My Detailed X3 Review
***SPOILER WARNING****
***OKAY YOU'VE BEEN WARNED***
X-Men: The Last Stand is presumably the final part of a trilogy of X-Men movies, and whereas it seems to have raised the stakes in terms of action sequences and special effects, the quality of story-telling and writing has been sacrificed, in my opinion. I'll break the movie down into three sections:
THE GOOD
-Ian McKellan: Anything I see this guy in anymore yields a great performance, and X3 didn't disappoint. Magneto really got to let loose in this movie with some killer effects, but also remained true to the basis of the character. For instance, in Jean's house when Charles was in danger, you really felt as if Erik didn't want to see his friend get hurt, even though they'd been opposed to each other only moments before. The sentiment returns again in the woods when Pyro talks about killing Xavier and Magneto defends Charles. The line in the final battle - "Traitors to their own race" - gave me the chills. I thought they captured the Magneto character exceptionally well. My only objection to Magneto's role was him not being locked up by the government at the end. Even if his powers are gone, he's a criminal. Why let him go? But it was nice to see the chess piece wobble right before the credits.
-Beast: I think they hit this dead on, and it started with the casting of Kelsey Grammer in this role. The voice was perfect, absolutely perfect. He spoke intelligently but not over everyone's heads. Him being part of the government as the head of mutant affairs or whatever wasn't tremendously out of place or unbelievable, and his fight scenes were amazing. I thought even though they did a lot of zip line work, they really did a nice job capturing the feel of what Beast would be like when he fights, flying and bouncing all over the place with an acrobatic style. And very well played by Grammer when he encounters Leech and sees the kind of effects the boy has on mutants.
-Multiple Man: Nice little cameo for Multiple Man, and while I knew he wasn't going to have a huge role, acting as a decoy for the army was a great idea, and it was awesome to see those circular blips on the screen just start to disappear. Very well written scene.
-Storm powering up: This is the kind of power we should have seen from Storm since X1, and I can understand why Halle is much happier with the character's portrayal in this movie than in the previous ones. She fought for her character, and she won out. Storm kicks some serious ass in this movie, but to me it didn't seem like she held any more of the screen in dramatic non-action scenes than before. Maybe that was a necessary trade off, but it seemed to work well.
-Action in general: Lots of great action in this movie. Everyone's power seemed to be so much... better than in previous incarnations. More powerful, used in cooler ways. The fight at Jean's house was very well done, with a good balance of the three different battles that were taking place. Watching Magneto and Pyro team up to throw fiery cars at the army or seeing Iceman in completely frozen form was very exciting for a fan who has only seen something close to this on still pages of a book. Ratner and company did a great job realizing the scale and action necessary to make this a comic adaptation.
THE BAD
-Angel: Did he serve any kind of purpose in this movie? I probably could have monitored his screen time with the second hand of my watch, yet he appears all over the place in the promotional material. I was really excited about how he might be used in this movie after the opening scene of him as a boy trying to cut off his wings, but after his escape from the lab, he all but disappeared. Apparently he stays in San Fran, as evident by the end of the movie, so he doesn't even join the team. What a waste.
-Colossus: I think Colossus might have had more speaking lines in X2 than he did in this latest movie, and that's incredibly disappointing. Did he even have that much action, either? Two Fastball Specials with Wolverine and letting Rogue absorb his powers are really the only memorable Colossus moments I can recall from this film. Peter is such an intriguing character in the books, yet in both X2 and X3, they couldn't capture it. And that has nothing to do with changing his nationality, but I just felt they did absolutely nothing with his character, and it showed.
-Rogue: This was a character that was vital to the first X-Men movie, but like Cyclops, is virtually written out of the third installment. Rogue sees Bobby flirting or at least getting close to Kitty, and decides that she needs the cure. So, she goes and gets it, and suddenly her and Bobby are back together. Sure, Bobby says that Rogue didn't have to change, but his actions spoke a different dialogue, and the visual image of the two of them together tells me all I need to know. "If someone doesn't like you for you are, change." Yeah, that's a great message to send to any of the young girls who may be seeing this movie. Not only is that a poor message, but it's completely contradictory to the theme of the X-Men in general.
