x-men 3

Police officers in the lead car in a convoy of black vehicles see a cloaked figure down the road. The figure facing the convoy does not move. The convoy does not slow down. The old man in the middle of the road raises his hand, points it toward the first car. The car is lifted off the ground. The man clenches his raised open palm. The car is crushed. He flicks his upheld arm toward his right. The floating, crushed car is tossed aside like a broken toy. The second car is disposed of in the same manner. The 10-wheeler behind the two front cars, whose freight car contains prisoners, is now visible. The truck will run the lone figure over in seconds. He flicks his hand upward. The freight car is unhinged from the truck. It will skid on the asphalt road until its momentum runs out. The truck surges ahead. The old man raises his other hand and the truck somersaults toward and above him, as though it tripped on an unseen obstacle. It crashes behind him. There are no survivors. The car behind the convoy and its occupants are crushed just as easily. Magneto, now joined by his henchmen, walks toward the back of the truck where locks and hinges burst away from the thick metal door. At the far end of the truck, Mystique, the Master of Magnetism's right hand, stands waiting, now liberated from her captors.

I would not have been able to describe the above scene as tightly if director Brett Ratner had not assembled the entire film as seamlessly, something I did not expect. The previous film (Xmen 2) had one too many mutants. You can't develop character when almost every mutant is allotted some airtime. The first film seemed too focused on Logan (Wolverine), who Xavier had to tame and who Scott Summers (Cyclops) had to keep away from his willing-to-flirt girlfriend Jean Grey.

To me, the first two films felt obligatory, with characters introduced, even if they had little to do with the story's narrative, and scenes where mutants demonstrated their powers were inserted throughout the films. The action felt stale. You are just glad the film is over.

Understandably, the stage simply had to be set so Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Eric (Magneto) could trade dramatically delivered dialogue, with Xavier espousing the Uncle Ben principle ("With great powers come great responsibility") and Eric paraphrasing Nietzsche's Superman principle (it is a disservice to themselves for Homo Sapiens Superior to curb their powers according to the dictates of mediocre human leaders).

Xmen 3 has no such obligatory feel. With the primary Xavier-Eric conflict and hate/fear toward mutants already established, the third instalment to the mutant franchise explores two interwoven plots. The first is Xavier's delicate gamble: under his care all along was a class 5 mutant more powerful than Magneto and himself--Jean Grey (What if she goes wild?). The second concerns the consequences when a "cure" is mandated by the US Government to be injected on all mutants. The cure claims to lay permanently dormant the genes responsible for mutants' powers and appearances (Would all mutants want a normal life?).

Director Brett Ratner made me forget I had a tumbler-full of cheesed popcorn, until the movie's end credits rolled up the screen.

In a flashback ten years from the film's present, Xavier and Eric, then friends, is talking a young Jean Grey into studying at Xavier's school.

"Oh, Charles, I like this one," Eric said as both men and Jean sat in the Grey family's living room; jut outside the window, several feet from the ground were all the cars in eyesweep. Jean was showing off. "I doubt it," she arrogantly said when told she was not the only one with powers.

Flashforward. Jean's traumatic near-death experience in Xmen 2, when she sacrificed herself to save the Blackbird (the Xmen's plane), had broken the psychic restraints Xavier had used to shackle Jean's desire-filled other personality, Phoenix. Phoenix killed Scott, nearly seduced Logan, and with Magneto watching and unable to stop her, she lifted Xavier from his wheelchair and disintegrated him.

Thrilled with his potential new weapon, Magneto brings the wayward Jean to his secret camp, where she is wooed into coming with Magneto's recruited army of mutants to Alcatraz Island, where the facilities for producing the mutant cure was found, and to help destroy the forces that aim to make mutantdom as mediocre as everyone else.

I am relieved that this time, Jean's telekinesis (the ability to move objects with one's mind) has been promoted--from being merely able to lift and shove people and objects aside, to dismantling and shredding and disintegrating matter (and people), and lifting the silvery ashes upward, in a grand demonstration of conceit and power.

And then there is Sir Ian McKellen's incarnation of Magneto, who majestically wields his powers and elegantly dodges Xavier's rhetoric on the need for all mutants to be good. I have a soft spot for villains whose words sting and linger and wound, and whose mere intent can kill a multitude.

I will not mind a fourth instalment.