, director Bryan Singer crafted a thoughtful summer blockbuster, an ode to superheroes and their fundamental mutant differences which cause them to be both lauded and ostricized. Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and his team of X-Men clashed with Magneto s (Ian McKellan) evil Brotherhood for mutant supremacy, while simultaneously fighting a US Senator who wished to pass the Mutant Registration Act, which would force mutants to expose themselves to a hostile human population. In the 2003 sequel, - which was the rare film to exceed its original source material in quality - the X-Men and the Brotherhood joined forces to battle against a US General hellbent on wiping all mutants off the face of earth.
In the supposedly final installment of the franchise, , our merry band of mutants wage war against a force far more sinister than any they ve come across before: new director Brett Ratner. With Singer defecting to helm the upcoming , the studio drafted Ratner to take the reins of their valuable franchise. Unfortunately, with his inability to craft a coherent story line without assaulting the senses, Brett Ratner has single-handedly mutated the X-Men franchise into something I never thought possible: boring.
Bursting with too many characters and too little plot, is a pointless, uninvolving mess. The film starts promisingly enough, opening twenty years in the past, as Charles Xavier and Magneto visit a pre-teen Jean Grey at her suburban home to convince her to enroll at Xavier s School for Gifted Youngsters. This amusing and charming flashback references a time when Xavier and Magneto were still friends, and is a nice reminder that, despite their ideological differences, they were once (and still are) two sides of the same coin.
Ultimately less successful is the film s second opening flashback. In this scene, a father, Warren Worthington (Michael Murphy), hears his son crying in the bathroom. Frantically breaking down the door, he sees the young boy holding a knife; the frightened, whimpering child has severed a pair of wings from his own back.
The floor is covered with feathers and blood. Jump forward to the not too distant future of the X-Men, and Worthington has created a cure for mutanism. Who will he test it on?
His grown son, of course! The child, who now goes by the mutant name Angel (Ben Foster), sports a 16 foot wingspan and boy-band good looks. Of course, Angel escapes from his father s attempts to cure him, smashing through a window and majestically soaring away to safety.
And, and and, that s it. Yep, Ratner quickly abandons this intriguing idea of a mutant who fears and hates his developing powers so much that he s willing to self-mutilate, and a father who is willing to test an experimental drug on his own flesh and blood in a vain attempt to make his son normal. It s an interesting way to introduce a new mutant, but the filmmakers fail to craft anything resembling character development for Angel during the remaining 100 minutes.
If you ve seen the trailers for , you ve seen the extent of Angel s involvement in the film. He doesn t get much more screen time than that. He s completely wasted, and a potentially interesting character is ignored.
Of course, mutants young and old take an interest in this apparent cure. The gentle and urbane Dr. Hank McCoy (Kelsey Grammer) is a big, blue, furry animal, also known as Beast, and he s the token mutant member of the US Cabinet.
He s annoyed that the cure was developed behind his back by the US government. Others, like Storm (Halle Berry), decry the cure because mutantism isn t a disease. Magneto, a Holocaust survivor, views the cure as another form of genocide.
The mysterious source of the cure is a young bald boy, Jimmy (Cameron Bright), who is being held on Alcatraz Island. Jimmy has the ability to block a mutant s powers once they get in close proximity to him. Threatened, Magneto decides that the boy must be destroyed, so he amasses a mutant army to assist him his task.
Naturally, the X-Men, led by Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), race to San Francisco in an effort to reach the boy before Magneto has a chance to inflict any harm. Subtlety in pacing and exposition are foreign concepts to Ratner, the director of such gems as and , director Bryan Singer crafted a thoughtful summer blockbuster, an ode to superheroes and their fundamental mutant differences which cause them to be both lauded and ostricized.
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