The third installment (to be less melodramatic about it), and despite the deaths and genetic alterations of several key mutants, it offers no assurance that it is indeed the last. (After all, the key mutant who perished in the previous installment returns here as an upgraded Class Five mutant: "The only explanation is that her powers wrapped her in a cocoon that protected her.") The storytelling addresses itself exclusively to devotees and does not worry itself with recruiting new ones or reclaiming defectors. Only devotees, surely, could go along with the assumption that the thing the series needed, even before the thinning-out through death and alteration, was more mutants with more powers. In sum, more mess. New to the series, Brett Ratner directed, or at any rate sat in the director's chair. With Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Kelsey Grammer. (2006) — Duncan Shepherd