X-men 3 - Thread - Update

[Vent-Axia]

Gonna see this tonight. Can't chuffing wait.

I hope it lives up to my expectations. It'd have to be seriously crap for me not to bloody love it though.

[patriot]

Just saw it now. Its good enough. I'm not sure if it follows the x men 3 story cause a few things happened in it that really suprised me.

[harlowlad]

I really liked it. Some bit frustrated me being a huge Marvel fanboy, but I was pleased with Iceman :-) ... Finally !!!!

Not as good as 2 but still a nice popcorn movie and would wanna see it again....enjoy !

[smithem]

Saw it.

Lots of characters, but not enough time spent on them all. And there's a few get-out clauses. Check after the credits!

[kwakpriest]

I hated it quite badly. Didn't stay for the post credit scene though - what was it?

[Lothar Hex]

I saw it today. I thought it was enjoyable, but nowehere near as good as the first two. And I'd agree there are too many characters in it. When this mutant called Arclight turns up near the end I went "Wait, was she actually in the movie at all until now?".

Decent, and enjoyable, but not as good as the other two. I did Enjoy Kelsey Grammar as Beast (watching Fraiser maul someone = hilarious) and Vinnie Jones as the Juggernaut for their sheer comedy value. I'll be buying it on DVD when it's out.

Post credit scene:

Xavier isn't "dead". It looks like he transferred his mind into the body of that brain dead guy he was showing to his pupils when he was talking about morality.

[Conor@CE]

SOME SPOILERS

Just back from the film. It's... decent. It's no Spider-Man 2, but still, it's no trainwreck like Daredevil or something. I think the problem was there was too much going on - the 'cure' storyline and its ramifications, the Phoenix, all the new mutants - to adaquately cater for everything. New characters arrive, but are rarely fleshed out (Juggernaut=cockney lout, Callisto's bunch=goths, Archangel=blank pretty young thing). It was cool seeing someone like Archangel, but he did nothing. Hank McCoy was brilliant though; Grammer suited him perfectly, and he got some good screen time.

The Phoenix story (which was mega in the books) was woefully underexploited; it only picked up near the end in the awesome scene with Wolverine (that was very reminiscent of Morrison's famous #150). Only then did I think that this was the great force from the comics I'd read. And the ethics etc. of the cure got brief mentions only.

Nothing was bad about the film (even if the dialogue was a little generic at times), it's just that there was little that jumped out at me. Maybe it's because the novelty of seeing the X_Men on the screen isn't what it once was, 3 films later, but also because it was kind of hum drum, normal Hollywood stuff. A few flashes of brilliance though.

[Roboplegic Wrongcock]

Damm you for this Fox...

[Gwynster]

WOLVERINE DIES. HA HA HA!

Seriously though, it was pretty good. I have a feeling they had to go crazy in the cutting room though, as there were some rather mad scene edits going on. One to get an Extended Edition of, I'd say.

I'm quite happy I'm not a fan of the comics, though. I'd probably be tearing my hair out at some of it (like I was in Batman Begins ).

[kamrantaz]

My opinion of this is the same as the last two. Nice to see wolverine on screen but everything else fucking stinks.

The films were always pretty "small" and lacked impact. I dont know why they're so popular. Also agree that there was too much of Storm. Berry is fit but she needs to stick to posing for pictures. Shes a shit actress.

Cyclops was always boring but kinda cool. So much of this series is wasted. They need to start from scratch with 4. Keep picard, frasier, wolverine, cyclops, jean grey and re-cast everyone else, especially rogue, and introduce fucking gambit you cunts.

[MrPogo]

My main gripe with it was the way they

killed off so many main characters, making me think "Wow, they're really wrapping up the series here!", then still left it with a 'look, potential for a sequel!'.

[Lothar Hex]

OH FFS.

The truth: People who do not know how to spell 'Rogue' have shit opinions. Yes, I'm also talking to you, you bunch of 'Rouge Squadron' haters. Gah!

Or Wolverine.

[Sabreman]

I don't have a problem with Berry at all, I think she's fine as Storm. I agree with Gwynster about the editiing, there was definitely a feeling of them trimming every single scene down to it's absolute minimum. Maybe a bit of BBFC tomfoolery too - there is a shot of Logan hitting the ground after taking quite a bit of damage that barely registers before it skips to the next scene.

[Gambit]

and introduce fucking gambit you cunts.

He would've been in it if Josh Holloway had accepted the role instead of bitching that the character is "too similar to Sawyer".

