DACrowe said:
To call X2 worse than FF and X3 is staggering.
I know it is opinion but wow.
Exactly how I feel when someone calls those two paper thin pieces of **** good movies, or worse yet good adaptions.
And to complain that the first two have too much Logan at least it fell natural. They didn't have to kill off Cyke so Logan can pretend and be Cyke in the Pheonex Saga and be the "leader" of the team too.
It didn't feel natural one bit. It felt like ****ty episodes of the Wolverine show guest starring hackneyed versions of the X-Men. Yes, Cyclops, amongst others were wasted in X3, and Wolverine is still an overused underachiever, but Rattner film is still leaps and bounds above Singer's. The Last Stand is the first actual X-Men movie; and Wolverine wasn't the leader, Storm was, she was simply enabling him to prove himself as a team player, he was never usurping her position, which was handed down to her by Xavior.
The Last Stand certainly had its share of pretty signifcant flaws. More of the same wasted and shallow characterizations the first two, though not as bad. This one was a team movie with slightly too much focus on Wolverine, where as the first 2 are bad Wolverine movies with almost no focus on anyone else.
Wolverine was a slight improvement over the generic as hell wannabe bad-ass from Singer's films, although he is still his opponent's ***** against anyone other than random generic or generic mutants. Jackman and especially Berry's acting were up quite a few nothces in this one. Their reaction to Xavior's death was perfect.
The pointless puppy love crap that I was dreading was also still, but not as bad as it was in Singer's films. Iceman atleast becomes an active part of the team here, and Kitty is more interesting and useful than he and Rogue were with their circular, completely uninvolving characterization through 2 entire films.
Juggernaut's use of powers were great, but the personality and voice were...not. Callisto, Collossus, and Psylocke(especially the last one)were very flat and for the most part, wasted.
Storm finally had an actual personality, was strong-willed rather than generic and shallow, and had some exhilerating moments(that most likely wouldn't have been there if Singer were involved). She was the most interesting part of the film.
Magneto was fantastic, as expected. He goes through a great character arch and also has some top notch setpieces involving his powers.
Pyro was a good heel character, coming full circle with his character arch that began in X2.
Rogue was a complete waste yet again, but after how badly Singer and company handled her there wasn't much that could be done about it.
Cyclops is also wasted yet again, but the same applies to him as to Rogue.
Mystique is used little, but effectively.
Angel is also used sparingly, but he's well acted and there's more to care about with him than there was with Cyclops, Storm, Jean, Rogue, Iceman...throughout the first 2 films.
I would've liked to see Beast do a bit more in the fights, but Kelsey Grammer did a fine job, and his personality matches the source material quite well(for once).
Jean, like Storm, finally manages step out of Singer's shadow of mediocrity(and that's being generous)and actually have a personality and be worth a damn. The origin of the Phoenix isn't the same, but the change still works.
Overall, it's not as deep as an X-Men film could and should be, but it does put Singer's movies to shame(which isn't tough to do). Rattner did a pretty good job of cleaning up the mess that layed before him. Singer's films had almost no character depth, and weren't even anything special to look at. Rattner's film has some character depth, some wasted characters(as opposed to almost all wasted characters), and it's some great eye candy.
I'll take Rattner's visually stunning film with an ensamble that could've had more substance, but has enough to get by over Singer's shallow films centering on one guy that they couldn't even come close to getting right despite how much time they waste on him that aren't even cool looking any day of the week.
I thought Fantastic Four was a pretty fun flick. It's amazing how so many people can praise the X-Men films, which Singer did a horrible hack job on, and bash the hell out of FF.
The X-Men films shove everyone else to the background just for the sake of putting Wolverine front and center when they should be ensamble films, and even with all the time they spend (waste) on him, they can't even get him right. He's little more than a generic bad-ass that can't back up his b.s. because he gets his ass royally handed to him every time he fights a mutant.
Reed is over analytical and thinks too much while not acting enough, Johnny is overly impulsive and acts too quickly without thinking, Ben is an outcast trying desperately to come to terms with has happened to him, and Sue is the maternal figure that's trying to keep to maintain a peaceful co-existence between the conflicting personalities around her; the way these conflicting personalities(personalities, something the bulk of the X-Men characters don't have)interact and come together was far more interesting than watching Singer's flat as a board excuses for characterizations pointlessly swallow up screen time.
Wolverine is a generic bad-ass. Storm has no personality. Jean has no personality. Cyclops has no personality, Rogue and Iceman were butchered and have done nothing of any significance through 2 entire films other than petty crap that anyone could've done like clumsily landing the X-jet and engaging in a pointless puppy love story that doesn't do a damned thing besides waste time (not to mention they're both horribly mis-cast. Rogue should be vuloptuous, Paquin hardly fits; and Ashmore's acting couldn't be more wooden if he were a cigar store Indian), Sabretooth, Deathstrike, and even Mystique are used as little more than mindless, cool looking goons...
Singer defined most of the characters solely by the powers without giving them distinct characteristics as people that made them worth caring about. All the guy did was point and shoot, his direction was non-existent
As usual, you are the king of redundancy. A.L.L. "which is worse" threads are dealing in opinions, especially with regards to art. It goes without saying. Otherwise he would've made a thread that said "Jesus created the universe and he told me for a fact that Fantastic Four is empirically, indisputably the worst out of the three, so there's no need for a poll, because it's a cosmic truth." 
