X-Men: The Last Stand

Alt. Title for promo purposes: X3

Released May 26, 2006 in the United States

Review Synopsis a.k.a Giving Away The Game a.k.a. Enough Already

Okay. From the number of comments I have received cheerfully telling me I'm an idjit, I think I failed to make something clear (note that the original writeup began below this, where it helpfully says Review) Read this next paragraph carefully, because it's absolutely crucial to comprehending the remainder of this somewhat scattered review. Ready? Of course you are. Here we go.

This is a bad movie.

Yep. Keep this firmly in mind. Now, the next thing you'll have to remember before I get to actual information concerning the movie itself, is the following: that doesn't mean you can't enjoy it. I did. I don't know if it achieves true badflique status.

Review:

It seems the Thing To Do when discussing this movie is to stake out one's ground first, so let me do that. I like comic books. I like the X-Men. I in no way have read even a meaningful fraction of the X-Men series, much less its multiple spin-offs. Ergo, I have a tenuous at best grip on what can laughingly be called its 'continuity.' I liked the first X-Men movie, and wasn't so thrilled with X2. I think Bryan Singer is overrated by those who discuss his directing. I have no stake in how closely this movie licks Stan Lee's taint or follows panel 7426.49j of issue 4696 of spin-off 94-Zed Stroke 9. I paid my ten bucks expecting to be entertained, understanding that my brain was somewhat weaker even than normal given that it was a weekday midnight showing and that I was in a sold-out theater full of X-Men fanboy geeks including some wearing silver makeup and tinfoil and others wearing angel wings.

From what little I know, this movie takes the notion of continuity from the comic sense and laughs while wiping its ass with it. There's even holes when considered strictly as the third of three movies in a vacuum. Hell, there's holes in scene-to-scene continuity (famous one everyone's mentioning: It's midafternoon! *PULLBACK* It's night! Umm...) But like a magnificent drunk, the movie just stumbles with divine grace across these holes and somehow stays upright through momentum. It's a summer movie, for Gawd's sake, it's not supposed to make sense. There's actually a story of sorts in there; one that connects with the prior two movies, so in that we are lucky. Looked at with one eye closed and the other squinting, it looks almost like it was planned as the third movie in a trilogy. Almost.

There are noticeably more explosions, effects, ass-kickings, and moments of general mayhem than in the first two. Part of that no doubt reflects a higher budget, but part of it also reflects much less of a tendency to get angsty about the personal stresses of mutantdom. The stress is there and still plays a significant role in the story (if not the most critical!) but much less time is spent trying to coach marginal actors (or marginally direct good actors) into producing expressions of personal conflict underneath DRAMATIC MUSIC to display INNER TENSION. More time is spent having said characters display their Issues by blowing the ever-loving shit out of some piece of scenery or even (in this flick) some hapless homo sapiens or even mutant who happens to be in the way - which, really, is what it's all about.

All hail the pyrotechnics teams.

Okay, some minor spoilers below. Nothing you wouldn't get from a close examination of the trailer, I promise.

Seriously.

Still with me? Okay. Some pluses and minuses. Here's one of my biggest peeves - Nightcrawler does not appear anywhere in this film. Whisky. Tango. Foxtrot. He was perhaps my favorite mutant; I was ecstatic when he showed up in X2, and they even did it right, making him one of that movie's high points. For God's sake (heh) he even bamfed properly! Give those people cigars! And then...what? He's just not there. We don't even get a throwaway line explanation of what the hell happened to him. We even have a scene in an abandoned church! His stomping grounds! But nope. No Nightcrawler. POINTS DEDUCTED.

Ian McKellen is a splendid bastard. Truly he is. Despite wearing what looks like a padded vise around his head, his eyebrows manage to perform some 47 percent of the acting duties of the entire cast (it would be a higher figure, but he does have Patrick Stewart to contend with, who is not forced to glower out from behind immobile headgear). Watching him tailor his physical gestures (degree of exertion, type of motion) to his various Magneto exploits is a treat to behold. Finally, we get not one but at least two Magneto-vs.-Xavier debates-with-pointy-words-and-tone, and just being able to pull two actors of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen's caliber into the project pays rich dividends.

