[Dr Kain]

X-Men - I haven't watched this one since 2009 and that's because it just isn't that great of a movie. The plot is rather boring and the action is very uninspiring. Not to mention Cyclops and Storm have no purpose being in this thing because they do absolutely nothing to further the plot. In fact, Scott comes off as just a glorified jerk who can't even convey a lick of emotion while Storm is just a tool. She is one of my favorite X-Men characters and this movie treats her like a third string character. Hell, the longest moment she speaks has her spouting some stupid ass line. In fact, this movie might as well have been called "Wolverine and His Merry Band of X-Men." I also don't care for how very little it even considers the source material. Magneto would NEVER sacrifice an innocent mutant just to further his ambitions, not to mention Mystique has no relation to Rogue one bit, Sabertooth is just some lame goon and they completely wasted their potential to do something worthwhile with Kelly and Geirich in future installments. Overall, the music is by far the best thing about this movie as Kamen's score kicks total ass that also feels very reminscent to the amazing theme song the 90s cartoon featured. Now I do give them credit for a first attempt at a live action X-Men movie, so I'm giving it a lenient 7/10.

X-Men 2 - A vast improvement over the first movie as it tries to fix a lot of its issues. Unfortunately, in doing so, it also creates a few contracitions to the first movie. Also, it pretty much remains The Wolverine Show as Scott continues to be reduced to nothing more than an emotionless jackass. At least Storm got a good scene this time around despite her voice being different. The plot dealing with Stryker is well done as Brian Cox does a phenomenal job portraying the character (last week I read God Loves, Man Kills and even with Stryker being a preacher I heard Cox's voice coming from him). Lady Deathstrike is quite useless and we don't even get Mastermind called by his code name. Oh, and those colorless costumes need to go. They are terrible and I forgot how allergic to color Fox was in the beginning. Then again, they still haven't changed much, but at least the First Class uniforms looked like X-Men costumes. Anyway, there are a lot of great moments to be found here even if it isn't that greatest X-Men movie as it was once believed. It has certainly aged far better than its predecessor and the travesty that came after it. It's a shame that they rushed right into the Phoenix story without any sort of development though. It would have been much better to actually develop Jean's powers over the course of several movies instead of just, "She feels very powerful and now she sacrifices herself to come back as Phoenix." Magneto also feels more natural this time around and I love how he easily manipulates Pyro without any effort. In the end, I give this movie a 8/10.