Who writes this stuff??

As promised, I'm following up last week's posting with my review of X-Men: The Last Stand. Being a fan of the comics back in the early 90's, I was mortified at the outcome of several key players, especially the ones who were among the most powerful mutants. I don't want to give away anymore spoilers (well, anymore than I already have), but this movie had the appearance of a first attempt effort to launch a franchise rather than a third movie in a highly successful series. The acting was sub-par, with notable exceptions (Ian McKellan, as always, does a wonderful job as Magneto, but towards the end of the film, the acting coach must have taken a nap because he started to seem like a feeble old man, rather than the powerful leader of the Brotherhood of Mutants; Halle Berry, although her reprise of Storm was a bit more strong character-wise than her earlier version, she still played an almost a minor role rather than the newly appointed leader of the X-Men should have; and Hugh Jackman - it's almost like he was born to play Wolverine. From his one liners to his almost ferral ferociousness when slicing and dicing with the ol' Adamantium claws, he once again shows why he should have his own line of Wolverine movies). There was hardly any musical score to set the tempo, the editing was poor and the script was poorly written.

On the plus side, it did have a large amount of classic hack and slash combat that you'd expect from this franchise. I've heard rumors that this is the last film for the X-Men, but with the amount of questions still left to be answered, it's hopeful that someone will pick up the ball and run with this. Anyway, the DVD will find itself on my shelf when it's released. Who can break up a series? It'd be like buying a complete encyclopedia set and not getting books R, S & T!

That being said, this is my brief review of X-Men 3. On a scale of 1-10, I'd give it a 5. Not great (not by a long shot), but not as bad as the rest of the critics say it is. I'm glad I paid matinee prices and not full.