X-Men 3: How Could It Be Better; Open Spoilers

I pulled these remarks fro the Plot Hole thread

I have to agree that X-Men 3 totally screwed up a lot of things. But not Rogue. Her story was completely consistent and the logical endpoint of the story as told. There’s no way around it; it’s what that character would have done. She doesn’t want to be a superhero, has no reason to be (really none of the younger peeps do except to emulate the adults), and there is no need for her to be a superhero. There’s no real way for her to use her powers properly in a fight. She’ll get destroyed by almost anyone not being an idiot. Which is why they used the super-Rogue in the comics, but that setup wasn’t something Rogue in the movies would do.

That said, I also think X-Men 3 actually had the most mature look at what a world with mutants would be like. Yes, there is some bigotry towards them, but also a lot of interest and brotherhood - and even the bigots are not necessarily monsters. The mutants themselves are more clearly shown as a continuum of monsters, giant dicks, and selfish lesser dicks, with corresponding heroes. And rather than try to turn it into a pathetic cypher for racism or homosexuality, it stands as its own issue with unique characteristics. The problem with X3 was not symbolism or story so much as Too Much Plot symdrome. It might have made two very good movies.

See, there are two more or less totally unrelated plots here: Jean Grey and The Mutant Cure. These two plots really have nothing to do with one another and should have been in seperate movies. This could have been a godsend, as well. Do a few shared scenes - but from the viewpoints of two different characters with similarly different. Let Cyclops go after Jean Grey. Let Wolverine go after the Magneto.

As it was, the movie felt cramped and choppy. We really didn’t get much on any of the characters, when we needed new material on the new characters. Angel does virtually bupkiss and the Beast is left criminally short of material. I was very interested in the President character. There were simply too many people over too little time.

The new “villains” had virtually nothing. Multiple Man and Juggernaut were one-liners with superpowers. Almost literally - I think the Juggernaut said maybe three short lines of dialogue in the whole film and MM had two. That’s pretty sad.

Agreed that it tried to do too much. The “cure” storyline was taken directly from Joss Whedon’s first Astonishing X-Men story arc, and it was an excellent story, but combined with a Cliffs Notes version of the Dark Phoenix Saga, the movie came off disjointed and forgettable. Ben Foster, an excellent young actor, was wasted as Angel, and I would have loved to see more of Multiple Man (my favorite Marvel superhero), played by Eric Dane from Grey’s Anatomy. Plus they conveniently got rid of Professor X (as they did in the other two movies, simply because he is too powerful to write well), and killed off Cyclops for no reason, when he is really the one who should have taken care of Jean in the end. I hated how Mystique got depowered so easily and how quickly Magneto turned on her. I couldn’t stand the new “evil” mutants who weren’t based on any comic characters in particular – the androgynous girl and the other Hot Topic convention members. Oh, and Halle Berry sucked, but she sucked throughout the entire trilogy. Storm should’ve been Angela Bassett, dammit.

Did I actually like anything? I liked Kelsey Grammer as Beast. I liked Iceman and Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page!) having more important roles, and Colossus as well (although there’s no reason Cyclops couldn’t have lived to lead the team at the end). I liked “Don’t you know who I am? I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!” only because it was an Internet meme that made it into the movie, although Vinnie Jones’ embarrassing Juggernaut costume made him look like a cross between a BDSM leatherman and a giant metal penis. I liked Rogue’s story coming to an end, even though Anna Paquin complained that her character went through three movies with almost nothing to do. (I still think the Wolverine/Rogue relationship in the first movie should’ve been Wolverine/Kitty instead, as I’ve never been a big fan of Rogue as a character.)

Sorry about rambling. It’s just that after liking X-Men and absolutely loving X2, I thought X3 was a horrible end to the trilogy. I’m hoping next year’s Wolverine movie will somewhat redeem X3, even though it’s a mostly-unconnected prequel/spinoff. At least we’ll get a non-shitty actor as Sabretooth (the always-solid Liev Schreiber), Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, and GAMBIT, who really could have redeemed X3 just by being there.

Agree with the OP. Too much plot, too many characters. There were two movies here, neither of which got a chance to develop. This overstuffing is characteristic of too many comic book movies–see esp. Daredevil–and is what Singer deftly avoided in the first two installments.

Gambit’s going to be in the Wolverine movie?! If so I will be seeing it. I heard he was supposed to be in the third, with a quick spot of him in the second (when the Professor is about to kill all the mutants with his mind we were supposed to see a shot of Gambit and Beast turning into mutants).

But yeah, when I first saw the third movie I came out of the theaters not really liking it, but not sure why not. The a few months later I was on an airplane and they were showing the movie but I decided not to pay any attention to it. With zero sound I was able to follow along. I think that’s why I don’t like that movie.
Oh, and they had Iceman beating Pyro. We all knew he would, but still. I hated Bobby Drake.

1: Angel Had Absolutley Nothing To Do, Whatsoever. Did not need to be in this movie.

2: Thats It? Thats The whole Dark Phoenix Saga? Thats the extent of the phoenix character? Getting angry and killing a few dozen red-shirt soldiers and b-list mutants? Jeez.

3: Those mutants with the tattoos… Holy crap. I thought it was Prince on tour with The New Power Generation again.

