Xmen III: The Last Stand

Well, it finally arrived. After watching X2 I was so insanely excited for X3 I ran around with my pants on fire claiming I was the pheonix....well, maybe not. Well X3 is now here and it is supposedly "the last stand"......well, maybe not.

X3 picks up right after X2, with Jean Grey supposedly dead and Cyclops all pooped out because of it. But all us X-nerds know about the Pheonix! This movie wasn't that bad. It was incredibly predictible, but it had some fantastic moments. My main gripe is that it just could have been so much better. Jean Grey was the characater that all the plots circled around throughout the film, but for the most part she stood there staring into space like something out of a Zombie movie. Very little time is spent following through on most of the new characters. Warren "Angel" Worthington is completely wasted in my opinion. He gets a few scenes in the beginning that get you interested in him and then he's pretty much ignored for the rest of the film. In addition, the majority of the new X-villans were poorly developed. When it came down to "the last stand" I actually could care less what happens to anybody except maybe Wolverine and Jean. Just look at the Xmen team: The Beast (ok, kinda cool - but where the hell is Night crawler??), Shadowcat (cheap Rogue replacement - what the hell is with that anyway?), Iceman (come on, lets start looking and acting like iceman!!), Colususs (More like "Wolverine Catapult System") Storm (Go away Halle!), and Wolverine (What's with the hair?). Wolverine was still a major character in the film, but he seemed to have lost his edge. Jean Grey put it perfectly when she said that Xavier had "tamed him".

All in all, I really liked the Pheonix. It just could have been such a better story. It had promise, especially after Xavier's death sequence, but it never seemed to get there. It just seemed to go through the motions. Not bad for a superhero movie, actually reminded me of the X-men comics more than the first two films.

6.5 out of 10.

Why not 7? The Juggernaut's line "I'm the Juggernaut Bitch!"
Why not 8? Crappy Xmen team
Why not 9? Crappy X-villan team
Why not 10? The not-so-dark Pheonix story line