The Terrible "Three's"

Here is a rundown of two terrible movies that everybody loves. Two terrible comic book movies, as a matter of fact. That's right, Spider-Man 3 and X-Men 3.

I'll start with Spider-Man. Now, I absolutely loved the first two movies. I felt that, for the most part, the movies stayed pretty true to the source material and I greatly enjoyed them. When Spider-Man 3 came around, I was excited like you wouldn't believe. I stayed up until midnight on Friday to see the film (I was unable to make it to the previous nights showing), and...the movie was really bad! I mean, I can make a list of all of the things I disliked about the film. In fact...I think I just might do that.

1. The movie was WAY too long.

2. I HATED the fact that they changed the storyline of how Uncle Ben died. Last I checked, Sandman had absolutely nothing to do with the death of Uncle Ben (but, leave it to Hollywood to crap on the source material).

3. There wasn't enough of Spider-Man. I thought the movie was called "Spider-Man", not "Peter Parker and his relationship issues".

4. The extremely lame dance scene (I actually forgot that I was watching a Spider-Man movie during this scene).

5. That scene where Spider-Man, in his fit of rage, pulls his hair in front of his face while looking in the mirror (note the visible eyeliner in this scene). What were they going for here? Were they trying to appeal to the "scene" crowd?

6. Child dialogue during the final fight scene. Maybe it's just me, but I really don't think that children should have lines in any comic book movie from now on (unless it's a comic book character who actually is a child). It just made the scene too campy and uncomfortable for me to watch.

I could go on and on...but I think I've bitched enough for one move (gotta save up some energy for X-Men). Point is, Spider-Man 3 not only took a royal dump on it's source material, it couldn't even pull it off to make it an engaging story. The movie was just too huge...way too long. Now, if you don't care about the comic books at all and just want a nice epic, romance movie, then by all mean, don't let this keep you from seeing it (if you haven't yet). But if you're like me and you actually care about the comic books then you probably won't like Spider-Man 3 so much. It's funny, before I went to see the movie, I had a couple of friends that had seen it already and they all said "It's a good movie, but you probably won't like it", and they were exactly right.

Now, X-Men 3 is a completely different story. There is absolutely no excuse for the travesty of a movie that was X-Men 3. I will always be amazed that so many people liked this movie so much. Now, the X-Men movies aren't exactly famous for staying true to the comic books, but I actually enjoyed the first two movies for the most part. However, X-Men 3 literally took NOTHING from the source material. I don't know how anybody was allowed to write a movie this bad. Let's crank out the list...

1. The "death" of Professor Xavier was incredibly lame. Come on...he exploded!?! I don't remember that from the comics. Now, it is worth noting that he didn't exactly die. If you stuck around after the credits (which I didn't), you learn that Professor X transported his consciousness to another person or whatever. But still, not cool. After he exploded at the will of Jean Grey, I literally could only say, "what the fuck?".

2. The death of Cyclops about five minutes into the film. Come on....were they trying to recreate the Johnny Cage incident from Mortal Kombat Annihilation?

3. Rogue accepting the "cure" for mutants. They should've gone with the alternate scene where she decides no to go through with the procedure...oh well.

4. The fact that it took until the third movie for us to finally see original X-Men Beast and Angel. Yes, Hank McCoy had a small cameo in X-Men 2, but come on...

5. The fact that they turned Juggernaut into a mutant. Anybody who reads the comics knows that Juggernaut is not a mutant and that he got his powers from some sort of magical gem (or something). Therefore, Leech's ability to nullify mutant powers shouldn't have had any effect on Juggernaut.

6. The loss of Magneto's powers near the end of the film (by far the saddest part of the movie for me). However, some hope is given near the ending when he moves a chess piece with his powers.

7. The sappy love connection with Wolverine and Jean that has been pushed since the first movie and comes to a head right before Wolverine impales Jean with his claws, effectively killing her.

I could go on forever on this one, but it is too terrible of a movie. If you don't care about the comics, then you may find something to like in X-Men 3. As for me, I'm gonna go watch something worth watching...like something created by Kevin Smith. Good day.

By the way, I hope I didn't ruin the movies for anybody.