-The Writing: Maybe it's just me, but when you're putting together the final chapter of what has been one of the most successful fantasy trilogies in a long time and one of the forefront franchises of FOX, you should try to come up with some better stuff than stealing lines from internet movies made by guys who are most likely high. "I'm the Juggernaut, -----!" Yeah, it was freakin' hilarious dubbed over the cartoon, but here it just sounds out of place. Especially when combined with the awkward "Who's hiding, dickhead?" from Shadowcat and the prison guard telling a transformed Mystique that he'd "spray you in the face, -----." It all just compiled to what sounded like a script penned (or at least edited) by middle schoolers.
THE UGLY
-Cyclops: I wonder whose idea it was to all but write Cyclops out of this movie. After X2 and Marsden's reaction to Jean's death, it seemed a given that Scott would play a huge role in any story involving Jean's resurrection. Instead, he is distraught, drives up to the lake, and apparently gets vaporized. Afterwards, no one mourns him or even recognizes his death besides a comment slipped in here or there. When Wolverine tells Storm and Xavier that he thinks Jean killed Cyclops, there is absolutely NO reaction from Xavier. In fact, Wolverine doesn't even think about Scott until after a heavy dry-hump session with Jean, and even then it's not the memory of Cyclops that stops him. Absolutely no respect at all for this character. I understand there's some off-screen politics about Marsden jumping ship with Singer to be in the new Superman movie, but this character deserved much better. He's the leader of the X-Men, for God's sake. I don't even care that he died, but at least do it in a way that's true to the relationship he had with Jean and respectful to the character. Not only does he meet his fate at the hands of Jean (who I guess we're supposed to believe showed more willpower in fighting off the other personality to save Logan than she did the guy she actually loved), but no one really seems to care he's gone.
-Editing/Continuity: For one regarding the bridge scene, that's the fastest I've ever seen the sun set, but maybe daylight works differently in San Francisco. Two, the X-Men need an advanced jet to make it to the final battle in time, but Angel manages to make it there on his wings alone in about the same amount of time? Really? Third, there were multiple instances where the film was hurt by poor editing. Cyclops gets killed at Alkaline Lake. Xavier pulls an Obi Wan and feels the disturbance, then tells Logan and Storm to go there. Instantly, we're there. Another scene between the two would have been benficial, though because of the immediacy of the moment, I can at least understand why no scene was put between the two. The same can't be said for the X-Men's arrival at Jean's house, which occurs instantly after the trio of Storm, Logan, and Xavier meet in the basement of the mansion. With so much else going on in this movie, there's no reason a scene couldn't have been inserted here for time's sake, so that traveling to Jean's house appears to actually take some time.
-Wolverine: Essentially Logan takes on the role that Cyclops should have been playing in this story: Jean's love interest/savior as well as team leader. This was likely a company decision since Wolverine is the primary character of the franchise and can't be out of the spotlight, even though he has his own solo movie on the way next. But Logan's role as Jean's love interest completely contradicts what happened in X2, where Jean made a choice of Scott over Logan and Logan apparently accepted that decision by telling Scott that Jean had chose him. I must have also missed when Logan's healing factor decided to go into hyperspeed as well, because he sure seemed to be healing much faster in the climax than he ever did in any of the films prior to that. I guess continuity be damned so long as it makes for a good scene? Not quite. What's funny is I actually like Hugh Jackman as an actor, but the way Logan is portrayed in this film just doesn't work for me.
-The Phoenix: This seemed like a movie on two fronts. On one front, there was a cure for mutants that the Brotherhood wanted to do away. On the second front, there was Jean and the Phoenix. To me, the entire movie felt as if the Phoenix storyline was just included because it had been previously set up by Singer, because it served very little purpose in the other main plotline of the film. Jean's resurrected, escapes the mansion, and joins the Brotherhood for what seems like no real reason at all. After the scene at her house, Jean did virtually nothing until the final battle, and she didn't even enter that until the first part of it was over.
This is the kind of action that X-Men fans have been craving since the announcement that the franchise would be brought to film in the first place. Unfortunately, for as good as the action was, the storytelling was lacking in several departments. The film had shortcomings in terms of editing, was disjointed with so much going on, and didn't make use of the many characters that were either introduced or supposedly more prominently featured. You expect to hear some cheesy dialogue in comic movies, but the writers went beyond to cheese to juvenile at points, and as a finale to the trilogy, X3 left somewhat of a bad taste in my mouth.
Overall, I'd give it
out of four for these reasons combined.
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