Well, this weekend (Friday), I went with some friends to the opening of X-Men 3: The Final Stand. Note, if you don't want to know any of the movie, I have some minor movie spoilers below. Be warned, not that I think it really matters.
I've been a long-time fan of the X-Men series and I loved the first 2 feature length movies. I adored the old television cartoons and read quite a few of the comics as a kid. Given that each previous movie had superb special effects, introduced great and true-to-story characters, and "plots" that were very much in-line with original stories, I had fairly high expectations of this movie. That is, although I hadn't heard much by way of reviews, I WANTED this to be a fantastic movie.
It wasn't.
While I never expect deep plots in my superhero movies, this was terrible. There were SO many plot lines, none of them could develop. There were so many things I wanted to know more about, but they never went any where. Very disappointing. It left me with questions all along the way.
Second, while the special effects were good, there wasn't much that you couldn't have seen in other movies. Much of the movie was a combination of the Matrix movies and previous X-Men movies. Unfortunately, even the characters introduced in this installment didn't have powers that allowed for anything flashy on the screen.
Third, one of my favorite things about these movies is the introduction of new characters. I was skeptical about Kelsey Grammer being Beast from the beginning, and it proved me right. He was terrible. Completely unconvincing. Besides that, he looked terrible. It was like someone pasted a beard (and other hair) on Kelsey, painted him blue and put him in a grotesque fat-suit. Juggernaut was quite imposing and looked good, but didn't really do anything. I would have liked to have seen Colossus more. Rogue was non-existent.
Finally, while I understand that Jean Grey (actually the Phoenix, in this version) was supposed to be manic-depressive, etc, it didn't allow her character to really develop any dimension. She seemed flat, almost boring, even though she had a huge role - she kills Cyclops, the Professor, and just about everyone else before... Well, no need to spoil THAT one.
It's not to say that it was ALL bad. It was just NOTHING near what I wanted. There were some good moments - Jean Grey had some crazy scenes. Magneto moving the Golden Gate Bridge was a trip.
But all in all, I'd save the money for the theater trip and rent it. Granted, I'll be purchasing the DVD myself, but more to round out my collection than because of its quality.
Later.