So I went to go see the new X-Men movie this weekend for the matinee showing at 2:30 PM after not getting a chance to see it on opening weekend. Overall the theatre was about a third full with mostly parents and children in the audience. Through the previews, Superman Returns, Ghost Rider, and The Omen got almost no crowd reaction, but surprisingly My Super Ex-Girlfriend got a strong reaction from myself and the crowd. Mostly it was because Rainn Wilson (aka Dwight K. Shrute) was portrayed as a similar character in the preview as he plays in The Office, otherwise it looked like a moderately bad movie. Out of all the previews, I’d probably see Ghost Rider, starring Nicholas Cage, the most even though similar Marvel movies like The Punisher, Daredevil, and Elektra were flops at the box office.
For the most part, X3 was a pretty good movie, but I’d probably rank it behind X2 in terms of storyline and character development, but about the same in special effects. I did like the large variety of mutants portrayed, but because there were so many of them, I felt like we didn’t get to see how cool they could be had the movie been longer. At a paltry 104 minutes, I felt like they could have added at least an additional 30 minutes of action to expose the cooler mutant powers or utilize the time to delve into the backstory behind the main characters other than seeing just a peek into the lives of Jean Grey and Warren Worthington III.
Spoiler of some movie specific discussion below.
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One of the things that I thought that they could have expounded on was Leech’s (the mutant that can neuralize mutant powers) backstory and maybe show a bit of his past and how he ended up in the Worthington scientific labs. Even though his powers were the center of the movie, they really didn’t show enough of who he was or even mention his name much more than flashing his little mutant card for a second at the start of the film. Sure we know that he just stays in his room all day playing Xbox 360, but how did he get there in the first place?
Focusing on Juggernaut, isn’t he just a muscular guy with a super-helmet in the cartoon? When did he suddenly become a mutant in the movie and lose them when he was trying to ram into Leech and Kitty Pryde? There shouldn’t be a problem even if he didn’t have any powers to begin with since he could just beat the kid up with regular adult strength!
One of the better points, however, was that Iceman got some well-needed screentime. His transformation into the full-ice-look as he beats up Pyro was really done well and if they decide to make a sequel to X3 (aka X4), I’d welcome Iceman flying around on a sheet of ice just like in the cartoon.
Another of the cooler mutants the movie would have to be Colossus. Even though Colossus gets a marginally greater part of the movie as he did in X2, the look of him turning his metal skin on and off was fantastic. I also can’t forget to mention him carrying around a huge TV through the mansion with one arm. Although his “fastball special” Wolverine toss was a bit overused throughout the course of the movie, it didn’t detract from how cool his character was despite lack of screentime.
Lastly, coolest enemy would have to be Kid Omega. Out of all of them, I thought he was the most well-done in terms of actually looking cool instead of having a dumb looking helmet like Juggernaut or Magneto. Maybe because he’s played by Ken Leung and he’s Asian…also Psylocke, played by Mei Melancon, and Jubilee, played by Kea Wong, are Asian as well…
All in all, they left the door open for a sequel, so we could possibly be seeing an X4 on the horizon even if X3 is entitled “The Last Stand”.
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Considering Xavier is still alive and Magneto has not totally lost his powers, both of them could make a considerable comeback in a fourth movie even though previous main characters Cyclops and Jean Grey presumably die during the course of X3. One of the things I’d like to see in a future X-Men movie is an inter-galactic villian like Apocolypse or maybe the emergence of Mr. Sinister. On the good-guy side, characters like Gambit, Bishop, and Cable would be pretty cool.
Things to look for (in very vague, broad terms) if you haven’t seen the movie yet.
- Stan Lee watering plants
- “Frasier” is obviously wearing gloves
- “Michael Jackson” clapping
- Wolverine’s indestrucible “Hulk” pants
- Evil “24″ mom M.D.
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