.

    - The script was written even when Singer was talked to direct it. So… the movie would have been quite the same, be it directed by Singer, Vaughn, Ratner or the bestbuy.

    - X3 is far from perfect, but it ties ups many loose ends, gives some thrills, show at last all the X-Men fighting… If you want some scapegoat go search the producers at Fox, but I don’t think that Ratner or the writters are the ones to blame.

  7. Sirand 05/27/2006 @ 4:19pm

    First, X2 is widely considered to be one the best comic adaptations...with good reason. Singer is an amazing filmmaker. Ratner is a studio “yes” man.

    Second, Singer & Co had a treatment for a back-to-back X3/X4 Phoenix arc. When he left to do Superman, the writers left with him. They did not have a script. This script was banged out and the film was rushed to beat Supes to the screen. Ratner just made it worse by cramming in even more mutants and action sequences into the screenplay after the fact.

  8. Au—èeal 05/27/2006 @ 5:05pm

    You should check the interview to Pek an Kinberg at http://www.chud.com. And being the “best adaptation” doesn’t means it is great. Maybe the counterparts are too low, that’s it.

    Gotta say I love X1 and X2, but I’m not blind to their flaws.

  9. crazybee 05/27/2006 @ 5:43pm

    I’m with Au—èeal on this one. I pretty much loved X3. Being a longtime X-Men fan (I’ve got about a thousand X-books from when I used to collect comics), it brings me joy to see my favorite mutants on the big screen. Every X-movie has a few flaws, but they’re easily overlooked in my mind.

  10. Kurt 05/27/2006 @ 6:35pm

    Posted this in our Forum (which you should visit. Really.)

    *Mild Spoilers*

    Gigantic disappointment....not so much because it is a terribly made film (it is not), but rather a load of wasted opportunities:

    1) Set up mutant ‘cure’ as an abortion/gay parable and then forget about it once folks start kicking each others asses.

    2) Start the Dark Pheonix arc and then make Jean Grey into a cipher for all the boys around to manipulate her.

    3) Have 15+ characters each get no more than 8 minutes of screen time thus dealing with anything in a satisfying way (I thought the Nightwatch/Daywatch films lacked focus, X-Men 3 is benchmark for spastically jumping from one tidbit to the next)

    4) Why do all the ‘low level mutants’ have to be hired from the local Vancouver Goth Scene? Where were the angry preppy mutants who would side with Magneto? And what was with the protest scenes...It felt like 30 extras filmed at a tight angle...The last thing our $100M movies should look is ‘cheap’ or cutting corners.

    5) If you are going to kill major characters, perhaps a scene longer than 2.5 minutes and then breezily moving along is warrented. The movie never stopped to breathe (beyond an ice-skating sequence which felt ripped off in a way from King Kong) for matters it was trying to convince were significant

    6) Key scenes (including one brief post-credit sequence) were telegraphed so obviously. Certain scenes would have worked a heck of a lot better if they never bothered to set them up...Mystery is more effective than aiming for sledgehammer foreshadowing…

    7) The actor who played the president of the United States was Capital “A” Awful. There were several instances of bad acting in the film which were jarring, and I don’t recall similar instances in the previous two films.

    8) Humour was stripped down to a minimum, only about 4 jokes in the film. The first film got by immensly on its sense of humour, and there were several excellent moments in the second one...Here, a kick in the nuts and an occasional cheesy one-liner are all we get.

    9) Patrick Stewart is really flat here after being solid in the first two films. And he is given one of the single clunkiest lines of dialogue (about Jean Grey wrapping herself in a cocoon of telekenetic energy) that is howlingly bad.

    There are good things about the movie: Ian McKellan, Kelsy Grammer, Hugh Jackman and Ellen Page were standout. The movie never slows down to be boring, running by at a very, very crisp pace (i.e it’s an action flick, not much more). This isn’t necessarily a plus though somehow it feels overstuffed and weightless at the same time.

    Am I the only one to get the sense that they were clensing the mainline franchise to make way for the younger generation...? It all felt so rushed...I blame the screen writers as much as the director though...Ratner was not a good choice, but hardly the only one here to take the blame. What can I say though, I’m superheroed out completely now...I don’t even feel like working up the energy to bother with Superman.

  11. DarkmanPoe 05/30/2006 @ 9:52am

    Fool yourselves however you’d like - this was very poorly written, sloppily slapped together, and very badly directed garbage. A mishmash of ideas from the books all slapped together in laughably brief scenes and synthetic “emotions” signifying nothing. The first two weren’t masterpieces, natch, but they were classic pieces of cinema compared to this patchwork of trash.

