The “clapter” accusation is the same sort of thing you’d get from any genre purist. Like metal fans complaining about certain bands not being metal, or punk fans complaining about sellouts, or horror movie fans complaining that a movie isn’t scary, or jazz fans complaining about everything.

“Band I never heard of”

Exactly. I think it’s a necessary counterbalance to any “Magneto was right” argument that could come up. Because it’s true that in the film mutants are hated and hunted, and you can understand someone wanting to change that. But using an innocent teenager as a pawn who’ll die in the process pushes Magneto comfortably…

And yet it’s hard to find too many good sequences that stand out in X3, while it’s easy to point out what made the first 2 movies so enjoyable.

One of the lesser-mentioned influences this movie had on the franchise was foregrounding the idea of the X-Mansion as a school in a way that was never the case before. The Xavier School/Institute had always been part of the X-Men franchise, but until this point it was a “school” that never had more than a dozen people…

So I mentioned in the column for Batman that I felt that film had a tremendous impact on the comic industry, and I feel that X-Men had a tremendous impact, as well.

Despite liking these movies, and what they did with the Rogue character overall, I still feel it’s a big shame how they handled her by basically undercutting two of my favorite X-Men.

I think the strength and the weakness of the first two X-Men movies lies in scenes and character development.

“he gives arguably the best performance that anyone has ever given as a superhero.”

Ahhh, yes. The year 2000. When a comic book movie was something fresh, original, and in the case of X-Men, intoxicating.

And, as Wolverine acidly points out, he’s a bit of a cowardly hypocrite as well. After all, if his cause was really so just, why not make himself the martyr?

I shall take this opportunity to publicly mourn the wasted potential of Rogue in these movies. She was my favorite character in the 90's cartoon, which was my main reference for the X-men at the time. They went in a very different direction with her in the first movie, kind of making her a Rogue/Kitty/Jubiliee mashup.…

There’s another brief exchange right around then where she’s trying to grab a ride  with him after the fight and him being exposed in the bar. 
“But I saved your life!”
“No you didnt.”

Wolverine was the critical character to figure out, and it was pretty incredible to see just how perfectly they got the concept down…

Paquin and Jackman were great together. There should’ve been a spin-off with them and Cyclops where they do a mutant version of True Grit.

I often think of this movie, and a few others like it, as an architectural achievements more than good movies. You appreciate it just because it can improbably hold together rather than because it’s a great story in and of itself. The first Avengers movie is a similar architectural achievement, that took things up a…

This. It’s really not hard to get, Magneto knows he is the leader of the Brotherhood and can’t be lost, so he’s willing to sacrifice Rogue to get the results he wants while keeping himself alive.

good lord this is a family site why would you put that liefeld drawing on here

I know this is trite, nationalist sentiment, but I remember being so relieved that they kept Wolverine Canadian, or at least didn’t explicitly Americanize him. For a long while he was one of, like, three cool Canadian things (Kids in the Hall & Neil Young, I guess?), so losing him would’ve sucked.

This is one of the two movies where, despite everything I know about their directors and with all my reservations about supporting them any further, I cannot help but enjoy due to the memories I hold of watching them with my late brother. (The other being the original Rush Hour.) This movie was the last movie both my…

The utility of Rogue isn’t hard to understand. Magneto’s machine uses magnetism but to do what he wants, he would need to use so much of his power that he would die. His solution is to transfer his power to Rogue and have her die instead.