xxx

the short answer is that x3 isn’t very good.

the long answer is that x3 was fine once through, but on further reflection the whole thing just falls apart. miles asked me what i’d do to make it better, and i couldn’t give an easy answer because there’s so many things wrong that fixing it would start with a new script.

i read awhile back that they were going to make x3 and x4 back to back, because jackman didn’t want to get tied down to the wolverine character for years. it feels like when singer was sacked because he went to make superman, fox didn’t want to invest in two more sequels, so they took the scripts for 3 and 4 and condensed them into a single movie. it didn’t work. it had its moments, but a few good bits don’t make a crappy meal taste any better.

they killed major characters without much purpose, changed allegiances on the fly with no clear motivation, had the old characters acting out of character most of the time, and didn’t take the time to do any real development with the new characters, of whom there were too many. where the first two deftly avoided the trap of good mutants vs evil mutants, x3’s moral compass has reverted to either on or off. they left themselves open to undo all the major changes they’d made, pulling their punches after they’d already landed. the characters who get the most screen time are not the most interesting ones.

like the harry potter films, any individual bit isn’t terrible, but as a whole it’s a sloppy adaptation of a larger and better story, and it rushes through it without giving any of the meaty elements time to develop. this should have been two movies, and in singer’s hands they would have been two great movies. instead, it feels like four episodes into a tv series they got cancelled, then came back with enough money for two more, so they took all their plans for the rest of the season and crammed it all into two hours, including setting up a second season, just in case.

and let’s not get started on how silly most of these people look using their powers. a big budget hollywood production ought to be able to beat the average saturday morning cartoon.