I would consider myself a huge comic book fan. And I've got the collection to back it up, especially in the xmen department. As ActionHank put it, fans were already disappointed with the first two movies; I would have to say I would agree. The first two were decent, but not nearly as incredible as they should've been. They didn't have the enormous budget of Spiderman, so I let a lot of stuff slide on them because they did have good character development that reflected the spirit of the most of the characters. For instance, Magneto's take on the whole situation made sense given his history with the Nazis.
But this movie had a much bigger budget and it came off cheesier. How much time, money,and energy did they invest in Angel? And he wasn't even a factor to the story! **spoiler alert** But my biggest problem is that they killed Cyclops. He becomes the epitome of an Xman. In the books, even Logan ends up giving him much respect and follows his lead after the prof exits the mansion. In the movies, he comes across as a crybaby that doesn't deserve the position he's been given. I could deal with that as long as they kept developing him into the leader he is in the books. One thing that ol' Scotty Summers could do in the books was bottle up his emotions. He did/does it too much and that makes him a prick, but the kind of prick you would follow in a charge to the gates of Hell with a water pistol. And they simply chopped him out of this story and even friggin' forgot about him for most of the movie!
The odd cinematography I can deal with because the movies were never really driven by special effects or wonderful camera angles, the poor directing (Wolverine is NOT a crybaby) I'll overlook simply because many of the actors never really nailed the characters (like Storm, Sabertooth, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, and Iceman to name a few) and some they got pretty good (like Wolverine, Prof X, Beast, Magneto from 1&2, and even Jean Grey). I even liked the way they spun the Phoenix story and the controversy over the "cure". But I cannot forgive them for killing Cyclops. The parts of the script that killed him off and kept him out of the picture should've been burned and the ashes peed on.