I normally like to do a sports post after doing a superhero post, but there aren't any sports happening right now, so I'll just have to stay on the superhero genre for a while. Today, I am finally concluding my quest through the X-Men movies.
X-Men: The Last Stand was directed by Brett Ratner and stars Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen and all the same main cast from the other two movies. I was really excited for this one when it came out in 2006, but I was a bit disappointed with the end result. In fact, this was a rather difficult film to review. Some parts of it were pretty awesome, but other parts ... well, not so much.
It's always nice to start a movie with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, even if their faces do look a little too plasticy to be younger-looking. I would have liked to add a point here, but I was really put off by Jean Grey. Why was she such a jerk? It seems these movies can never get her right, no matter what age they make her.
I will add a point, however, for the second flashback at the beginning. It was a shocking scene to see little Angel cutting off his own wings. This really shows how traumatic it is for kids to discover they're mutants. Unfortunately, Angel did very little in the rest of the movie, but this scene sticks with you, and for that, the score is now a 6.
The next scene is a good representation of the whole film. It's the X-Men training in the Danger Room. There's some nice action, but it's brought down by a few lame things. We do see Colossus, but he does little and says even less. We do see the head of a sentinel, but not the whole body for some reason. There's also some really lame dialogue, especially when Storm gets really mad at Wolverine for destroying the sentinel for some reason. Wasn't that what they were supposed to do? Sadly, the whole movie is just like this. Kinda good, kinda lame, overall just bland.
I will add a point for Kelsey Grammer's portrayal of Beast. He looked perfect, sounded perfect and acted perfectly. They even got the little things right like having him read books upside down and the design of his old uniform. It really is a terrible shame that we may never see him play Beast again.
Now it's time to start taking away points. The first deduction is caused by the super-lame "class" system they invented to rank mutants. What the heck is a Class 3 mutant? We've never heard that terminology used before or since. It was much worse than the mitichlorians in Star Wars. I really think they did a good enough job of showing how powerful Jean was without shoving the Class 5 thing down our throats.
Another point is deducted because of Cyclops. I know James Marsden couldn't get much screen time because he was filming Superman Returns at the same time, but what they did with his character here was just awful — especially after he did practically nothing in X2. So sad. In this movie, we see him whine for about two minutes, shoot one pretty pathetic-looking optic blast into the water, and then get killed for no reason. If you're going to kill a main character, you have to do it heroically, like Mace Windu, not Boba Fett. Hmm, I think I need to watch Star Wars now.
Before I take off another point, I will add one for the fresh take on Phoenix. This is one of the rare situations where the movie did better than the comics. Phoenix in the comics is super abstract and super confusing. In the movie, it is simply a split personality in Jean caused by Xavier locking away a majority of her power. That's logical enough for me. So our score is back up to a 6 now.
But the praise doesn't last long. It was a little annoying when they introduced hundreds of "mutants" who don't look like mutants and have lame powers, but it was a tragedy when they brought on the Juggernaut and practically ruined him. He was way too small, had a stupid-looking outfit, and suddenly became Australian for no good reason. They also explained his powers with a lame, "Once he gets some momentum behind him, he becomes unstoppable." So stupid!
We also lose another point for the nasty sex scene with Jean and Wolverine. In a way, it kind of makes sense with the Phoenix being loose and wanting to experience ... things ... but the way they showed it here was just plain wrong. Especially when Jean started ripping into Wolverine's skin. Gross, gross, gross!
Xavier's death scene should have been more powerful than it was. The problem with it might have been the unimpressive fight scenes with Juggernaut, Wolverine, Storm, and the other two lame mutants. Some parts looked quite strange, like when Juggernaut threw Wolverine up into the ceiling and he immediately fell down into the next room. How does that work?
But I will add a point for Magneto. He was one of the few characters the movie producers understood in terms of power, looks and attitude. I loved it when Pyro complained he couldn't kill Xavier and Magneto immediately rebuked him and defended his old friend. Perfect. Our score is now an average 5 heading into the final battle scene.
Like I said earlier, this was mostly bland. There were a few nice and interesting things, but they were immediately countered by boring, dumb things. Magneto lifting the Golden Gate Bridge was nice, but most of his mutants were just lame. Juggernaut chasing Kitty Pryde through walls was an interesting concept, but it was weird seeing she was shorter and younger-looking than the kid she was trying to save. We see Storm kill someone (which I guess fits into her character), but it takes her forever to do it. Maybe it was an overkill? Really, she was just too violent in these movies and probably could have gone evil in the fourth, had it been made.
I do have to take away a point for the cheesy climax. To hearken back to the suddenly important Danger Room scene at the beginning, Wolverine said, "We work as a team." And Storm said, "The best defense is a good offense." Why do these scenes never work with Storm? Is Halle Berry really just a bad actor or is the script that bad?
So the movie ends with several main characters dead — Cyclops, Jean and Xavier (but not really) — and the main villain, Magneto, deprived of his power (but not really). If they wanted this to be the final installment of the trilogy, which I think they did, hence the Last Stand, then they needed to end it in a conclusive, fulfilling way. This was just a depressing ending that seemed to point toward another sequel that would be impossible to pull off because they painted themselves into a corner. For this failure, I take away another point.
Overall, this is not a bad film, just a bland one. It lacked the emotion from X2 and didn't do a good enough job tying directly back into the previous movie. They did try, like with Rogue and Iceman and Pyro, but those plot lines weren't given enough time to develop and came off as rather annoying when they tried to force them in. I thought it was really lame how Rogue assumed that all Bobby wanted was to have sex with her, even when he said several times that wasn't the case. The introduction of Kitty Pryde also came out of nowhere. We did see her briefly in the other two movies (played by different people) but now all of a sudden she's a full-blown X-Man? Also, they failed to say what happened to Nightcrawler after he seemed so eager to join the team in X2.
So many complaints add up to a rather disappointing end for a franchise that hasn't quite ended thanks to the two new prequels. I guess I still need to review X-Men: First Class before I can say I'm done with this series. In the meantime, I think I'll begin to put some much-needed DC on this blog.
Final score for X-Men: The Last Stand: 3 out of 10.
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