How could I have known that all the trepidation and FUD exhuded by the name Brett Ratner was more than justified? How could I deny the rank mediocrity of Red Dragon? First off, they lied about the last in the title. That post-credit sequence is the worst cop-out I've seen in a while. Then they decided to behave as if this was the last edition in the trilogy (in 5 parts?). So they made some obvious moves. Taking a hint from the mass don destruction in The Godfather III, the scriptwriters proceeded to bump off one character after the other. They also attempted to play a crazy balancing game by tossing in as many new characters from the canon as they can find. To top it all, they decided that the Phoenix arc was a really cool idea to use, stuck this square peg into a round hole and hurled the resultant mutant shape at the audience.
The Wolverine/Jean/Cyclops love triangle could now be exploited for some PG-13 on-screen heat. They managed to rope in Kelsey Grammer for one of the thankless parts (Beast). They scripted a ton of "clever" one-liners giving the audience ample opportunity to play "guess what this character's going to say next" all through the film. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan add some seriousness to their parts and Hugh Jackman's Wolverine continues to be an interesting character. However, Halle Berry's Storm continues to be one of the most uninteresting parts in the series (a real surprise if you've read the comics). Guess who threatened to back out in the absence of a meatier part? The result is a lot of useless dialogue delivered by a worthless character. It's so bad that it overshadows her acting inabilities.
Cain "Juggernaut" Marko is reduced to an all-brawn-no-brain bozo who delivers crowd-pleasing lines like "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch"
A wave of Maine Pyar Kiya nostalgia might flood in when Wolverine socks a regenerating mutant in his nuts.
Why choose Alcatraz as the location for the pharmaceutical company's research facility? Because it capitalises on the movie allure of the place, makes for more $$-spending, and allows our filmmakers to create and execute a rather silly sequence where Magneto turns the Golden Gate bridge around to create a path for the mutants to the island. I wonder if that shot of rush hour traffic on the broken bridge was a nod to Ratner's comic venture.
The music kept reminding me of The Lord of the Rings
Where TF is Nightcrawler? What's your fetish with vistas? Did you take cinematographic lessons in Bollywood?
The SFX are involved and dedicated to the sole cause of fulfilling the expectations from a summer blockbuster. Patrick Stewart's face looks a tad stretched during the flashback sequence, though.
Bollywood fans will relish the presence of a "twenty years ago" message.
Didn't know d**khead qualified for a PG-13 rating.
While coming up tops on the summer blockbuster explosion and mayhem coefficient (bonus points for a retarded apocalypse), this flick pales horrendously before the first and second editions.
The best thing about the film happened before the previews began. A lady stood before everyone and requested that all cellphones, text messaging and blackberry devices be turned off (or set to vibrate) and if they weren't they'd have to first warn the person and then next time ask him/her to leave; she also asked people to wait till the credits were done for a special sequence (which didn't matter for me, because I sit through the credits anyway). Unfortunately, some well-educated individual did not heed this directive and you could hear a cellphone while the feature was on. Some morons never learn.
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