Before the production of X-Men and X-Men
2, Bryan Singer was a tender-
foot
to the world of comic books, yet, before long, he knew all about the
people with special powers, people who, with a tipper-tap of their
fingers, could reduce multi-million-dollar developments to rubble and
make whole cinema audiences disappear. Yet, these weren’t mutants,
no super-powers did they have, no… these people were simply
internet-savvy comic-clutching renegades; so protective of their beloved
X-Men that they probed the young Singer’s direction ceaselessly.
They basically frightened the crap out of him.
Luckily for Singer, he went on to make two big-budget movies as rich in character-detail as it was in ‘why can’t I have adamantium claws?’-isms. Yet imagine, if you will, the shock and disenchantment of the geek-community to learn, one morning, awaking from their Star Wars bedspreads, that their man Singer would no longer be directing X-Men 3, and would instead be replaced by the man responsible for Mariah Carey videos and the movie career of Chris Tucker.
That man was Brett Ratner, whom, after a tip off from Singer, was also vigilant of the commercial and critical threat of the mighty fanboy. And therein lies X-Men 3’s dilemma. So worried, it seems, was Ratner and the producers in appeasing the X-Men fans in Singer's absence, they’ve made the error of throwing too many mutants into the broth, or whatever the saying is…
New characters, of course, are cool. But what the original X-Men taught us was that giving your characters depth, range, and an intriguing back story (Wolverine’s military experiments, Magneto’s holocaustic experience) makes the audience care; if you introduce a mutant porcupine whose main story-arc is his battle with his own verbal articulation, no-one will give a single slurp of their super-sized Pepsi.
The plot concerns a mutant cure for a mutant populace. Oddly, X Men 3 is almost 30mins shorter than the previous instalments, with my budget-calculationometre, the screentime-to-cost ratio is somewhere in the region of $1.5 million-per-minute. Why, then, cram your film full of barely introduced characters that are often mediocre (Angel) and at best, blue (Beast)? Also, audiences must maintain a certain level of composure when swallowing down hammy one-liners, yet, there can few with strong enough stomachs to resist the urge to spontaneously vomit when Vinnie Jone’s Juggernaut opens his mouth. Woeful in a more ubiquitous sense is John Powell’s overwrought X-Men III score, which manages to clog up far too many ‘emotional’ moments, i.e. the inevitable: ‘We’re X-Men!’ speech.
Yet, for producers and a director mindful of keeping their inherited audiences ‘happy’ there are more than one, (actually there’s about five) moments that are genuinely shocking. It’s unfortunate that I can’t go into specifics, but there are major moments when you ask: ‘Have they really just done that?’. In actuality, the first two thirds of the film are fantastic. There’s a pleasing ’20 years ago’ opener; seeing a slightly computer-rejuvenated Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart, pre-wheelchair) and a crimson-suited Magneto (Sir Ian McKellen) enjoying a spot of friendly banter as they visit a prepubescent Jean Grey (later Phoenix, Famke Janssen) at her idyllic suburban home.
Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine may only be a shadow of his brooding self in X1, and mainly serves to give the majority of the quips, but he still manages to hold an affecting presence; as with early on, talking to a distraught Cyclops (James Marsden) about the unbeknown-to-be-not-so-dead Jean Grey, (Cyclops: “Not everyone heals as quickly as you, Wolverine”). Wolverine is also given a plentiful bout of action sequences, including one with a mutant who can generate and throw lethal pine-cones, or something. Yet it’s Famke Janssen as Jean Grey, a.k.a. Dark Phoenix who is the real revelation, and there can’t be many actresses capable of being as intermittently alluring and deeply-malevolent with each twist and turn. Kudos to the writers (even as far back as Stan Lee, who gets another cameo) for creating such a genuinely fated character, and kudos again to the X-Men III crew for making her appear so, well… evil.
Where Ratner outshines Singer, is with the action. But it’s a shame, then, that the final battle (bad mutants vs. humans vs. good mutants) is such a puddle of clichéd tripe. Often, films save their cheesiest lines for their money-shots, and X3 is no exception, spitting them out with a shocking earnestness. We’re treated to Iceman vs. Pyro’s “You should have stayed in school!”, Magneto’s: “Oh, they’ve learned…” and most appalling of all: “I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!” in which Vinnie Jones seems to attempting an impression of that belligerent school-girl from Little Britain. Ratner should have taken the Singer route and kept his henchmen mute.
In summary, X-Men 3 isn't (as everyone seems to say) nearly as bad as it could have been post-Singer. Yet there are far too many lapses in taste towards the film’s final reels (and the blatant plug for X:4) to rate this as a genuine companion to the first two instalments. As for ‘The Last Stand’, let’s hope that if there is an X:4, it’ll be done with a sincerity and restraint for special-effects over character-development. Besides, the Wolverine and Magneto spin offs sound more interesting anyway.