I do wonder how the hell Ratner chose which new mutants too introduce in this film. I mean, Beast and Angel are well known characters, but why Callisto and Stacy X over Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch??? And now I hear that even that cunt Spyke from the X-Men Evolution cartoon makes an appearance.

[kamrantaz]

Sawyer with a french accent FTW

Rogue was fucking shite, no question about.

What pissed me off is all the female heroes and villans were like 5'3" tall. I want 5'7" minimum with mondo midrif action you CUNTS!

They should have got Kira Knightly put on a southern accent and get her for rogue

As it stands the only females that looked the part in this series were Femk as Jean Gray and Kelly Hu as thatmade up female wolverine

oh yeah they should have got a real red head for jean grey...like Nicole Kidman

[SuperCat]

Right, so all this killing.. I take it, it DOESN'T setup the whole Gladiator/Apocalypse/Sinister story?

I would imagine those story lines would be too epic for the current films.

[smithem]

naah. Especially good, as otherwise we'd have some half-baked sci-fi/comic thing which would be TERRIBLE.

[kamrantaz]

How the fuck can they kill off cyclops, jean grey and prof X, ok the prof will be back but fucking hell its shite. makes me angrier just thinking about it. What was the point as well? (killing off cyclops)

[El Spatula]

Quick point. It's kinda based more off the Ultimate Universe than the normal one. Hence Rogue not being super strong and invulnerable and Juggernaught being a mutant rather than magical in nature.

They need to stop with the Magneto being stopped by plastic for fucks sake. He can control magnetic fields. Not just metal. He's kinda he Unified Theory embodied. They need Uber Magneto from the comics in which the only way to take him down is by attacking him as a team. He should be a MAJOR threat. On par with Jean. Not some pussy who kinda goes "Oh noes plastic!". Or I'm a Magneto fanboy.

Anyways apart from Wolverine being a bit of a wuss (except in the end bit which was awesome) and Magneto not being utterly badass I enjoyed it. Not loads but in a 3/5 kinda way.

Juggernaught was horribly miscast though, but somehow worked.

[Steely]

I went to see this today as people have said it’s a good popcorn movie. But it could have been so much more. The fights could have been longer and more of them. I mean the iceman and Pyro fight was especially lack lusted, it must have lasted a good 40 seconds although it was the first time we seen him fully iced it was still a let down. There is too much of the '3 fights going on at the same time' for my tastes. More focus on individual mutants and not the whole bloody gang please, it only seems to be Wolverine that steals the show.

Oh and human Mystique FTW!

[MrPogo]

Here's a semi-coherent account of the life of an extra on the film, from another message board I use (contains a couple of spoilers, for anyone who hasn't seen the film yet).

It's funny. I worked for an entire week on this movie. Well, I didn't really work. My agent hired someone who's in the movie now. And I went to visit my agent. So I was on set for a day and they asked me if I wanted to do prosthetics since I was bored anyway. So they put this green snake skin on me, blonde mohawk, the rest of my hair was covered with latex to make it look like i was bald there. i had vampire teeth, yellow eye contacts and a mouth prosthetic that made my lips look a bit fuller and swollen (so that the teeth were visible). I wore a skirt. I was just standing around but it was fun and a good way to pass the time. But it was freezing. My agent gave me this map how to get to the filming location. Wasn't supposed to post this anywhere but the movie will come out next week anyway so it doesn't matter now.

In the scene Ian McKellen was standing up on the hill and famke Jansen was there next to him in a beautiful dark red dress. And she's this Phoenix now. She sent this wave through us mutants and we literally had to stand there pretend like a giant wave was going through us for like 5 minutes without stopping. The only thing that helped me were the big fans blowing at us but since it was filmed in a forest I got stuff in my eyes and that part was a pain, but it was just hilarious. Ian McKellen was standing behind the camera the entire time and even he laughed. We ended up shooting the scene for 2 hours. Just the blowing part. By the end of it I had so much dirt in my eyes and mouth (because of the huge fans blowing at us) they needed to check us later to see if we're ok and there were no eye infections or anything. It was a surprising thing I randomly did while I was there. Normally I didn't do much in front of the camera unless it was modeling.

Ian McKellen had this really long speech and he kept messing it up or his voice would start breaking because it was freezing. And he couldn't say "homosapiens" right so they kept reshooting it. We had over 60 takes of that scene by the end of it. I hated the whole speech after all that. At first I thought it was amazing and Ian is truly one of my favorite actors ever so he really did a great job. But hearing it that many times....arghh! The speech was just about the humans wanting to eradicate the mutants. he says something like "They want to cure us, but I say we are the cure."

