When the first X-Men film came out six years ago, I was thirteen. That means that I was six, thirteen years ago, when the Saturday-morning cartoon show on Fox was wildly popular. I was always a Spider-Man kid, but most of my friends watched X-Men, and I would often join them. When pressed to choose a favorite character, I chose Cyclops (what can I say, I was a kid who liked to follow the rules). When director Bryan Singer took away the yellow-and-blue costumes and made Cyclops (played by James Marsden) a jerk with X-Men (2000), I was not happy. My rage at Singer’s take on Cyclops (and his relationship with Jean) and the absence of Wolverine’s (Hugh Jackman) distinctive costume blinded me to the fact that it was a very, very good movie. I was convinced it was, at the best, sub-par.

I have learned my lesson. I now know what a sub-par X-Men movie is like. Singer was terrific at telling a story; his character’s emotions seemed genuine, his action was motivated by the story, his pacing was excellent, his style was remarkable and evocative. He also had a team of writers with whom he always worked that helped adapt the beloved comic characters onto the big screen in a believable and (eventually, for me) acceptable way. All of this is gone in Brett Ratner’s debacle X-Men: The Last Stand. It looks like it was directed, well, by a guy who directed Rush Hour 2 (2001). The pacing is strange, the editing simplistic, the camera work virtually nonexistent. Bret Ratner’s directorial trademark seems to be that he is distinct for the indistinctiveness of his films.

I suppose I should give you some sort of plot summary, though the plot is simple enough to have been thought up by a third-grader – and if the third grader couldn’t think up the plot, he could certainly fill in the blank spots in the outline with dialogue, which seems to be what the writers of the film did, with no cliché spared. It takes great pains to remind us of what happened in the sequel through painfully obvious expositive dialogue, such as when Pyro (Aaron Stanford) and Magneto (Sir Ian McKellan) are discussing how Pyro used to be “one of them” (i.e., an X-Man) and Pyro reminds him (and us) that “I would have killed the Professor too, if you would have let me.” Thanks Pyro, now we all remember you’re a traitor.

That plot summary I was speaking of: the government has invented a so-called cure for mutants that will turn them into normal humans. This has had a mixed reaction in the mutant community, but largely resistance and anger from the prideful mutants. Magneto has used this anger to build a Brotherhood of Mutants, a small army that is going to wage war on humankind. Meanwhile, Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) is not really dead (in the comics, Jean Grey is notorious for dying and coming back to life more times than most other superheroes), and both Wolverine and Cyclops are drawn to her, finding her much changed. She calls herself the Phoenix now, but looks nothing like the Phoenix from the books. I could live with that, I suppose, if Bryan Singer hadn’t shown us an obvious picture of the Phoenix as she looked in the books at the end of X2. Oh well, who needs continuity anyway?

The film is irresponsible with its characters, quickly killing off any who aren’t as recognizable and highly paid as Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry. I blame this partially on Halle Berry, who refused to come back for a third film unless her character was bigger, but I have to believe that Storm could have played a significant role without destroying the base of the X-Men and getting rid of one of the coolest characters, Nightcrawler (whose mysterious absence from this film remains unexplained). About halfway through the film, X-Men 3 becomes Storm and Wolverine, though it tries to make up for this with a dumb and incoherent subplot involving Iceman (Shawn Ashmore) and Rogue’s (Anna Paquin) relationship.

Speaking of irresponsibility, it has been said that any and every film is inherently political. This is true especially for X-Men, which has always been an overt political allegory about racism and acceptance, as well as adolescence. The end political stance of this film is confusing, however. I’m not quite sure where the film (or the mutants, for that matter) stands on the issue of the government’s cure. Maybe it is supposed to be an ambiguous moral issue, but Ratner doesn’t even handle that well, concerned with the fast-acting cure as a way to get some cool special effects in the movie – and an acceptable way to dispatch baddies.

On a slightly more dorky note, this is the first X-Men film with all of the original X-Men characters in it. Angel, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, Iceman, and Professor Xavier (Jean-Luc . . . er, Patrick Stewart) are all in this film, and it would have been a nice, subtle wink if they had all been in one frame together at some point in the movie, but alas, it was not to be. All we get is a none-too-subtle wink to a recent Internet craze when Juggernaut (Vinnie Jones) yells “I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!”

All this said, there is nothing like hearing the “SNIKT!” of Wolverine’s blades again, and watching him tear into some bad guys. The action scenes are not as thrilling or involving as the last film (remember when Wolverine takes out those soldiers in the Academy?), but they’re decent. It’s nice to see Juggernaut in the film, and watching him throw Wolverine around is something I hadn’t even realized I missed from the old cartoon show. There is some decent action in the flick, but it would have been better if Singer had been at the helm. It’s nice when characters have motivation.

In the end, I think it’s a difference in attitudes between the two directors. Singer wanted to tell a good, if not great (I would argue that X-Men 2 was a great film, perhaps the best of the recent superhero films) story with real artistry and thought involved. Ratner wanted to get what was written up on the screen, with some mindless, cool-looking action and no further thought about the themes, motifs, or motivations involved. The film is headed to one of the biggest opening weekends of all time, so my review has done no good, but in all honesty, Mission: Impossible 3 is a much better popcorn movie – and I hate Tom Cruise.