I'm sitting here patiently waiting for the X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE trailer to come online. It's currently in theaters with THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (sorry, not interested at all), and there are a couple of Youtube bootlegs, but I'm going to wait for the proper HD version. Wolverine has always been vying for the title of favourite superhero with Batman since I was a kid, so it's good to see him get his own movie.

Of course, the previous X-MEN films were pretty heavily focused on Wolverine anyway. I always liked the films because - despite the importance of Logan - they did well showing the X-Men working as a team. At least most of the time. I like the first flick a lot, it's not incredible, but it's thoughtful, and I'll forgive the slightly dull action scenes for the actual time spent on the characters, which is rare (or was rare in 2000) for a film like this. For example, the opening scene with Magneto. Genius.

X2 is just a brilliant ride. Jackman is intense, Brian Cox as Stryker was amazing, and Alan Cumming (i.e. the Scottish comedian and GOLDENEYE computer nerd) was a revelation as Nightcrawler. The action was finally as good as the character work, and it all came together brilliantly. THE LAST STAND... well, it's not great. I love the concept - the idea of a cure - but it just didn't come together. Angel was woefully underused, and should have been much more at the forefront. Then again, I'm not a big fan of Ben Foster as an actor, so I'm not sure how much I'd have enjoyed it. Beast was great, as was Kitty Pryde, and some of the action scenes at the end really paid off with the X-Men fighting as a team.

However, some of the character stuff was really off. Rogue taking the cure... well, that's a straight betrayal of her character from the comics and a really idiotic lesson to give on behalf of a franchise that has its roots in educating the masses. The fact that she's accepted back after being "cured" undoes all the great work the series has done in parallelling the "fantasy" stories with real-world social issues. Killing Xavier was pointless, and doesn't even work for shock value because of how badly the scene was done. Magneto being cured was the same... especially since both essentially came back in their own special ways at the end.

Jean... wow. The whole telepathic block thing, it's intriguing, but I don't think it's something Xavier would do, and just seems unnecessary. The first films worked it fine - she's powerful, she's then more powerful after the end of the first film (referenced in X2), and her powers have broken out. The whole thing was done so mundanely, that it had no emotion to it whatsoever. It was like "Oh... she killed Cyclops. Oh... she killed Xavier. Oh... Wolverine killed her." Still, if they make another X-Men movie, I'm sure she'll be back.