X-men 3 - I talk about the plot so avoid it if you don't want to know about a movie you didn't see yet.

I went to see X-men 3 this weekend and I enjoyed it. I liked the changes they made to the Dark Phoenix saga because lets face it, it’s a fairly ridiculous story to begin with. I was trying to explain it to A. after the movie and explaining about Professor X in love with an outcast alien princess and Cyclops meeting his dad who is now a space pirate and then killing a galaxy by exploding a sun… yeah, wouldn’t have worked in a movie no matter how awesome it was back in the comic heyday.

This movie managed to capture the melodrama, the action and the intrigue that the X-men do so well, when they are allowed to do it well. But in this movie more than the first two there was a lot of wasted potential. Jean Grey is meant to be uber-powerful but she sort of sits around a lot looking at crowds. Mystique gets depowered as does Rogue. Colossus sort of disappears and comes back a lot and it would have been nice if Angel had, I don’t know, like a line of dialogue?

Storm finally gets to be cool. She’s flying and lightning people left and right. Of all the really strong characters she’s the one that finally gets used to her potential. I do find it a bit strange that all the really powerful women, and lets face it, all the really powerful mutants outside of Magneto and Professor X are the women characters either get depowered or killed. Now, I know this is an X-men movie so I’m assuming there will be another sequel and everything will be back to normal. I really did love the two endings, very clever. Especially the Magneto playing chess which harkens back to the first movie.

So if you’re looking for the death of the X-men movie franchise, this isn’t it. Sure there was a bit more cheese dialogue than I can remember in the previous two, but otherwise I really liked it. If not more than the first two, equally. I was a bit saddened by so much wasted potential but I understand how expensive special effects could have been. If I could have given the filmmakers some money I would have done really only one big thing. I’d have Colossus punch the flaming car bombs out of the air. That would be a fuck yeah moment.

I did have to say that there were 3 moments I loved. The “Not to Distant Future” sequence. Fastball special. And the Wolverine getting all twisted apart like the Prometheus arc (I think that’s what he was called) in the comics. I’ll have to check my Essential Collection tonight.

So I liked it a lot but I’m not particularly in the mood to justify it more. Oh yeah, spoilers.