Exceptionally Uncaught

The best way to describe X-Men 3 is to say it's a sequel. X-Men was a great movie, and everyone I know was pleasantly surprised when X-Men 2 turned out to be just as good if not better then the original. I had high hopes for X-Men 3, but it turn out to just be a sequel.

That's not to say it wasn't good, it's just that they fell into the trap most sequels do - it was like the original but more. More action, more mutants, more explosions, more More MORE! But I did enjoy it - it was a good sequel, it just was no X-Men 2.

Some Of The Good:

• The casting. It's always been pretty great, and this time round it was no different. Kelsey Grammer was perfect for Beast (unlike what Penny Arcade had suspected). I couldn't imagine anyone but Vinnie Jones playing Juggernaut.
  
• Finally some of the students get to start being X-Men. Iceman, Rogue, Colossus and Kitty Pride all get uniforms and get treated like part of the team. Nice to see.
• Raiding the prison and on the Golden Gate Bridge were perfect Magneto for me - unnecessary but big and showy, and demonstrate just how powerful he is.
  

Some Of The Bad:

• There are other characters apart from Wolverine and Storm. Yes, I know you're paying them both the bulk of the money, but we've had lots of Wolverine in the last two movies, and frankly Halle Berry is not worth more than a few minutes screen time, especially not if it means cutting Nightcrawler.
  
• Any one of the three main plots would have been fine for the movie. But doing all three at once was a bit dumb.
• On the one hand, they tried to introduce lots of new mutants. On the other hand, they didn't really bother developing anyone other than Beast. It would have been nice to have more than 6 X-Men for the final battle, but the army of "hey, check out my random power!" got old pretty fast. Part of what I really like about X-Men is characters using their powers in clever and different ways. If we've only got enough time to find out what their power is before they're punched through a wall, that can't really happen.

If you enjoyed the first two X-Men movies, then you should definitely go and see number 3.

3/5