After that I flew back to NYC. A month after my agent asked if I wanted to work there again in a Golden Gate Bridge scene (which they built a model of in Vancouver and filmed against green screen). I didn't go though because I already quit modeling and with that I quit anything related to that industry. So I didn't do it.

You know what the sad thing is though? I never watched X1 or X2 before I was on this set. After the first day of filming I rented both and watched them till 4 am. I went to set at 6. It was crazy but I loved the movies and I liked knowing what it's about then. Although I didn't understand how Jean could be there when she died in the second one. But one of the guys from the crew explained she came back as the Phoenix. No one on set was allowed to talk about outside the set. We couldn't bring our cell phones, no cameras, we were checked afterwards to see if anyone stole parts from the set. It was so top secret at the time, I loved it.

[tonymg]

I saw it today and wasn't expecting much but really enjoyed it. I agree with what people have said about most of the new characters lacking depth and its not a patch on X-men 1 or 2 but overall I thought it was an enjoyable summer action film. I definitely plan on going to see it at least a couple more times

I really liked:

- Wolverine taking out all the guards at Magneto's camp

-Beast's fighting

-Although I thought Vinny Jones was really awful I liked the scene with him beating the shit out of wolverine

-The whole of the final battle

I don't quite get what people were expecting with the Dark Phoenix storyline. It's impossible to translate the comic storyline into a film without going into the realms of unbelievability. As for another sequal I'm in two minds. I'd love another one (provided they get a better director/script together) but having Magneto as the bad guy again in the 4th means retreading old ground. If they do I hope they don't have Gambit as one of the new characters, to me he's always been a poor man's Wolverine and the accent would sound ridiculous.

[noizu]

Gah! Spent the whole film waiting for some nice fire effects to flare up around Jean Grey, kept thinking they must be saving it for the big reveal at the end or something... but what the fuck??

Who thought some generic evil veiny face effects would look cooler than a huge firebird thing?

Really disappointed by that, Janssen really looked the part otherwise and some of her telekinesis effects were really good, but still... huge missed opportunity there. Especially when the last shot of X-Men2 was a big fiery reflection over the lake!

Some alright bits in the film but felt like a a rush job overall.

The FX model of Colossus was less impressive than in the last film too, weirdly enough

[sir stiff_one]

And btw, Anna Paquin's a very nice Rogue. Completely unlike the Rogue we were used to, but she plays her role with flair. And she's cute too.

Would that be the kind of flair that Bonna has in Big Brother. The dull boring kind.

[Alex W.]

That was pretty enjoyable. The telekinetic belt removal got an impromptu round of applause.

[Tangent]

Saw this last night. I liked it a lot. I think, as has been said before, it could have used a little longer in production and been 15 mins longer to flesh out the characters more.

But it is FAR from a bad film. It’s a lot of fun, and a great popcorn film.

[Treble]

I used to read X Men comics, and the only thing I'm disappointed with in the whole saga is the lack of some decent uses of powers. None of them are clever, intelligent or original, bar Nightcrawler's sequence.

A good example is Cyclops: you see him training, smoothly taking out little flying disks with aplomb. This lasts about 3 seconds. During all his action sequences he either has his visor ripped off or he just does big, wide and unfocused optic blasts.

Wolverine was the most accurate, I suppose, in terms of usage of abilities, but even that's poiled by having a crappy Sabretooth. You can't put Wolvie's powers into context unless you've got a smirking, more powerful psychopathic version of him walking around. Using a wrestler just because he was tall was a fucking joke.

So, they can kill characters off, change their personalities, change their motivations, even change their abilities and I don't care. But at least use the ones they do have well. As an earier poster said, someone should be doing their homework and watching The Incredibles.

[sir stiff_one]

I thought the use of powers was the best thing about X3.

[Gambit]

Kelly Hu as thatmade up female wolverine

She wasn't made up. Lady Deathstrike is a well known X-Men villain, its just that in the movie she looked nothing like she does in the comics.

[DJ_Mike]

I have to agree about the Phoenix part of the storyline - was really expecting her to burst into flames when the whole tearing thing started at the end - hell, it would have made for a fantastic effect to have people dissolving all around and flames roaring everywhere, but I guess they felt that would draw attention away from the point of the scene or something, I dunno.

Actually, in terms of sheer power, I actually found myself enjoying the first Phoenix sequence in the house most of all during the film