The X-Men Trilogy - X-Men, X2: X-Men United, X-Men: The Last Stand

Yes, I was one of the ones who watched X-Men: First Class before seeing the rest. But you know how much I love Nicholas Hoult. In fact, I actually watched X-Men Origins: Wolverine before I watched the rest. This was like two years ago, and I can't offer an explanation as to why I chose that one first. So I finally decided that I'd pick up the actually trilogy (which we only just got at the shop...useless or what?), and give them a mini-review each.

X-Men

I'm a big fan of finding out how people came to be who they are. Sure, this was done, to a degree, in X-Men: First Class. In fact, when this began with the exact same concentration camp scene, I thought I was in for something similar. But no, instead of that stylish 60's theme, we have a movie that comes to the start of the big mutant/human fiasco, and we have one of those typical comic book movie themes. It's shiny, filled with lots of action and basically everything I hoped to see from a movie made in 2000 (I'm uneasy about this year...I have no idea why). Here, the audience, along with Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Rogue (Anna Paquin), is introduced to the school that Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart) has created for mutants with special powers. And through this, we are introduced to the disagreement between Magneto (Ian McKellen), who thinks that humans and mutants could never co-exist, and Xavier, who believes they can. Now this is the kind of story that begs for a sequel, in order to fully understand this war and get the rather large cast all sorted out. This film does really well at introducing the several characters without allowing them to become two-dimensional. It requires a bit of work to do this, but I didn't really mind at all. To back this up there were some good visual effects that never became too cheesy, and it was frequently funny as it was thrilling. All in all, it was a solid start to the series - probably my favourite in the trilogy. That's probably because I'm big on having character dynamics actually working.

What I got:

X2: X-Men United

A lot of people like this entry the most, and I don't blame them. The mutants come back, and they're bigger and meaner. Plus, now the characters are all set-up nicely, they can just have an all out action flick with nothing else to worry about. However, one of the reasons why I didn't like this movie as much is because I felt it was too long. And with that came the unnecessary amount of loudness. That's not all that bad, though, because in it's longness and loudness, there are some great action sequences, a really good story and some really good acting - which is sometimes a rarity in such big action ensembles like this. The climax was exceptional and definitely rewarding, which makes you think that the series probably would have been right without a sequel. But in the last few moments, the film begs for a sequel, with a question that really can't go unanswered. This could be perceived as one of the film's biggest downfalls. Despite that, X2 is mammoth entertainment, with many layers providing enough to have a fully enriching time with a superhero movie. Even if the idea of trying to exterminate all mutants is really just a stupid idea to begin with.

What I got:

X-Men: The Last Stand

Well, everyone pretty much hates this one. Me? I didn't see what was so wrong with it. I actually enjoyed it just as much as any of the other ones, and thought it was a fitting end to the trilogy. However, the flaws are as plain as the nose on Owen Wilson's face. Brett Ratner replaced Matthew Vaughn who replaced Brian Singer in the directing job. First of all, had Singer continued, he would have had a really great trilogy. Matthew Vaughn did phenomenally well with X-Men: First Class. Ratner? He got a bit trigger happy. Instead of having the heart and emotion of the last two, this film is angry and through that anger comes lots of action...that pretty much doesn't mean anything. It wasn't done with the love that Singer had for the project. The story was very simple compared to the other two at well, further pushing it's status as a brainless blockbuster. Another thing that the film did wrong was having Olivia Williams play Moira MacTaggert for all of a minute. You don't just have Olivia Williams in a film for a minute...because that becomes both the highlight and the great disappointment of this film. However, with all it's flaws, I still enjoyed it enough. It was cool being introduced to some more characters, even if they were severely underdone (like Beast, whose makeup was simply atrocious). I can't decide whether I liked the way Jean Grey was changed from such a good person to that evil force...it seemed really strange and misplaced, but Famke Janssen was really good in her bad side. So yeah, I didn't love this entry like I did the others, but I didn't hate it, as everyone else did.

What I got:

And here's my ranking of all the X-Men movies:
1) X-Men: First Class
2) X-Men
3) X2: X-Men United
4) X-Men: The Last Stand
5) X-Men Origins: The Last Stand

What do you think of the X-Men trilogy? What's your favourite out of the lot?