4: Nothing for Colossus to do either. Did he even have a speaking line?

5: The final battle was a disgrace. What should have been helms Deep with Mutants turned out as six X-men getting attacked one at a time by stoopid running-directly-into-the-line-of-fire henchmen.

6: Why exactly did Jean Have to be killed? No cure darts left lying around?

7: Proffessor X was, in his ten minutes of screen time, a real Dick, especially to Wolverine. Just bitched on him for no good reason.

8: Kelsey Grammer was great as Beast… Read; Kelsey Grammer had a great make-up job as Beast. That could have been anyone under there and the effect would have been the same. With nothing for the character to do, it was such a waste.

9: The last scene shows Magneto slowly regaining hispowers… so, the whole cure plot was worthless, seeing as how the cure doesnt work. The whole movie was for NOTHING.

10: Just bad, ok? Bad script, bad acting, bad casting (Vinnie Jones? Was Jason Statham busy??) badly paced, badly directed by a bad director… Just a bad movie. Need it to be better? Change everything.

As for improvements I would have made X3 just Dark Phoenix and nothing but Dark Phoenix. It’s what the end of X2 hinted at after all. Maybe even with aliens and cosmic forces like in the original story. (Which I have to confess I’ve largely forgotten.)

I disagree with these two points. How exactly would you shoot her with a dart if she could just destroy it, and then you? And would she have been happier “cured”?

And Professor X was not being a dick. He was being practical. Jean was very dangerous and he was trying to stop her before she cut loose. Wolverine was just thinking with his dick.

I agree with the basic premise that there were too many characters. Unfortunately, that seems to be the Mutant/Superhero Sequel Paradigm. Just keep adding new characters without any real need for them, just to give screen time to someone new. This weighed down and destroyed the Batman series, as it devolved into bigger and bigger names for smaller and smaller roles. But given the number of mutants in the historical series and the clamoring of fans to have their favorites appear, it was to a certain degree inevitable.
I disagree with the premise that the cure not working in the long run invalidated the entire movie. The underlying premise of the movie was Identity Politics. Mutants like Magneto had their entire personal world wrapped up in their Identity as “Mutants”, as something other than Human. So when something comes along that threatens to strip that cherished personal identity from them and render them what they chose not to be, what they hate…merely Human, that’s a huge motherfucking threat!. Imagine if we suddenly had the power to turn the entire KKK black, or the Nation of Islam white. That’s the kind of threat to personal identification we’re talking about.

Personally, the fact that the cure did not turn out to be permanent is very cool. Now it’s just a Medicine (which can help people like Rogue have a real life without permanently removing her abilities if she should ever want them back, sort of a Mutant Viagra type solution), or a Punishment (used to deprive mutants of their powers while incarcerated); it is no longer the world ending threat to personal Identity Politics that it is initially feared to be.

if you could buy the whole idea of Wolverine being able to get to her in the first place, (Magneto had no problems keeping Wolverine at bay. Jean > Magneto) he could have disabled her instead and left the decision of deciding whether she’ll be happy or not to herself.

Disagree.

Cut the Dark Phoenix stuff entirely. It was too soon for it to have any real impact.

Better way to do the Dark Phoenix:

Bring her back (supercharged, but otherwise still Jean) at the beginning of the movie, do the cure storyline with her as an X-Man. Have something happen in the final confrontation (Magneto kills Scott, Jean’s forced to kill Magneto, something along those lines) that causes her to snap.

Cue Dark Phoenix as the next movie’s big bad.

Ideal, to my mind:

Leave her dead for a movie, then do the above.

For me the X-men series simply tried to add too many mutants, leaving less room for plot and character development.

Mebbe it’s fanwankery, but there’s no guarantee the dart would have survived the trip to her. Wolvie only did because he’s pretty indestructible.

Or at least his pants are. :smiley:

I agree with the “Ditch the Dark Phoenix story completely” idea. Too many mutants in the story, and too many different things to worry about. It needed more Beast.

I think the point was that wolverine could have stabbed her with a dart rather than his claws. I thought the whole lifting the bridge thing was ridiculous, if Magneto really had that kind of power he could have simply dropped the bridge on top of the island and killed everyone.

I wanna know why you’d follow an Evil Overlord[sup]TM[/sup] if his minions have to live in a tent city? I mean, for chrissakes, even the low-rent Bond villians had cool lairs where they and their henchment lived. If Magneto’s such a bad ass, then he and his mutant buddies should be able to whip up something better than a bunch of tents in the middle of nowhere.

Really. The man should be able to walk into the middle of the average scrap yard and turn it into a metal castle within a few hours. You’d expect that to be common for a guy who could manipulate metal like that.

The tents were telekinetically woven by one of the most evil mutants on the planet, The Tent Maker, who was eternally frustrated that his powers lent themselves not to world domination so much as they did to establishing a successful chain of camping gear stores.

The Tent Maker was not at the final battle, incidentally, because he had to do payroll that evening.

i mean disable as in knock her out, then use the darts.

At this point how many people had Jean Grey killed? Forget trying to knock her out. You take her out before she has a chance to do more damage.

Marc

Magneto was one of the most powerful mutants ever. It’s no surprise to me that the cure didn’t fully incapacitate him. However, he did get half a dozen doses of the cure…