God help me, but I agree with Harry Knowles’ review. Some­times you need a fan­boy to point out what’s wrong with a movie crafted for fan­boys. He picked up on the absurdly sen­si­tive Wolver­ine, the impor­tant Phoenix back­story cur­so­rily related in hammy expo­si­tion, and the sud­den and arbi­trary shifts from day to night. But the worst crime of all is that the movie is actu­ally bor­ing; a mere ninety min­utes seem­ingly stretched to what felt like 2-plus hours.

Also both­er­ing me: why on earth was X-Men III: The Last Stand such a mas­sive hit? Not just the ques­tion of gen­eral qual­ity, but also the fact that it’s set in a densely self-referential world com­pre­hen­si­ble only to dorks that read the comics as kids (cough, cough), or at least to movie­go­ers who hap­pen to remem­ber the first two install­ments really well. Per­haps the answer is as sim­ple as it being a hol­i­day week­end with no real com­pe­ti­tion in the­aters, but still, it must have been off-putting and mys­ti­fy­ing to mere mortals.

It’s tempt­ing to blame the whole mess on job­bing direc­tor Brett Rat­ner, but if Bryan Singer had still been involved, would the script have been any different?

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