The X-Men are back. Well, that is, most of them are back. Noticably absent is Nightcrawler who played such a prominent role in X-2. I was very disappointed in this for Nightcrawler was one of my favorite characters, but I was happy to finally see Beast (and not just because he is Dr. Hank McCoy). While watching the movie, I had no idea who played Beast but knew that I recognized the voice somehow. I won't spoil it if you want to be surprised (as I was) when you read the credits.
X-2 was the first of the movies to kill off a character in Jean Grey. However, X-3 decided to bring her back for a bit so that it can instead kill off a bunch of other key characters. Why? I don't know. Maybe they want to whittle down the number of characters to a manageable size. Maybe they just want to tick off people whose favorite characters go by the wayside. Or perhaps there is some other agenda. In any case, it is disconcerting. But I digress...
Scott/Cyclops is able to locate Jean Grey when he begins to hear whispers. Some backstory into Jean Grey's character shows that she has perhaps the greatest mutagenic power of anyone but that it is hard to control. Her resurrected self is something of a split personality...the new one being a passionate, hot-tempered, and dangerously out-of-control force of power called The Phoenix. She is too powerful for Cyclops to handle, and he is vaporized.
Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen) are two old friends who are inimately aware of Jean's powers; however, the two are at odds on how to deal with it. Xavier wants to keep it under control while Magneto wants to use her destructive power against the humans. Meanwhile, the humans have found a way to take away a mutant's powers. To some mutants, such as Rogue, this is a dream come true. To others, this is a huge threat to freedom and individuality. A showdown between humans and Magneto's mutant army is inevitable, and it is up to Charles Xavier and his X-Men to stop them.
This movie was exciting, action-packed, and developed a couple of the characters quite well. It also introduced a couple of new characters such as Beast, Juggernaut, and Angel.
However, I was disappointed in the removal of some characters, that Bryan Singer was no longer at the helm, and the lack of interesting bad-guy mutants. On this latter note, most of the mutants under Magneto's influence didn't really seem to have any powers at all. The only way that you really knew that they were bad was that they dressed in goth. This just seemed silly to me.
However, I can't complain too much because I want to see more of these movies. I know that while full-fledged sequels are not in the works, there are spin-offs of Wolverine and Magneto being planned, and I can't wait!
Not the greatest of the X-Men movies, but definitely worth seeing.
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