[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
Yep, that’s right. Step-brother, Gem of Cyttorak, telepathy-reducing helmet since it’s pretty much the only thing that can stop him.
[/QUOTE]
Makes you wonder why the government imprisoned him with his helmet on!
From what little I saw of Cain in the comics, he seemed more mercenary than villian. He had a hilarious knock-down drag-out with Captain Britain in the first Excalibur series.
[QUOTE=dbuzman]
In the book adaptation (I read it then saw the movie) she is just referred to as “Weezie” …
[/QUOTE]
it’s Mrs. Jefferson!?!
I haven’t even seen the movie yet, but I must say I found the following CNN article quite amusing:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/05/31/film.qa.xwomen.ap/index.html
You’d think a bunch of actresses in a major movie would be pretty gung-ho about promoting it, but they seem so underwhelmed by the whole experience that it almost reads like an** Onion ** parody. My favorite exchange:
Gee, I’ll bet Fox is loving that kind of promotion! 
On the other hand, they go on to compare their characters’ powers like a bunch of comic book geeks, so they definitely win some points for that.
Ian McKellan is far and away the best thing about this movie, so much so that I felt sorry for Magneto in the last scene until the final shot, when I was happy for him.
[QUOTE=rjung]
Signing in here. Loved the first two X-movies, as well as the Spider-Man films. I’ve missed most of the other superhero movies in the last decade out of apathy, though I was moderately entertained by The Hulk (though I understand why a lot of folks didn’t like it).
X3, however, was a solid miss for me. The movie had nothing aside from the obligatory splashy special effects and big fight scenes. Characterization was practically nil, subtlety was non-existent, and everything was delivered with the subtlety of a sledegehammer. Which is fine if you want a mindless summer popcorn movie, but after the first two, this one was a disappointment. I was also irritated by how characters were asted (either killed off wily-nilly, or just introduced and then ignored), as well as the predictability of the plot (who didn’t see the Angel’s last-second rescue coming?).
They could have easily made two movies out of this – the mutant cure and the Phoenix resurrection – but throwing them together made the movie too crowded and rushed as a result. X3 is what you’d get if George Lucas were to do an X-movie. I’m sure Fox will do another movie, but after this one, I’m definitely going to wait until after opening weekend and see the level of suckitude before dropping my money.
For comics geeks: I caught the Stan Lee cameo, but apparently Chris Claremont and John Byrne also had cameos in the opener as well. I also totally missed the references to Jubille and Psylocke, which IMO says something about how lame the movie’s direction was.
[/QUOTE]
Bolding added.
Seems like the critics can’t get it straight on this movie. . .was it just non-stop action and mutants or was it too busy with storylines? Personally, I thought the mix was just right.
I liked how dark it was. . .killing off three of the good ones, and de-mutantizing the two main bad ones.
So, the Magneto scene seemed to indicate that the cured mutants can get their powers back. . .let’s hope Rogue isn’t enjoying Mr. Freeze’s popsicle when her powers start coming back! :eek:
My only real gripe was some of the crappy dialogue; Kelsey Grammar is reduced to saying, “Mr. President, you’re on a very slippery slope here.”? Magneto had a couple of crappy lines too.
And, nice product placement for the microplane grater.
Easily better than the first one. Slightly better than the second.
Saw it last night, after having never read the comics and enjoying the first two films immensely. And…I liked it! It lacked Bryan Singer’s nuance, but I think it fits very solidly into the trilogy. X1 and X2 could get too talky and don’t hold up so well on repeat viewings. This one is really pure fun.
I could do without the one-liners though. “I’m Juggernaut, Bitch!” seemed forced and self-concious. As were all the other forgettable “zingers.”
The Beast in battle was way, way cooler than I could have imagined. The casting and effects on that character were just great.
Are you guys reading the same magazines I am? Although they are obviously leaving the door open, TPTB indicate pretty strongly that this is to be the last X-Men film. However, they are for sure doing a Wolverine spinoff movie, and perhaps a Magneto one, too. Halle Berry is quoted as saying she’s out of the series for good (collective sigh of relief), and it appears that Patrick Stewart is as well. If Xavier comes back, he comes back in another actor’s body. How convenient!
