Fox News representatives and Roger Friedman met today and mutually agreed to part ways immediately. Fox News appreciates Mr. Friedman’s ten years of contributions to building foxnews.com and wishes him success in his future endeavors. Mr. Friedman is grateful to his colleagues for their friendship and support over the past decade.

It re-created the Alkali Lake stuff from X2 quite nicely, but even then the movie didn’t synch up with what happened in the first two X-Men flicks. Sabretooth being the most obvious difference, but Stryker’s story had some (ahem) striking differences too. It also didn’t help that I never believed the actor playing Stryker, as he was nothing like X2′s Stryker. You could say the same about Liev Schrieber as Sabertooth, but he’s certainly an upgrade from Tyler Mane. In the case of Stryker, they definitely downgraded. There’s a funny scene with Stryker in the closing credits that made me chuckle, but it would seem to contradict X2.

Then there’s the whole thing with Wolvie’s girlfriend (a real cutie, BTW) and Emma Frost… I don’t think that was following the comics history at all, but then I’m not all that familiar with Emma outside of Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men run. I do know she shouldn’t be like a high school cheerleader though, which how she came off in this movie. Cyclops seemed added to the movie for no particular reason either.

Then there’s Deadpool… Not terribly familiar with him either, but I feel awful for fans of that character. I KNOW that’s not supposed to be his backstory!

I feel bad for Jackman too, because I think he’s a good guy and he always delievers as Wolverine. But he’s been stuck in yet another crappy movie, and I don’t feel the need to plunk down money to see it. I wanted to like it, but the bar has been raised even higher after Batman Begins, Dark Knight and Iron Man, and this just doesn’t measure up. Hell, it doesn’t measure up to the first two X-Men or first two Spider-Man films.