X-Men 3: X-tend your stay to the very end

The new X-Men movie, "X-Men: The Last Stand", is hitting theatres this Memorial Weekend and I advise all X-fans, stay until after the credits. Only a few of us informed audience members stayed and it was worth the wait. If Howard Stern had not mention the information about the ending on his radio show, I would have left during the credits.

I don't know if 20th Century Fox has advertised or alerted to the fact that there is something more to see after the credits, but if they didn't, word of mouth will have to be the way. If you missed the real end, don't worry, it was only about a minute long and basically was just a teaser for us true comic book fans. There is always the DVD to catch it later.

Now as for my review of the movie itself, let me just say 'bravo' to Brett Ratner, X3 director. He takes over the reins, handled in the previous two X-films, from Bryan Singer. Ratner is best known for the "Rush Hour" films with Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker. From the start of this movie, to the special effects, to the costumes, I was inthralled. You see, I collected the X-Men in my youth. Seeing the characters brought to life puts a huge smile on my face. When I was buying the X-Men comic books, the team consisted of Cyclops, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Banshee and Wolverine. But for the movies they had to pick the main characters that were the most popular. They did find ways to have some other characters in the films by way of Xavier's school and Magneto's brotherhood (of evil mutants). But I transgress.

The 3rd installment starts where the 2nd left off, the death of Jean Grey. The movie tackles prejudice like the 1st two films. In X3, the villians are Magneto & his band of evil mutants and a corporation, Worthington Industries, which is responsible for a mutant cure drug. If you are going to see a well scripted film, then stay home. This is a comic book action film, where the story and script take a back seat to the characters. It is action packed, with a brief halt here and there, from beginning to end. The special effects were top notch. The new characters that sent my heart pounding are Juggernaut, the Beast ("O my stars and garters") and even Angel.

The rest of the cast of characters we have seen in the previous films are Cyclops, Storm, Rogue, Mystique, Charles Xavier, Colussus, Kitty Pride, Iceman, Pyro and of course Wolverine. The action scenes are spectecular and I couldn't wait for the Wolverine vs. Juggernaut scene (you knew it was coming). There are some things in the film that disturbed me (X-Men fans will know what I am speaking of). But since it is suppose to be the last X-Men movie (wink, wink), I can understand why. And being a comic book world, everything can be 'fixed'. I will not give away anything, hence to say I enjoyed this movie tremendously. If there are only these three X-Men films made, then I can live with that. Before I sign off, I will say that X-Men: United (film #2) is the best of the three, with X3 my 2nd favorite. The first had to introduce the X-Men to the general public, so it was slow off the ground. Enjoy!