As for Rogue, count me in with the crew that sees the ending as ambiguous. As someone else pointed out, she only said she did what SHE wanted. It could be that taking Bobby’s hand was a way of telling him: “this is who I am, so we’re going to have to deal with it.” If they did decide to pursue this story line later, there could be some fun drama here, with them breaking up, leaving the door open for Gambit. But would that be an X-Men movie or a Rogue spinoff? Or a drama series on the WB?
Was I the only one who thought the Magneto scene at the end was really sad? He could move bridges, and now can barely rattle a chess piece? Yes, it’s hopeful that he can do even that, but still. Poor guy.
Trunk, I couldn’t believe they showed the Microplane in at least 3 separate shots, that I remember. It was so prominent that I thought for a moment it might come into play somewhere else in the movie. But did Microplane pay to show their product being used to shave off wing buds? I mean, ew. Not exactly zesting a lemon, is it?
Another egregious product placement: Mercedes. I don’t even remember the scene, but there are three trucks/cars/SUV type vehicles arranged artfully like a car commercial, with the big-ass Mercedes symbol smack in the middle of the screen. :rolleyes:
what did we miss?
We walked in less than 10 minutes after the scheduled start time, and we saw the younger Xavier and Eric talking to Jean’s parents. The parents asked something about a “cure,” IIRC, and then they called young Jean into the room.
Seems like we didn’t miss much, but did they have a title card or something ("# years ago," or some such?). Did I miss any conversation worth knowing about?
Figures that we’d pick the one movie theater in New York that doesn’t show a solid twenty minutes of ads and trailers in front of every summer blockbuster…
The scene with Xavier and Eric meeting with Jean was set twenty years before “the not too distant future” (as a later title card held).
[QUOTE=Otto]
The scene with Xavier and Eric meeting with Jean was set twenty years before “the not too distant future” (as a later title card held).
[/QUOTE]
Between those was a scene set ten years ago, showing Angel trying to go pluck himself.
The “not too distant future” was a bit of a ruse, I thought, suggesting some of the post-apocalyptic Sentinel stories, but no big deal.
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Between those was a scene set ten years ago, showing Angel trying to go pluck himself. 
/QUOTE]
Daddy Worthington: Son, I said to go fuck yourself.
-Joe
It was a pretty disappointing film, I thought. Rogue losing her powers really pissed me off. Ever since the first film, I’d been expecting a scene where she drains some super-strong mutant (Juggernaut would have been good) and goes on a rampage. Instead, we get one use of her power (in the training room at the beginning) and then she goes and neuters herself. Huge, huge missed opportunity. Offing Cyclops seemed dumb, too. Whatsisface doesn’t want to be in it anymore, so just get a different actor. It’s not like he’d really established any sort of a screen prescence in the first two films. And Halle Berry is just awful as Storm. I’m glad she doesn’t want the role any more. I wish she’d walked after the first one. I did like the bit where she electrocutes Callisto, and Callisto’s lip piercing gets red-hot. That and Colossus carrying the TV under her arm were two of the cooler small touches in the film.
Also, Jean: in the last film, they setup the whole Phoenix thing by having this cool fiery aura form whenever she used her powers. And Professor X sees a flaming bird under teh waves at the end of it that makes him think she might still be alive. This film, she is Phoenix for the whole thing, and what do we see? Bad eczema. What happened to the flames that, y’know, pretty much defined her as Phoenix? Dumb.
Angel, as others have pointed out, could have been cool, and he had an incredibly chilling intro, but he didn’t do anything for the rest of the film! Why did they even bother putting him in the movie? A lot of characters were underused, actually. Leech wasn’t a character, he was a plot device. Colossus, too. I’d have loved to see him fight Magneto. He’d do pretty poorly until her realized that if he deactivated his power, then it’s a hugely muscled twenty-something year-old versus a frail old man. Seeing him slug Ian McKellan in the face a couple of times would have been good for a laugh.
Eh. It was a good franchise while it lasted, but as always, the suits at Fox had to fuck it all up. They should have just handed Singer a blank check and walked away. The movie would have been ten times as good.
[QUOTE=Trunk]
Seems like the critics can’t get it straight on this movie. . .was it just non-stop action and mutants or was it too busy with storylines?
