With the new Wolverine film kicking off the summer blockbuster movie season a couple of weeks ago, we thought it’d be interesting to look back on the X-Men film franchise and how it’s managed to find mixed reactions from audiences over the years–particularly the last installment, X-Men: The Last Stand. It’s probably safe to say that a lot of fans see the entire franchise falling victim to the law of diminishing returns, while others might find it wholly adequate as just-above-average comic book movie fare, but how do you know where you stand?

Being the simple outfit we are, SPJ decided to share a couple of different viewpoints on the topic. Scott and I go over our reactions to the film and how it’s affected the X-Men universe and of course, you’re welcome to join in and share your thoughts. Read on and watch the sparks fly!

Scott: X-Men 3 is SO bad!

I haven’t seen X4: X-Men Origins: Wolverine: Logan’s Revenge: The New Batch or whatever it’s called that made a whole bunch of money on the kickoff weekend to the 2009 movie season, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy it a lot more than 2006′s downright disrespectful X3: X-Men: United Again: The Last Stand or whatever it’s called. I hate to be the nerd who bitches about unfaithfulness to source material, but X3XMUATLS is an embarrassing example of studio interference at its worst, using the familiar names of a comic book property with complete disregard for the characters those names are attached to. It’s no wonder that two talented directors (Bryan Singer and Matthew Vaughn) were backdoor fired so that the hackiest hack alive (Brett Ratner) could take the reins and do whatever he was told.

Before I embark on my rant, let me first say that the film has a few things going for it. All of the returning actors do a fine job. Of the new characters, Kelsey Grammar is a great Beast, and Ellen Page is very cute Kitty Pryde, exuding the sweetness that made her a star a year later in Juno. Aaron Stanford’s Pyro has a few good scenes, actually improving a character who’s a fairly uncompelling stock villain in the comics. But these are tiny bright spots in an otherwise awful film.

For example, Cyclops is killed 10 minutes into the movie in his second scene. Anybody who has read a single X-Men comic book can tell you that Cyclops is the beating heart of the team, the uncool straight man who holds down the fort so that moody loose cannons like Wolverine can go off and sulk. But that kind of character doesn’t sell well to Hollywood execs, so screw him. While we’re at it, let’s kill Professor X! HE’S OLD! He’s bald and crippled, and every second we spend with him is less time we could be spending stabbing stuff with metal claws, or shocking stuff with lightning, or freezing stuff, or simultaneously freezing and burning stuff!

So honestly, killing Cyclops and Professor X (who goes out 30 minutes in, for those of you keeping score) is enough to make X3XMUATLS a hateful slap in the face to anyone who cares about the X-Men. But just to piss everyone off a little more, let’s use the Dark Phoenix Saga, which took place over five years in the comics and is arguably the high point in the X-Men’s nearly 50 year history, as a B story in a 100-minute film where there are also C, D, E, and F stories (among them heavy-handed metaphors about abortion and homelessness). Let’s cheapen our film by taking our cues from YouTube videos (“I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!”). And then, after doing that stuff that just pissed you off, let’s undo it all in a scene after the credits that miraculously makes the dead undead, thereby rendering everything you just saw completely meaningless. It is quite possibly the least essential film in cinematic history.

Judged on its own merits, completely detached from the X-Men of comics or Bryan Singer’s good first film and masterful second one, it’s not really offensive. It’s just a waste of time, like a big-budgeted third season episode of Heroes. But since X3XMUATLS doesn’t exist in a timeless void, it sucks. Really bad.

Robert: Is X-Men 3 SO bad?

When I first heard about X-Men: The Last Stand (really now, let’s just call it X-Men 3) and the announcement that Bryan Singer wouldn’t be directing, to say I was disappointed would be an understatement. Let’s be clear, I wasn’t exactly a big fan of the first X-Men film in the first place; I found it watered down and somewhat lacking in the action department. It seemed that Bryan Singer just wasn’t the kind of director that should be tackling big-budget comic book movies, and although the sequel, 2003′s X2, dispelled a lot of that theory, 2006′s Superman Returns only reinforced it. I think, out of the bunch, X2 was simply an example of everything lining up just right and nothing more.

On the other hand, I don’t consider Brett Ratner any sort of visionary filmmaker by any means, but the fact that he’s been able to successfully deliver an entire trilogy of martial arts/buddy-cop/comedy flicks (yes, I do love me some Rush Hour) has to be worth something, right? You’d think it was in his genes to deliver on entertaining, high-action thrills and then you’d remember the lesser works like Money Talks, After the Sunset and Red Dragon and immediately be reminded that Ratner turns in more hack work than not.

Even though my hopes for a even more engaging sequel to X2 were dashed, I still think X-Men 3 manages to deliver, especially for what’s now probably considered yet another comic book movie. Ultimately, I found the movie about the equivalent of the first film in the series. Not particularly inspired storytelling, but about the same in terms of performances and production value. And since I was never all that familiar with the X-Men comics or specific storylines, I wasn’t bothered by what happened to whom and why. Amidst the uproar over the fate of Cyclops, the cheekiness of Juggernaut and even the rather lackluster showdown between Pyro and Iceman, I think X-Men 3 still brought enough to the party to make it worth my time.

Speaking of time, there’s a reason that X2 is largely considered to be the best of the three films and that’s because it takes its time to tell its story properly. While it clocks in at over 130 minutes, every bit of the film feels important. If anything, I think the biggest problem with X-Men 3 is the same problem that X-Men had–that it simply tried to tell too big of a story for its own good. It seems like you could extrapolate three different movies from all the stuff going on in those 100 or so minutes, and as often happens, nothing stands out as particularly well-developed.

Still, if you consider that X-Men 3 managed to do very well at the box office on its opening weekend, I guess the critical bashing that it took afterwards didn’t put much of a dent in audiences demand for more X-Men on the silver screen. Perhaps the hardest part about being a fan of X-Men isn’t that some of the movies are good and some are bad, but that there are movies being made at all. For every X2, there’s bound to be an X-Men 3, and even though X-Men Origins: Wolverine seems to be doing well so far, what are the odds that the upcoming Magneto film will also be just as good or better? I guess those wacky Marvel mutants can’t win for losing.

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What’s your take? Do you consider the X-Men film franchise ruined after X-Men 3? And if you’ve seen X-Men Origins: Wolverine, has it put everything back on track?