Despite its remarkable box-office showing this weekend, the third installment in the X-Men series might best be characterized as an intriguing disappointment. On one hand, it is a passable summer entertainment: fast-paced, occasionally clever, bloated with computer-generated spectacle. Like its predecessors, it comes packed with a surprising amount of contemporary political tension revolving around the rights of minority interest groups, yet it never gets bogged down in rhetoric. But too often it feels rushed and careless, as if the filmmakers were merely following the directions in the superhero film section of the blockbuster instruction manual. And however tantalizing its political implications may be, they are casually abandoned at the faintest call of fireballs and mutant brawling.

Picking up where the previous film left off, the story continues to chart the fate of a loose team of super-powered mutants as they fight for political equality and fend off attacks from a band of disgruntled mutant villains. The heroes, led by the wheelchair-bound psychic, Professor X (Patrick Stewart), want to live peacefully among the humans. The baddies, under the leadership of nefarious Magneto (Ian McKellan), want to exploit their mutant powers to rule over the un-super masses. This conflict is exacerbated when a corporation announces the invention of a mutant “cure.” Meanwhile, as if the life of a costumed mutant wasn’t stressful enough, a once-good mutant named Jean Grey returns to life with a bad attitude and the tendency to angrily disintegrate her surroundings. Needless to say, everyone involved quickly dons their ribbed-leather jumpsuits and begins to thrash each other properly.

And thrash they do. After nearly three decades of blockbusters, one might think that Hollywood’s creative talent had exhausted every possible method of massive urban destruction, but every summer they prove this idea wrong again. Here, all manner of scenery is destroyed with $200 million worth of ingenious bombast, culminating in the forcible removal and levitation of the Golden Gate Bridge and the spectacular demolition of Alcatraz island. One wonders: Who pays for all this mess? Superheroes may be in the business of saving the world, but this sort of thing must play hell with insurance rates.

Under the direction of Brett Ratner, who took the series’ helm after former director Bryan Singer left to direct this summer’s forthcoming Superman Returns, there is enough mutant mayhem to satisfy even the testiest comic-book junky. And yet, too often the action seems inflated, oversized for its own sake. This is hardly surprising coming from Ratner. The director of the Rush Hour films, as well the execrable After the Sunset, he is the directorial equivalent of a generic TV dinner: an imitation of a better meal that comes off bland, unstylish, and lacking any particular depth or style. Here, Ratner’s work is primarily an imitation of Singer’s. But for all the effects-driven fury he pumps into the action scenes, Ratner cannot match Singer’s strength with characters.

Singer’s movies gave depth to comic-book caricatures, but Ratner barely manages to fit them all in. Not helping matters is the relatively short running time and the addition of half a dozen new mutant faces (one of which shoots out killer prickles).

Fortunately, the previous films had already assembled a workable cast, most of whom manage to rise above the script’s plodding dialog. Even clad in a silly helmet and purple cape, Ian McKellan is once again a commanding, charming, and wry presence. Patrick Stewart, meanwhile, relies on the same upper-class British righteousness that powered him through seven seasons of Star Trek. Lighting his cigars on burning rubble, Hugh Jackman looks appropriately gruff and grizzled, and Halle Berry can once again be seen sporting an unfortunate hairdo. As the reborn Jean Grey, Famke Janssen mainly gets to look deranged and let things around her explode (which, admittedly, she does quite nicely). Newcomer Kelsey Grammer, as a furry blue beast of a mutant–named, of course, Beast–fares less well. Painted racket ball blue and covered in a stringy mane (also blue), he looks like a cross between a member of the Blue Man Group and the Cookie Monster.

As in the first two films, much of the movie is concerned with not just the fight for mutant rights, but the fight over just how to attain those rights. In the movie’s universe, mutants are the all-purpose minority interest group. The X-Men are the patient, generally peaceable crowd that wants to work from within the system and live pleasantly and equally alongside their human counterparts. Professor X runs a boarding school that offers courses on superpower ethics, while Beast heads up the government’s department of Mutant Affairs. Their idea is to lobby for their interests; think of it as the mutant K-Street project.

Magneto and his crew of tattooed, leather-clad nasties, though, are the mutant equivalent of ecoterrorists. They want to take human society by force and subjugate it to their whims. Where the Spider-Man movies were all about the superhero as individual, the X-Men films are all about superheroes as a group. But Ratner’s film can never bring itself to say anything more complicated than evil mutants are bad news. The film sets up a potentially interesting clash between activism and militancy, but fumbles when it comes to resolution.

There are strong moments and interesting ideas scattered throughout the film, but in the end, most of them are discarded in favor of a mutant battle royale. Perhaps the real mistake was to bill the film as the last in the series. As another episode in the X-Men’s adventures, it proves mildly amusing. As a grand finale to a previously excellent series, it is sorely lacking. What once looked to be an invincible, super-powered franchise is, in the end, only mortal.

–Peter Suderman is assistant editorial director at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He maintains a blog on film and culture at http://www.alarm-alarm.com/.