X-Men 3 Needs to Get Here Now

So I’m a little bit of a comic book nerd.  You can’t work in the software industry and not have at least one geeky trait.  Knowing that, and knowing that I love the X-Men (if you didn’t know that before, now you do), you should be able to deduce that I have been looking forward to the 26th of May in the year 2006 quite heavily.  The reason for this—X-Men 3.

Finally, after some leaked internet photos and lots of speculation of how the movie was going to pan out, we’re treated to an actual preview of the movie.  

My initial thoughts are that it looks ok, but not spectacular.  X-Men 2 was pretty phenomenally awesome and it is still the defining comic book movie in my mind.  This one looks like it may be attempting to be a little too ambitious as well as trying to be too epic.  Some parts of the preview make me wonder if the writing/directing team aren’t going to try to cash in on the “big battle” syndrome that’s been plaguing Hollywood ever since Braveheart.

It’s hard to pull off the big battle scenes and few movies have done it well.  The Lord of the Rings did it well.  Star Wars Episode III did it well (I know, I feel dirty saying anything positive about that movie too).  Troy did it well.  War of the Worlds did it well.  Gladiator did it well.

On the other hand, Chronicles of Naria looks like they won’t do it right.  Pearl Harbor did it bad.  The Matrix Revolutions did it not so great.  The Last Samurai didn’t do it very well.  Star Wars Episode II did it quite crappily.  Windtalkers did it atrociously.  The Patriot did it very averagely.  Kingdom of Heaven did it semi-decent.

And X3 looks like it might fall more into the second category as opposed to the first.  I’ll remain optimistic, but I’ll temper my expectations for the action scenes.

As for the new characters, Beast looks passable but Angel looks kind of cheesy.  Of course, it’ll be easier to do Beast well as opposed to Angel, but I’d rather they have left both of them out of the upcoming movie.  There’s already two characters covered in blue make-up (Nightcrawler and Mystique), do we really need a third?

I’m still looking forward to it like you wouldn’t believe, but I’ll also be trying to keep my high hopes in check.