X-Men: The Last Stand

Director: Brett Ratner
2006
RT Score: 57%
My rating 5/10

If you are not a fan of the show Community than I suggest you log on to Netflix and start watching season 1-3 and you can thank me later. I fully admit I tried watching it when it originally debuted and after 3 or 4 episodes I gave up. Thankfully that is a mistake I would later correct and now the show ranks up there with Arrested Development among my all time favorites.
I mention this because one of my favorite bits from season 3 is a montage of signs that Abed may need some psychological help. Included in the montage is Abed getting up from the table and yelling at Shirley for suggesting Brett Ratner may be the new 'Spielberg.'
And, if your one of the 7 people reading this than you already know why that is so laughable. Ratner, who is best known probably for his Rush Hour movies, is not the total insult to the directing craft that Michael Bay is, but when hand a Cadillac he gives you Camry.
That's the best thing I can say about Ratner's turn with X-Men. There are elements of this film I do like including just about every line Magneto has in recruiting mutants to his brotherhood and rallying his army. I think Magneto moving the Golden Gate bridge is great and the sequence at Jean's house is also great.
Of course, we could just chalk this one up to the myth that the third installment of every trilogy is a disappointment, but I tend to think that is over rated. What I look at here though is that the things I praised with Singer are things Ratner dropped the ball on. We see a huge increase in mutants that are directly involved in the story and by the films end most of them can't even be named. There's an Angel, a guy from Lost, a telepath, Juno, and kid that is supposedly the cure.
The cure is another angle that I feel Ratner fumbles completely. In previous films Singer was able to do a seamless job of integrating human politics with mutant politics. Here it feels like an after thought. We see what I think are hundreds of mutants protesting outside 'clinics' in which we also see dozens of mutants lined up to receive said cure. They are all made to look ordinary and to that end the Ratner may have been too successful as none of this story line feels like it resonates in the same way the Striker story line did.
Another failure for me here is the Jean Grey/Phoenix character. After sacrificing herself to save the X-Men at the end of X2, Jean Grey returns and a story line implying that Professor X had 'tamed' her in the past is opened up. When allowed to, Jean Grey is possibly the most menacing character introduced into the X-Men movie universe so far and yet most of the time she is seen standing around looking like a deer in the headlights and being held back by Magneto as his last resort weapon. The entire angle seems to fall on it's face too as it continues the love story between Grey and Wolverine that Singer teased but stayed away from. Some of the closing lines between the two are cringe worthy (as is Magneto's line 'what have I done') and the whole thing is just a mess.
When it was in theaters I will say the film was good enough to see twice in theaters, although the fact that my wife was 8 months pregnant and desperately wanted to sit in an air conditioned theater probably played a bigger role in that decision. Ultimately, this will be my only Brett Ratner entry and I would have to say that based on this experience I think Abed's reaction to Shirley referring to Ratner as the new Spielberg is totally justified.