X3

Warning!
This post contains spoilers about X-Men: The Last Stand. If you haven't seen X3 yet, don't read this post!
(Of course, if you haven't seen X3 yet, it's a wonder you're reading this blog at all....)

Yes, I was one of the millions who saw X-Men: The Last Stand over the weekend. Although I didn't like it quite as well as the first two movies, it was generally satisfactory. Here are my impressions.

The Good
* The Iceman/Pyro fight. The effects here were decent, and it was great to see Bobby all iced up. The closing dialogue was great, too. Pyro: "You should have stayed in the school." Iceman: [after taking Pyro out with a head-butt] "You never should have left."
* Beast. When I first heard they were casting Kelsey Grammer in the roll, I had my doubts. I was wrong. He was perfect. The voice, the attitude, the intonation, the "Oh my stars and garters" were all perfect. Whenever I read X-Men from now on, I'll probably hear Frasier's voice for Beast.
* Mystique's revenge. After being Magneto's right-hand woman (and lover?), he casts her away when she loses her powers. Big mistake. This woman is not someone to have as an enemy, no matter who you are.
* Kitty. I love the way she took out Juggernaut. Classic.
* The Fastball Special. "Hey, Tin Man, how's your throwing arm?"
* Magneto. For the first time, we really see him as a villain. Yes, he's been annoying and arrogant before, but here we get to see him for what he really is: a racist and a ruthless b@stard.

The Bad
* The effects. Too much of the CGI looked like CGI: the bouncing blue Beast, Jean's vaporization effect (especially in the big fight), and so on. Per a conversation in the gaming group last week, there's no excuse for poor CGI in a big-budget movie anymore.
* The death of Charles Xavier. Sure, his "I want you to take over the school someday" speech to Storm was a fair bit of foreshadowing. But to have him die so early in the movie felt anticlimactic. I suppose the plot required his early demise, but I'd have liked to see more of him.
* The death of Scott Summers. Leader of the X-Men, Charles Xavier's prize pupil and chosen successor, he doesn't even rate an on-screen death. At least it's consistent with the comics: nobody gets screwed by his writers quite like Cyclops.
* Jean's descent into madness. We didn't get to see enough of what made her evil: the battle within between her humanity and her lust for power. A few moments inside Jean's mind and/or a well-placed mental flashback or two would have made a world of difference.

The Ugly
* Jean's appearance. Granted, the makeup people did a good job of making Jean look creepy. But the Phoenix is supposed to be a creature of great passion - great joy and great rage. But she didn't look passionate in most of her scenes. She looked constipated.

Overall, I give this movie a B-. The plot wasn't as deep and the dialogue seemed forced much of the time, but there were also a lot of bits in there that kept the movie true to the franchise. In general, it was entertaining. I'll undoubtedly buy it, probably later this year when the three-movie box set comes out.