If there's one thing this summer movie season is teaching me, it's that I can no longer be won over by flashy special effects. For a while there, I admit, I allowed myself to be dazzled by every gimmick that came along. Dinosaurs, superheroes, massive armies; every new trick bigger and better than the last. It was so very fascinating to see what technology could do, sometimes I forgot what was important. But I've finally reached my saturation point with the digital stuff, and effects just aren't enough to carry me through two hours anymore. Especially if, as in the case of X-Men: The Last Stand, I go in to the movie with high expectations.Here's the problem with X-Men, v3.0: After directing the first two stellar X-Men films (X2 is one of my favorite action films ever), Bryan Singer defected to take the helm of Superman Returns (another summer superhero flick I have high hopes for), and Brett Ratner (of Rush Hour fame) stepped in to take over X-Men. And with that, bye-bye franchise. I'm not going to pick over how far the script diverges from what's been written in the comics. Plenty of fanboys have done that already, and besides, I was never that hardcore about the X-books. My problem is with Ratner's basic filmmaking techniques: horrendous dialogue, telegraphing his plot, underutilizing the lead characters, putting characters in the movie that serve no purpose... the list goes on and on. If he can't get that stuff right, it doesn't matter if he follows canon or has 8,000 groundbreaking special effects shots; he lost me after 20 minutes of ham-handed dialogue and painfully obvious plot points. If I wanted to see something that's been dumbed down for the masses, I would have saved my $8.75 and stayed home to watch Two and a Half Men. Oh well. I guess not everybody can be Wes Anderson.
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