I'd seen pictures online, but I couldn't help to laugh when Beast showed up. It was even worse when he started talking. This isn't Beast, this is Fraiser painted blue. Similarly, Vinnie Jones didn't play Juggernaut. He played Vinnie Jones.
It's kind of a tradition in X-films to make secondary villains irrelevant, but in this movie this also expanded to the heroes. It wasn't just Angel. NONE of the new characters are relevant to the story. That's why they could just take out Gambit when Sawyer from Lost said no: he would have been as irrelevant as Beast, for example. What was the point of introducing Beast? Just so he could stand there with the rest and make witty Fraiser one liners, as if he was a well established character.
The personalities aren't even developed. The Danger Room scene at the beginning was the perfect set up to show some character development in Kitty and Colossus. Instead, they kinda disappear during the middle part of the movie, and the "change" happens for Wolvie (who goes from working alone, as a sub teacher, to working with a team, as a leader... this wouldn't be entirely bad, if the change in him was justified in the least). Can anyone tell me why I'm supposed to care about what happens to Kitty during the end battle, if she's a character we've barely seen? At least she got to save the day... they didn't even try with Colossus.
Most of the old characters got fucked. Cyclops has an off-panel death, probably because he didn't sign on for a fourth movie. So much dramatic potential is wasted. Iceman's rivalry with Pyro, for example, comes down to a kame-hame-ha fight. Rogue gets the cure because she feels jealous of an 11 year old girl, and in the end it's like "Oh, okay". The only relationship that was handled well was Prof X and Magneto... but, of course, that goes to hell when he Xavier gets killed off way too early for his death to have any real significance.
I understand why they wouldn't want to use the cosmic entity explanation for Phoenix, but they just pulled the multiple personality explanation out of their asses. There's nothing in the previous movies that could even hint this was coming. About the only thing that was properly set up in this movie was the post-credits epilogue, which was clever, but what was the purpose of that scene, other than shock value?
The dialogue sucked. I can understand if the President speaks only in cliches, I mean, that actually does happen in the real world. But Magneto turns into a parody of himself because of the way his ideas are expressed.
To end this predictable rant, I gotta say they did an awful job recapping the events of the previous movies, and explaining who the characters are. I saw the movie with a friend who hadn't seen the previous two, and I had to keep explaining stuff to him. Like Rogue, why can't she touch people? Oh, so she's going out with Iceman? For a casual movie goer, watching this movie is like catching a soap on TV.