[/quote]
Who says it can’t be both? “Gee, we’d love to stop for characterization and depth and subtlety, but we’ve only got another 110 minutes left to cram in another three dozen plot points and four hundred mutants.”
X3 was the cinematic equivalent of “Visit ten European countries in three days.” Aw, you blinked at the wrong time and missed the Eiffel Tower!
[QUOTE=vaderspal]
what did we miss?
…
[/QUOTE]
Well, Galactus showed up, and the Red Skull was fought plus that cameo of the Avengers but other than that, not much.
About the pronounciation of Xavier’s name, why can’t it be “Xavier”? An “X” at the beginning of a word may be unfamiliar to English speakers, but it’s not impossible to pronounce. And no, it’s not the same as “Exavier” nor “Zavier”, but it’s similar to both.
On the whole iron-in-blood thing, Magneto’s powers work on metals. There is no metal in human blood. There are some atoms in human blood which are metallic in one form, but they’re not in that form in blood.
My impression of the movie, I wasn’t too impressed. It wasn’t totally worthless, but it was nowhere near as good as the first two. It had a feel of “We don’t want to make another movie in this series, so we’re going to break everything so nobody else can either”: There were just too many characters killed or de-powered. And I didn’t like Magneto’s interactions with the other mutants: “In chess, the pawns move first” is completely characteristic of Magneto, but some of the others should have started wondering whether he considered them pawns, too.
I did, however, like Kitty Pride. Her power, used unimaginitively, would still be pretty good. But she was clever enough to make it great. She’s clearly no match for Juggernaut in a toe-to-toe fight, so in a display of good sense uncharacteristic of Hollywood, she doesn’t go up against him in a toe-to-toe fight. She instead outwits and outmaneuvers him. And for those complaining that she wasn’t smart enough, remember: When she learns that Leech suppresses mutant powers, it takes her about three seconds to assimilate that information and form it into an effective plan to beat Juggy. If nothing else, she thinks fast in a crunch.
I just went to see this movie.
No, actually I’m mistaken. Just like I had a bad dream there was a second Highlander, I think I dreamt I saw X3. There really hasn’t been one made. Certainly not one where three of the best mutants either die or get changed to human in the first quarter of the film. Definitely not one where Scott dies with barely a line. And absolutely not one where Xavier dies accomplishing nothing.
Of course it couldn’t follow up X-2, since this one had absolutely no character development. And no way would they waste a cool character like Angel picking up a perfectly useless and better-off-dead father who created the “cure” to fix his own son.
And absolutely not one that was essentially a Wolverine vehicle.
Still, in my dream, Dr. Hank McCoy at least was everything I hoped for.
Stupid dream. Now I’m going to go see either brokeback mountain or Cars.
Hah, I walked out of there and said “He’s turned into george lucas!”
And I second Miller’s comments about a complete and utter waste of Rogue. And a neutering.
And yes, I felt really bad for Magneto.
I didn’t. I thought Magneto’s zapping was perfect. I always felt Scott was wasted, so his “death” didn’t bother me a bit. More depth with fewer mutants would have been nice, but we got a wonderful Beast, so it balances out.
But Jean was a joke.
Oh, it bothered me. Mainly because he never seemed to me to be “evil” in the other two movies. He had too much depth to be merely evil, he was more than a two-dimensional James Bond movie. He simply had a different outlook, a different view. I’m not sure what would have been a better fate; I’ll think on it, but that fate - reducing him to any old man - was pathetic and unfair.
[QUOTE=Miller]
Colossus, too. I’d have loved to see him fight Magneto. He’d do pretty poorly until her realized that if he deactivated his power, then it’s a hugely muscled twenty-something year-old versus a frail old man. Seeing him slug Ian McKellan in the face a couple of times would have been good for a laugh.
[/QUOTE]
I always liked that in the comics.
“I am Magneto, you are powerless before me and I will destroy you!”
"Oh yeah? ::fzzzt:: There, now I’m not metal anymore. ::smack!::
[QUOTE=silenus]
But Jean was a joke.
[/QUOTE]
Did you just say Gene-joke, because that’s considered racist in the mutant community, you know.
[QUOTE=Anaamika]
Hah, I walked out of there and said “He’s turned into george lucas!”
[/QUOTE]
Actually, he turned into Brett Ratner.
