FILMBRATS - REVIEWS

At large society, and especially the government, is still at odds with mutants. Mutants are seen as menaces and scourges, whether they battle for good and harmony or for world domination and destruction. The government may have found a way to deal with the problem. It appears that they’ve developed an elixir that will convert mutants to their ordinary human form. It has been dubbed “the cure.” Good and evil alike are against this injection, but for vastly different reasons. But leave it to the bad guys to try to take drastic measures. Can the X-Men stop the villains while encouraging a wide-spread tolerance for mutants?

What could possibly be so bad about a movie directed by the man behind “Rush Hour 2” (Brett Ratner) and the writers of “xXx: State of the Union” (Simon Kinberg) and “Elektra” (Zak Penn)? Did you just vomit a little in your mouth, too? It probably could have been worse, but it definitely could have been a lot better. Here’s a simple, yet effective way to make the main plot much more involving and interesting. What if Magneto and Professor X rounded up their freak show troupes and joined forces to combat the evil that is the mandatory cure shot. How about just creating a more in depth comment on such topics the plot line seems to encourage, yet embarrassingly ignores, most notably how we treat people negatively based on their differences from us. What about throwing in something about a potential segregation solution (humans on one part of the city, mutants on the other)?

It seems like there were a lot of missed opportunities here. Not just in terms of depth and impact, but also in the lack of screen time for the new mutants. Granted, most of them are pretty lame. “I can tell what level mutant someone is.” Awesome. Can you make sandwiches with your mind, too, because I might get hungry later? There’s another guy who basically turns into a blowfish, with needles popping out of his body. Rock. But really, the less screen time given to Ben Foster (who plays Angel) the better. Really, though, it only felt like there were six people with an overwhelming amount of small cameos (the new people included). And I really don’t care about the angst ridden duo that is Pyro and Iceman. Sure we have the Beast playing a small and ultimately insignificant role. And we have those throwaway villains I mentioned earlier. Juggernaut is pretty worthless. Major players from earlier films are either rendered useless or just pushed to the side. A Sentinel appears at the beginning, but it’s not nearly as cool as you might think. The only way to make it worse would be to throw in Gambit and Jubilee. Oh, and no Nightcrawler. I guess he knew enough to teleport himself away from this garbage.

There’s just too much stuff going on, and little of it’s good. Even less really makes sense when you think about the big picture. There should be a mutant that goes around fixing plot holes. I would call him Construktor. I would imagine fans of the comic books would be even more disappointed than someone like me, who’s only seen the first two superior super hero movies with a passing knowledge of the people’s names. I can’t believe their favorite characters are truly represented in the ways they want them to be.

Somehow we escape with a movie that’s less than two hours long. They must have found a mutant with the power to condense. Too bad that same guy couldn’t make it worthwhile. Some of the action sequences were good, but there wasn’t really much of anything we haven’t seen before in the series. The movie holds your attention, but I think it’s probably just because you keep hoping it’ll get better at some point. And the ending. What the hell were they thinking? It was completely laughable the way everything seemed to wrap up nicely as if it were a half-hour sitcom. Don’t believe me? Stay through the end credits. Those last couple scenes nearly make it so the entire film was a waste of time (at least in terms of plot). Good thing this is the last. I don’t know if I could stand another one anymore.

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