I just wonder if Brett Rattner really suceeded in taking over the great Bryan Singer. I believe, and will always believe, that X-Men 2 was one of the best comic adaptation ever brought to screen. There was action, there was lots of moral lessons on it, and lots of emotional stuff. Now, X-Men 3 did make a blast, but it's the least developed of the trilogy. I enjoyed the film, yes, and I could say it boasts the recent century's wham-bam of special effects (as if Bruckheimer produced it). I was entertained by the mutants' powers, new characters and gripped by the film's one-hell-of-a-climax 20-minute ending. I was drowned by a big wave of action sequences (nope, not Poseidon, haven't seen that one yet) and was stunned by how Dark Phoenix played a big part of the film. Suddenly, it was pissing me off to realise that the movie was so short, only an hour and a half something, and that the film introduced so many characters yet leaving most of them undeveloped. Alright, it was sad after what happened to Professor Xavier because I didn't see it coming. I like the development of Sir Ian McKellen's Magneto in the last scene of the film. I appreciated Halle Berry standing up and say "will you people please let Storm do her thing?" But I think that's all. Others were remained in the dark. TOO BAD Warren Worthington III wasn't much of a focus. They should have made Angel looked much cooler, I mean, what's his power, only flying? His character was really underplayed and underused. Kitty Pride too. I adore Ellen Page but I think there's more to her than what we really see from our eyes. Cyclops, in my own opinion, had been the boringest mutant alive. Storm played a bigger part, okay. Wolverine was his usual self, a raging berserk. He did played the role well, though. Although his pre-battle talk was too much of a corny one, "We are the X-Men, blah blah blah..." Nonsense. Even Colossus was subtly played. I HATE WHAT THEY HAVE DONE TO MYSTIQUE. Actually, as what I have noticed in the past few films, Rebecca Romjin Stamos was one of the best actor around the X-Men convention. She's got blue stuff all around her yet she still acts perfectly, bringing a cutting edge to the blue temptress of a chameleon. And the rest, all fell to Brett Rattner's underlooked direction. By the way, where's Nightcrawler anyway? Why have they blasted him off from the plot? Was an X-Men movie bound to introduce a character and then wipe them off completely in the next sequel? Whatever. Jean Grey turning into the Dark Phoenix, for me, was one of the best highlights of the story. The filmmakers had done fairly well around it. Famke Jansen did a good job really, doing all the rage thingy. I was just a bit disappointed not seeing her in the film shouting "PHOENIX!" as what her character does in the comic animations. But still, the last sequence was brilliant over the devastated Golden Gate bridge. In the real sense now, X-Men: The Last Stand had the most captivating plot of all, judging from the past mutant movies. There was this "cure" as what they call that could mutate mutants back in their own selves, and politically speaking, the human government is promoting the said cure to mutants. Of course, some mutants object, some don't and rather become passive to the choice of being human. It's an engaging plot but sadly Leech's character wasn't all that elaborated. It highly reflects society nowadays, speaking of the cure to the mutated people (i.e. people with AIDS, homosexuals, black people, Jews, etc.) and the choice of being cured to become normal ones. Storm highly reacts on this saying that mutants aren't diseases. And now, it has become a choice, a final stand to what they believe is right.But then again, all goes down to Brett Rattner. Yes, I enjoyed the cinematic presentation. Yet, I couldn't escape the fact that X-Men movies meant so much more than just an action film. It needs a fluid emotional range that it deserves.

Rating: B+