Strong Like Stalin!

Borat the movie!

We saw X3 a couple of weekends ago. Despite the warnings, the bad reviews and the fanboy (and girl) hatred, we forged ahead. We weren't in denial - we were still curious. They were right. It sucked. We hated it. It was as though Brett Ratner glanced at a bunch of X-Men character profiles, then threw all of the X-Men comic books in a pile and took a huge dump on them and lit them on fire. "X-Men: Taking a Crap" is more like it.

For anyone familiar at all with the comic books and the characters, this was a huge travesty. The Phoenix saga is like, the pinnacle of Marvel storylines (at least to me). Jean Grey's death, her resurrection, her rise to ultimate power and her demise showed where a commercial comic book could go. In the films, I can (grudgingly) accept some of the retconning. I can accept that Jean joins the Brotherhood, that Kitty's not into Colossus, that Rogue and Iceman are dating, and that Nightcrawler's not even mentioned. I can even handle Psylocke joining the Brotherhood (she doesn't even get to show off her psychic knife!). But the way Cyclops, Professor X, Wolverine and Jean Grey's characters were handled was abominable. Talk about a 180! Yeah, I know Cyclops kind of sucks. He's definitely not my favorite character. But he's an integral character to the Phoenix saga, not a redshirt. And Professor X! C'mon, it's not the X-Men without the Professor. Yeah, he takes his leaves of absence, here and there, running off for a Shi'ar booty call with Lilandra and all that, but get real. And Wolverine. What have they done to Wolverine? My Wolverine would never have wept like a little bitch. The only woman he *might* have wept for would have been Mariko Yashida. Finally, there's Jeanie. Can we believe that she wakes up out of her hibernation to suddenly become the badass Dark Phoenix? Where's the conflict? The turmoil? The confusion? She certainly doesn't find it in Wolverine's arms.

Anyways, the first two were actually pretty good. It's a shame that this last one left such a bad taste in my mouth. Hopefully, the third Spiderman movie will be better. And although I was never into Superman, Superman Returns looks promising.