Xmen III gets well-deserved Editing Room treatment

The Editing Room recently made one of its "Abridged Scripts" for X-Men III. If you don't mind a lot of creative profanity/crude humor, and you've already seen the movie, have a look . It matched most of my own opinions. I know nobody would visit this blog solely for links, since I know there are much better places to visit for gathering Web links (BoingBoing, Digg, Metafilter, etc.), so here's some original content: my unsolicited opinion.

Good things about X-Men III:

• The mutants get to do a lot of flying. This may seem trivial, but considering how many people have actually dreamed about being able to fly, it really isn't.
• Good visual effects. I like to see mutants toss cars around. 'Nuff said.
• Juggernaut and Beast made it in. See below in the other list for why this is also a bad thing.
• Grand, epic battles. Some people complained about the first X-Men not having enough action. No chance of those complaints this time.
• Deaths, both physical and metaphorical (cured mutants). I'm not a fan of tragedies in which everyone dies at the end, but a death or two can up the emotional ante.
• Phoenix. Constant muttering about mutants "levels" aside, the raw power of Phoenix came through loud and clear. Giving Famke more screen time is another plus.
  

Bad things about X-Men III:

• Juggernaut and Beast were disappointing. Maybe Juggernaut's size just doesn't translate well from the comic to the movie. And his lines were sort of funny, I guess, but it made me long for his performance in Snatch as Bullet-Tooth Tony. Beast looked fine, although once again there's a "size"-able difference between the comic and the movie. I was hoping Beast's personality and intelligence would be showcased more. Give Frasier something more to chew on.
• Other new mutants. They just came off as lame. I'd rather keep more of the old ones alive than toss in those.
• Too few of the great character moments or sly in-jokes from the first two movies that reminded us the mutants were people - a general slump in dialogue quality.
  
• The frantic, overstuffed pace. Maybe this could be blamed on the director switch or one too many script writers. In any case, the movie tried to include too many fan-pleasing elements in too short a movie. Then again, if the movie had been longer, I imagine more would have just been packed in to compensate.
• Spotlight on Storm, or should I say Halle Berry. Yay, Storm has a lot to do. She gets to have personal growth. Whoop-de-friggin-do. The Editing Room's abridged script zeroes in on this point perfectly and then obliterates it.

With all that said, I enjoyed the movie. Whether it'll stand up to repeated viewing as well as the other X-Men movies, only time will tell. (I have a sickening feeling that I'll watch its DVD by skipping over the more melodramatic Storm parts just as I skip over the Jar Jar parts when I break out Phantom Menace for nostalgia watching).