There were a great number of Inexcusable Movie Cliches, even for a comic book flick. Honestly. Helpless-housewife-locks-car-door-in-the-face-of-unimaginable-power. R. Lee Ermey's Drill Sergeant Voice. Jack-Ryan-Style Fake-IR-Satellite-Realtime-Video Taken-From-Ten-Feet-Up Live-In-The-White-House. A President who can only speak in overdramatic four-word-cliches. Sometimes the cliches even overrode the movie's sensibilities - for example, Magneto's army. Because the army is Bad Mutants, there's some reason that 95% of them have to look like Biker Gang rejects and be wearing clothes straight out of Deliverance. Uh, I call bullshit on this one. Eric Lensherr would not be delivering his speeches of self-defense and actualization to a bunch of intensely xenophobic backwoods types. He'd be able to find a bunch of self-interested as well as urbane revolutionaries who had a better place to hang out than behind Cousin Bob's Trailer.

More good-natured jokes about the outfits, which is good. Hank McCoy wearing his 'old' outfit and bitching about how it used to fit him was a good follow-on to 'You'd prefer yellow spandex?'

On the plus side as well, the storyline (cough) they chose fit in extremely well with Magneto's character and backstory; his motivations were completely believable, and his actions throughout were self-consistent and (mostly) understandable. The 'with us or against us' meme was developed well, and they didn't spend too much time (as I feel sure Singer would have) 'exploring the issues this would have raised among the Xavier community.' Nope, too busy with the asskicking and general Armageddon.

Technically, the movie was midrange even for a summer action flick. There were a lot of effects, but the CGI got fairly sloppy at times, especially at the end battle. Almost Lawnmower Man level in certain places, which made me shudder. It was inconsistent, though; some of it (Magneto and the Golden Gate) was awesome - I don't know if it reflected a budget disparity or just rushing in some parts to get it done. Jean Grey's dynamic makeup (CGI as well?) was good. We didn't see nearly as much of the Mansion this time, making it seem like less of a 'special place' - we saw some of the school part, but not a lot - and in fact the sets weren't all that great. They were fairly generic. I can't think of any that stand out.

The music was entirely forgettable. In fact, I'm fairly sure I've already forgotten it, except to note that there were several points when it seemed rather out of step with the action on the screen.

Final kvetch: there sure are an awful lot of mutants out there. Makes you wonder how Charles kept everything so quiet and why he even needed the Machine to find them if there were that many - even if they were mainly 'pawns' as Magneto put it.

Okay, done rambling. I enjoyed the flick, and will probably see it again. I liked the final scene; I thought it was the right 'comic book series' ending. It's much more of a comic book (singular) than the first two, which tried to 'distill' multiple comic books into a 'real movie'. This one is more of a comic book painted on screen, and I must guiltily admit that I really enjoy those. Oh, and advice: stay after the credits.

Select Commentary:

mkb says: NO BOOBIES? who cares then
A valid point. I never made this claim though. We do get a fully unclothed and un-Mystique-shifted Rebecca Romijn, for example. Who's to argue with that?!?!

Walter says: This movie was utterly terrible. Everything that happened was stupid and senseless and it was entirely devoid of character. You should feel guilty for enjoying it!
It's a summer blockbuster™. It's supposed to be terrible in many ways. I cheerfully accept this interpretation and offer, to both provide context and assist in further digging my own hole, the fact that I quite like Tank Girl and The Shadow.

X-Men: The Last Stand

Directed By: Brett Ratner
Screenplay By: Simon Kinberg & Zak Penn
Studio: Twentieth Century Fox (with Marvel Comics)

Abbreviated Cast

Professor X / Charles Xavier: Patrick Stewart
Magneto / Eric Lensherr: Sir Ian McKellen
Wolverine / Logan: Hugh Jackman
Storm / Ororo Munroe: Halle Berry
Jean Grey: Famke Janssen
Beast / Hank McCoy: Kelsey Grammer
Cyclops / Scott Summers: James Marsden
Rogue / Marie: Anna Paquin
Mystique / Raven Darkholme: Rebecca Romijn

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

X-Men 3. Nope, I'm not referring to it by its real name. Because (A) I thought it was lame when they announced it and (B) My least favorite part of the movie makes it so there's really no Last Stand to speak of. Which is sad since it came right at the end and I thought everything else in the movie was sweet closure.

