Movie #49 - X-Men 3: The Last Stand

"Take a stand."

Alright... I will take a stand. I stand in protest to Marvel Productions from making anymore bad comic book movie adaptations. Stop it! I liked Spider-Man, but then you had to make that into a crappy franchise of poorly cast villains with bad acting to boot. You made everything under the sun in the Daredevil franchise - both movies we could've done without. You made 2 Hulk films now... and re-cast the actor portraying Bruce Banner / Hulk (Eric Bana first time around, now Ed Norton second time around). You seemed to have done well with Iron Man and that proves that casting does make perfect - Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark / Iron Man.

The list can go on. Your failed attempts at some other Marvel films such as Fantastic Four and Punisher are prime examples. Not to mention, you already did all of this in the early 1990's, back when everyone forgot about the original Punisher movie starring Dolph Lundgren (1989) or Captain America (1990), and Fantastic Four (1994). How many times are we going to hash out these poorly done films and bank on the success of teenagers and nerds like myself going to watch them in theatres or buy your DVD's.

Don't get me wrong, I used to collect comic books and my favourites have been Spider-Man, X-Men, and Batman (DC Universe). DC learned from their previous faux pas of the Batman sequels sans Tim Burton and finally did something right, re-vamping the prequels of the Batman storyline and casting those films with great performances and a killer script based on the Frank Miller Batman: Year One saga.

Back to X3, I like the casting of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, he actually resembles him quite nicely and you cannot go wrong with a blue Kelsey Grammar as Beast. Not to mention Rebecca Romijn in that murderous blue body suit as Mystique... someone was thinking there. In addition, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen as Professor X and Magneto are great ideas on the whole for the trilogy.

What was a bad decision is trying to cram as many X-Men into these 3 films as possible. The biggest fear with regards to the X-Men film adaptations is trying to develop full characters from the movies. Check out the Harry Potter franchise or even Lord of the Rings - this was accomplished, not only be strong scripts, but good casting and lengthy films.

X-Men has a number of core characters who should've been the focus of all 3 films - Wolverine, Storm, Jean Grey, Cyclops, Rogue, Magneto, Iceman, and Professor X. We as fans do not mind the peripheral side characters and villains, but please develop these characters through the films and do not just put a whole bunch of action over 2 hours. Not to mention, you missed out on some cool villains such as Mr. Sinister, Master Mold / The Sentinels, and Apocalypse... all are which would've been easily accomplished with the right voice over actors cast and killer CGI technology.

Brian Singer had it right to attempt to create some films from the X-Men franchise, but I think he didn't map out the progression of the character storylines and didn't anticipate it having to abruptly end in X3. Like in the comic books of the last 15-20 years of plot, we get way too much of Wolverine and little of no one else... if that were to be true, then branch out with some Hugh Jackman Wolverine movies and re-write the Sabertooth foil character to enhance his background... Marvel - you did it with Elektra, now why don't you try it with Wolverine?

So this is my last stand... unfortunately, it is the X-Men's as well... and we shouldn't see another film with this band of heroes until another full generation of teens and tweens becomes old enough to forget about this trilogy - give it 12-14 years at most.