X-Men Trilogy

In preparation for the upcoming Wolverine movie, I picked up the X-Men Trilogy on DVD and finished watching all three films this past week. In general, I'm a big fan of the X-Men and have been since I was in middle school. I'm not quite sure if I was first exposed to the franchise via the popular cartoon show (with an awesome intro theme, by the way) or through the second volume comic bearing the X-Men name (i.e. not The Uncanny X-Men), but I'm pretty sure both happened around the same time, so what does it matter? For a couple years, I was hooked on both of these outlets for the franchise, and I even owned a large collection of X-Men action figures (which I wish I still had around). Then, in my grad school years I started collecting the Ultimate X-Men trade paperbacks, which I'm planning on rereading soon.

All this said, I initially found the original film X-Men to be a fairly mediocre representation of the franchise, and my recent viewing has confirmed that I still feel this way after all these years. Now, although I didn't even like it that much when it first came out, I would have to say I like it even less now that so many incredible superhero movies have come out since. By contrast, I've always thought X2 was an incredibly superior movie, and although I fear I've seen it too many times now, it still ranks as one of my favorite superhero flicks. Finally X3 sits in a weird position for me, as it's not as good as X2 had had me hoping for, but it's not nearly as mediocre as the first installment. My general feeling with this film is that it would have been great had Bryan Singer finished out the trilogy instead of switching over to Superman Returns, but ultimately it could have turned out a lot worse too...

So, now I'm ready to see the new Wolverine movie. Dave is convinced it's going to be horrible, but I'm going to reserve judgment until I catch it sometime this coming weekend. Crossing my fingers...