When Warner announced that Bryan Singer was leaving the third installment of the X-Men-franchise to don the blue and red of Superman and Brett Ratner emerged as his successor, the internet community - spearheaded by Ain't It Cool News' Harry Knowles - responded with an outcry as if The Godfather was being remade by Dr. Uwe Boll. Before seeing a single frame of the movie the man behind the Rush Hour-movies was doomed as the guy who will destroy the X-Men franchise. Considering that Singer left the franchise in tip top state, with actors who know their roles in and out and a foundation for the story already in place, it appeared to be a hasty judgement. Unfortunately the doubters were right.
Although Ratner will receive all the blame for the failure, there are two other guys who should take the fall with him: screenwriters Simon Kinberg and Zak Penn, whose previous crimes against humanity included Elektra and XXX: State of the Union. This unholy trinity managed to come up with a completely unfocused and badly structured plot, which confuses the viewer from the get-go. This is mainly due to the short runtime of the movie, which clocks in at roundabout 105 minutes. In this short time span, they not only try to fit in the complex Dark Phoenix story, which was hinted at at the end of X2, but almost a dozen subplots as well. We get backgrounds and introductions for new mutants, a war between humans and mutants, a cure for mutancy, characters dealing with several deaths (they didn't pick the title "The Last Stand" for nothing), attempts to explain the relationships between Über-Mutants Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen) and the resolution of two love triangles among other things - quite a bold effort. The result is a story which swaps locations and characters so fast that the audience gets dizzy in the process.