But I really liked it. I thought the conflict with the cure for mutants was really well done. It was something I believed would be the final straw for Magneto to start his brotherhood and thus, have the X-Men defend the fact that mutants had a choice if they wanted to be mutants or not (despite the initial claim of cowardice by Storm).

Sure, the politics and the characters have always been great in the series, but action sells. And it was damn fine again this time around. The Phoenix attack in Jean's childhood home, Wolverine's rampage in the woods, Magneto fucking TEARING cars apart, a Danger Room sequence (finally!), Juggernaut chasing Kitty Pryde, the entire Golden Gate Bridge sequence and Phoenix's farewell. All very well done.

As for the characters, I accept that there's a fine line between comic X-Men and movie X-Men. Cyclops was offed as if he was a bit-character. Why? Because he WAS a bit character in the movie series. A shame? Maybe? But it's not like they were going to suddenly build him up to be the Scott Summers he was on the page in the matter of one movie. I was glad for the storyline in which Rogue felt as if she had to, to use the corny tagline, take a stand for herself and give up her mutation to win Bobby Drake over for good. Rogue always did consider her ability to be a curse (with due cause), and she got to do something about it. Oh yeah, and Angel, while I found him cool looking, was underutilized and pointless. Still, him being in the movie made for the cool scene of him bursting out of the lab, refusing to be the first to be cured, but still, pointless to the greater plot of the movie.

Sure, the Phoenix Saga is classic on the page, but I knew they weren't going to have time to do Jason Wyngarde and Emma Frost and all that the same way they didn't have time to do the whole M'Kraan Crystal deal in X-Men 2 (again, no dumb official name please). And while I could've used maybe a LITTLE more time spent with Phoenix, I liked how they worked everything. My favorite tip of the cap to the Phoenix Saga in comic form was Phoenix holding back Scott's energy blasts and kissing him. All the movie needed was a simple Xavier explanation to Wolverine had all the info out there right quick. Let's face it, they'll never going to get all the details out there in the movies and they'll never be as pure as the comics were. But the X-Men movies have done a fine job given the challenge of translating the source material to the big screen, and the Phoenix Saga was no exception. It resulted in some real cool sequences and a finale to the character that I thought was absolute closure.

Ah yes, closure! I really liked all the other major character transformations. Why? Because it brought a sense of closure. Wolverine starring out in the distance of the Charles Xavier School for the Gifted, knowing the future that maybe more adventures might take place, but we'll probably never see them on the big screen. As that image played on the screen, I realized that the three movies had let me into a huge period of time within the adventures of the X-Men, and I enjoyed them all. Sure, there may be more adventures afterward, but I felt I had seen the best of them, and that it was soon to be closing time in the X-Men movie series. I felt satisfied with that.

The movie cuts to an urban park. We see Magneto: Powerless, sad, a portrait of a once-great man with a great power. Now: an average joe forced to begin rebuilding his life anew. He holds out his hand to try to manipulate metal as he once did...and fails. He hangs his head and the credits roll.

Oh, no. Wait, this is still Hollywood.

Yes, the fucking chess piece moves leaving the door wide open for a sequel.

And yes, after the credits, the coma-striken body turns to Moira MacTaggart and says "Hello Moira" in Xavier's voice. Thus kicking the door even further wide open.

I try not to let bad endings kill movies for me. And by no means did I let these brief moments in the very end and after the very end of the movie ruin what I thought was yet another solid X-Men installment. But why leave the door open? Especially when the movie had such a great sense of closure, with its huge circumstances, epic action sequences, massive moments that shifted (and sometimes ended) the lives of the characters and a fine finale. Why not leave well enough alone?

It's really too bad some suit and tie at 20th Century Fox had to stand up and say "Wait, what?! No! We need MORE X-Men movies after this! We need the bank!"

But hey, let's just pretend a gust of wind caught that chess piece and that the whole "Hello Moira" bit was just a dream sequence on Moira's part. Because, besides those moments, the movie definitely delivered the goods to a big fan of the series.