X-Men 3: The Last Review

In what must surely be last in the line of bloggin' mates who've reviewed X-Men: The Last Stand, I present my humble ramblings. Lets cut straight to it!
Be warned——
SPOILERS BELOW!

The Good:

• There's a good body count of heroes, which you need in an ensemble cast piece or otherwise you risk being Star Trek.
• Didn't look nearly as bad as it could have after all the reported problems with directors, budgets, timeframes and such. Special FX credits went for a long time, and were unusual not for their length, but the number of different Fx houses included!
• I liked Beast. Kesley did a good job playing the big blue diplomat: the good-guys needed another adult around.
• I thought the Kitty Pryde character (girl who walked through walls) was made to look very weak and insecure, but they made up for it with her final showdown piece.
• The opening scene with younger versions of Xavier and Eric looked great.In fact, the Magneto/Xavier interplay there and later they confront Bad-Jean was full of great character moments.

The Bad:

• The body count was a cheap one. Jean was dead already, the boring Cyclops (after finally getting some character development) dies off-screen, Xavier may return, and Magneto may get his powers back. This is like watching a boxing match with "punch-pulling".
• Storm got some decent lines and screentime this time, but I gotta say that although I like her, Halle Berry here was awful and insipid. Hard to tell who was to blame.
• The final battle uses too many characters you didn't really know much about if you didn't read the comics – and who are too damn young! It makes you not care who dies (I fully expected one of the kids to buy it, and based on the "least screen-time/character development" principle, I assumed it would be Colossus); it makes the bad guys look inept; and the hard-edged, only-looks-out-for-himself Wolverine seems to be the eternal baby-sitter.
• I find it hard to believe that Wolverine can heal faster than Phoenix can disassemble atoms. I thought they needed to bring the kid into play here. Nice touch Wolverine having to kill her though.

Gaffs:

• Beasts first scene has him upside down reading, but his hair doesn't move.
• Why move the whole bridge when you can just levitate a bus over there? Plain and simple showboating, by both Magneto and the director! But that's fine, what really bugged me was that once Magneto stopped holding it, it somehow failed to plummet into the Bay.
• Why drop the head scientist from the roof? Very uncreative death (I know, a duex-ex-machina for winged-boy), especially when we just saw his assitant get porcupined.
• Magneto should have been killed in the final explosion. There's no way the old man could have hobbled out of range. At least they should have arrested him at the other end of the bridge, everyone knows what he looks like as he was the terrorist/resistance leader always on TV.

Overall, it didn't suck, although I can't really decide where it falls in the grand scheme of X-Man movies. On the walk home, the Gorgeous Wife and I asked each other the question: If you could have any of their powers, which would it be?
The answer for me was easy - Mystique's shapeshifting. Unlimited possibilities! And unlike my wife, I really don't want to know what everyone is thinking, that would be the end of my faith in humanity.

Leave your superpower choice in the comments section!