Believe it or not, I’ve seen two movies on their respective opening nights this month. I know! I’m livin’ on the wild side! I’m a mad man! You can’t stop me!

Some guys from the office (myself included) took an afternoon off and went to see X3. That’s the cool, hip, wild-side-livin’ nickname for the third installment in the X-Men series, “The Last Stand”. I think it’s great that X-Men is now a to-be-taken-seriously movie franchise. Now, if you tell a girl you have Wolverine bed sheets, she’ll think of that hunk, Hugh Jackman, whereas a few years ago, the same girl would slap you and tell you to sell your comic books and move out of your parents’ basement before trying to hit on girls. Okay, well, she’d still probably say something like that, but she’d be thinking of that hunk, Hugh Jackman, while she said it.

The first X-Men was great. I liked how they developed the characters and introduced the mutant phenomenon in a (sort of) believable way to folks not familiar with the comic books. X2 was great. They introduced more mutants, upped the ante on the special effects, and killed off a major character (of course, real fans knew that that was just a set up for the arrival of Phoenix). X3 was great. They introduced more mutants, upped the ante on the special effects and killed off a major character. Oh… Hmm… Maybe this is getting a little formulaic. Ah, who cares? It’s X-Men!

Seriously, though, I really did enjoy X3. They did a great job portraying the new guys, like The Beast and Juggernaut. (If anyone had told me that Kelsey Grammer would be an X-Man, I’d have laughed them out of the comic-con.) The movie rides along at a fast pace and without losing the story.

My only complaint was the ending. It was entertaining and “fit”, but there were several logical alternatives that made more sense. I’ll have to explain more, but it will involve spoilers, so the next paragraph uses my patented spoiler resistant technology. Highlight it to read more if you don’t mind spoilers.

Pretty cool, eh? First, Phoenix makes her debut (being the reincarnated Jean Gray) but she can’t control her powers and becomes a very dangerous “bad guy”. At the end, Wolverine has to risk his life to face her and kill her. But wouldn’t it have made just as much sense for Rogue to sap Phoenix’s power. Or even better use that “Cure” mutant kid. He just walks up to her and her powers disappear. Why kill her? On a side note, it’s totally retarded that Logan’s shirt, and even his flesh gets torn away by Phoenix’s evapo-rays, but his pants don’t even get torn. Dave and I both said (at the same time) they should have made the rest of his suit out of whatever those pants are made of. Kind of ruined the moment for us.

Okay. Now that that’s out of the way, let me say that if you liked the other two X’s, you’ll like this one too. Is it better than either of the other two? That depends on who you ask. Still, I think it’s a great movie and I’m giving it four out of five grins.

Postscript: One last thing. I’m the kind of guy that always stays through the end of the credits, just in case there’s tasty morsel hiding there and I usually get made fun of for it. Well, this time, since I was with “the guys”, I left with them and, wouldn’t you know it, I found out from another friend later that there’s a tasty morsel after the credits. GAH!! If you held your bladder for two hours, you can wait another five minutes and let me see the secret scene! Seriously!