Full Length Trailer for X-Men 3 is Up!!

After a dazzling teaser for X-Men 3: The Last Stand, was released a couple months ago, yesterday the powers that be at Fox finally released full length trailer . Boy, am I excited!

Though perhaps lacking in the sort of character driven emotional journeys of comic book films like Spiderman 2 and Batman Begins, the X-Men films have always been solidly done and great fun to watch. I don’t care what anyone says about him, Hugh Jackman makes a great Wolverine, and Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan battling it out as Professor X and Magneto is a casting dream come true. Not all of the other actors may be as strong, but none of them are actively bad, and besides they all look the part so much who can complain?

While I was dubious about the passing of the franchise from the hands of the foolish but talented Bryan Singer to those of the foolish Brett Ratner, it would appear that so far, so good. The camera work looks great, and film definitely seems to have a stylish element of its own. I love the shot of Angel flying out of the sky scraper, the line of mutants marching among the cars led by Magneto with Phoenix by his side, the section of the suspension bridge flying in slow motion through the air, and the mutant chase throught the concrete walls.

The script for this installment of the X-Men movies, was written by Zak Penn and Simon Kinberg. Penn worked on the story of X-2, and has also written Elektra (uh oh) Suspect Zero (never heard of it), and the dialogue for the Fantastic Four VIDEO GAME (interesting –didn’t know they hired official Hollywood screenwriters for video game copy). Kinberg was a writer on Mr. & Mrs. Smith (barf) and XXX: State of the Union (oh my). I know what you’re thinking, and believe me it’s crossed my mind as well. This does not exactly bode well for the screenplay of X-Men 3. Yet the screenplay for X2 was well done, and I’m hoping that Penn’s work from that film will carry over into this one. From the small glimpses we see in this trailer there is at least some continuity in the relationships between the characters, i.e. the love triangle between Cyclops, Wolverine, and Jean Gray and the dynamic between Wolverine and Rogue. I am also intrigued by the way that Kitty Pryde seems to come inbetween Rogue and Iceman’s relationship; mutant gossip, hooray! I didn’t notice any particularly egregious dialouge, except for maybe the line that Prof X says to Storm: “You of all people should know how fast the weather can change…”

Still, this trailer keeps me very optimistic. The culmination of this trilogy has been building towards a huge all and all out battle between the U.S. military, and each faction of the mutants, and finally it seems like this is what we are going to get. X-Men 3: The Last Stand will be released on May 26th, in what I hope will be an excellent kick off to the summer movie season of 2006.