  12. Nelson Cheung 05/30/2006 @ 12:54pm

    I agree with the review. Saw the film in on Saturday with expections lower than low hoping that the film would exceed my expectations. I really gave the film every opportunity I could give it, yet it still delivered below my already low expectations.

    The film had no heart and great actors such as, Stewart, Mckellan, Gramer, and Jackman were wasted. The emotional and rational elements needed to make any film, whether it’s a character driven film like The Godfather or special effects laden film like Star Wars are essential. This film had none of that.

    The first two X-men films, which I think all comic and film geeks enjoyed did not have big budgets comparatively speaking to other big summer blockbusters. In fact Fox was known to have really short changed Singer on both films, keeping a really tight financial leash. Yet Singer gave us really emotionally gripping films. He understood the need to really grasp each and every character and allow the story to drive the movie, not the special effects. As a director you have know how to hit your marks, how to break a screenplay down and sythesize and emphasize the moments that will drive your movie. The great directors of our time know this. Just look at the work of Spielberg, Coppola, Lucas, Howard, Cameron, Hitchcock and Kurasawa to name just a few.

    Ratner is a grad B director and everyone knows it. In my opinion he spoiled a perfectly good franchise. And if we never see a X-men 4, this is the way it will end...a horrible terrible end.

    Let me end with one more rant. Why use a bridge to crossover to Alcatraz? Wouldn’t had been easier to use a boat? Or levitate your people. You’re a grade 3-4 mutant for godsakes. If you’re powerful to rip a bridge off of it’s legs, you can levitate your people across. They all had some piece of metal on them, i.e. belts, rings chains. I mean give me a break.

  13. Justin Fields 05/31/2006 @ 7:13pm

    I’ve read through all of the responses here and I have to say I agree with the “nay’s”. Assuming someone asked the questions: “was X-3 a good movie” or “is X-3 as good as the other ones” we’d all reply “nay.” I REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted to believe in this film really. I tried my hardest to sit on my hands concealing my ire as a bastardization of the Dark Phoenix saga was relayed in front of me, but after a while my friends, non-X-men readers, could tell of my discomfort in the film (as if the sucking of my teeth wasn’t a big enough give away.)

    I’ll be completely honest. I didn’t really care for the first X movie too much. With this movie I was comparing X-Men the movie to X-Men the comic book and it really didn’t stack up, not to mention Halle Berry’s dismal accent droping performance. Then by the time X-2 came out I grew to appreciate Singer’s take on the X-Men universe and even if I hadn’t known anything about the X-Men world it still was a good movie, solid. X-3 ,however, offers nothing that hasn’t been done. The visuals weren’t as good if you asked me and the film quality (I believe it was shot with a rougher grained stock, especially during the assault on Alcatraz scene) changed the look of the film. Their were too many mutants thrown into the movie also, pointlessly. Why have Arclite and Callisto and Spike and Juggernaut and Phoenix and a million lacky-morlocky mutants, why? I think Singer avoided mutant on mutant action because of you can’t do it right it will look crappy, or be dumb. No two characters had a fight last over a minute or two and with that short of a time frame most of the fights don’t seem satisfying.

    Concerning the story or characters they didn’t seem to be themselves. “Xavier tells Wolverine to mind his business” or him brainwashing someone, that’s not the Xavier we all love. Wouldn’t a newly turned human Mystique or Magneto kill themselves before they were imprisoned as a human? And even at the end of the 2nd film Professor X spoke of a new begginning that the X-men would be facing as a phoenix appeared over the waters of alkali lake. What happened to that? It wasn’t an ominous tone in which the movie ended? And also why didn’t Jean ever really show that whole flame phoenix thing? And why did they go all “Emily Rose” with Jean? I blame Ratner. For those of you who are into film you know that many people ascribe the Auteur theory of film direction. Basically, the director is the Author of the film and is responsible for all aspects of it. If the film’s script is bad he should have gotten a new writer, if the actors suck get new ones. If the director doesn’t make these decisions who will?

  14. ss 06/13/2006 @ 4:32pm

    My review of X3.

    Action? Good!

    Special Effects? Great!

    Story? Boo.

    Characterizations? Boo.

    Faithful to Marvel Storyline? Boo.

    It’s pretty. It’s fun to watch if you ignore the story. If you’re not going to be wowed by the action/special effects then the movie is pretty terrible.
    -----

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