I was surprised at how much I liked the first X-MEN film when I saw it at the cinema: it really did transport me back in time to when I was a kid loving the Claremont/Byrne/Austin comic so much. But I had my reservations, mainly at turning Magneto into a Bond villain (Mags points giant death ray at world, X-Men stop him, blah blah blah). The second one was better again, but made pretty much the same mistakes (villain points death ray at massed ranks of humanity: oh no, think of the children!).
So X-MEN 3 - what chance does it have, especially with such a dodgy hack at the helm, and the writing team behind such classics as XXX2 and FANTASTIC FOUR (ugh)? Well, if the first finished moving images are anything to go by, it looks pretty much like more of the same. The new guy apes Singer's portentious visual stylings, and what little I could sense of a plot seems to be an all-out war between the philosophies of Xavier and Magneto, with mankind stuck between the opposing forces. Early script leaks that Cyclops karks it seem to be true too, which is daft: the character has always been the book's compass, not Xavier, and certainly not Wolverine. Plus, it should always be Cyclops that offers Jean Grey's Phoenix the hope of redemption. Oh, and I always thought that James Marsden was a pretty neat lookalike for Neal Adams' Scott Summers (always my favourite era of the comic). Kelsey Grammer's Beast looks somewhere between great and kinda dopey, as does Vinnie Jones in the Juggernaut armour, which makes him look like he has big ol' swinging tits. Famke Janssen looks eff-one-tea as a butcher's dog in her underwear, and poor old Halle Berry finally has a decent looking barnet. And loath as I am to let my critical judgement be swayed by the quality of the female talent on show in a movie, I have to add that Rebecca Romijn: hubba-hubba, honk-honk, yowsa! That said, it was impossible to tell if the script has any of the grasp of character that made the first two movies so appealling (and made the occasionally cheesy make-up and visual effects forgiveable), as it seemed intent on establishing and maintaining a bombastic tone.
So, interesting, but I reserve judgement.