X-Men - The Last Stand

X-Men - The Last Stand Date: na   —   DVD / VHS product page Rating:

I just saw X3 this weekend with my niece.  This review will contain spoilers, so if you haven't seen the movie then I would definitely avoid reading this review. 

This was definitely the worst of the three movies in the X-Men "trilogy" - I call it that even though there will probably be more movies to come.  So while the series is put on hiatus while Marvel works on Wolverine and Magneto, I'm going to talk about what worked and what didn't.  There's not a lot of the former, and a whole bunch of the latter. 

The story and script were really well thought-out, in my opinion.  This was a very good story.  It fit in nicely with the tone set in previous movies.  The professor's death, while a bit cheapened by the extra scene following the final credits at the end of the film, actually was touching and handled effectively.  I may be one of the few people who liked Juggernaut, even though he isn't a mutant in the comics.  One of my favorite scenes was when Mystique lost her powers, and Magneto totally ditched her.  Even though I saw it coming, it was sweet.   I also enjoyed how Magneto defended Professor X in ffront of the punks in his army.  finally, Jean's demise totally made sense.

Now here's what didn't work:

• The direction.  It was crude, going from one big bang to another without enough reflection.  There wasn't much in the way of sophistication, and you didn't get the sense that the events on the screen were part of something much deeper.
  


• The special effects/costumes were good in some places (Angel), but absolute garbage in others (Beast, Colossus).
  


• The complete lack of character development.  Other than Wolverine, Rogue, Iceman and Storm, it seemed like nobody else got any deoth added to their characters.  This was especially criminal for the characters that returned for their second movies (Kitty Pryde, Colossus, Pyro, Mystique) and for key characters in this one (Beast, Angel, Jean). 
  
  


• The dialogue.  It sucked ass.  It was crude, even by comic book movie standards.  It was maybe one step above Frank Miller's Sin City. 
  
  


• Angel started out seeming like he'd be a major character, but ended up not doing squat.  They could have written him out completely and the movie wouldn't have really changed at all. 
  
  


• No Nightcrawler, who the movie made into one of the coolest characters.
  
  


• Thoguh I hate Cyclops in the comic books, killing him off was more sketchy than any other death they depicted.  He is such a rock-solid mainstay of the team in the comics that imagining the X-Men without him is just plain weird.  Though based on what I saw in the 'secret' scene after the credits, he may not be dead. 
  

I try to avoid being a total comic-book or book fanboy when I review movies like this, because it's asinine to expect the movies to adhere slavishly to the original media.  In spite of that, I have to again rage against the way they treat Colossus.  He is my favorite X-Man -- and moreso for his personality than for his powers.  He has one of the better-developed backstories in X-Men history, and he has appeared in two straight movies as nothing more than muscle.  In this movie, he barely gets any dialogue and he doesn't even seem Russian!  WTF?!  Ridiculous. 

The whole movie was rushed, and it showed.  There were rumors that the studio was tushing to put this movie out before Superman, and those rumors now seem very true.  Cut-rate special effects, a lack of character development, and the 'crammed' feeling felt throughout meant that thsi movie was doomed to not live up to some of its expectations. 

But, as I said in my last review, expectations are a funny thing. And I'd heard so much negative buzz about this movie that I ended up thinking it was a lot better than I thought it would be.  It was still entertaining, and as an X-Men fan I enjoyed it, warts and all.  If you don't go in expecting this movie to be X-Men or X2, you'll have fun.

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