Review 69: X-Men: The Last Stand

X-Men: The Last Stand is the kind of movie that I feared X-Men (2000) would be. An unpolished, rushed synthesizer of slam, wham bangs and action tropes. There are interesting ideas on display but without much human interest to back them up.

A pharmaceutical company has developed an antidote to the mutant gene, provoking controversy in the mutant community. Magneto (Ian McKellen) declares war on the humans and retrieves his own weapon: the telekinetic and telepathic Phoenix, who is the resurrected former X-Man, Jean Grey (Famke Janssen).
After Phoenix kills Cyclops (James Marsden) and Professor X (Patrick Stewart), a final battle between the X-Men and the Brotherhood ensues, and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) must accept that in order to save Jean from her second personality, he will have to kill her.

The plot...  well to be honest with you it's a mess. It’s a whole mishmash/anaglam of promising ideas (The Dark Pheonix Saga) and ones that should just have been cut from the script (the mutant cure, Megneto begin the main antagonist). Two comic storylines served as inspiration for this film, The Dark Phoenix Saga by Chris Claremont and John Byrne and the Astonishing X-Men storyline "Gifted" by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday. Unfortunately, the film never finds it footing regarding either of these two storylines and the whole film ends up feeling cluttered and messy.
At no point are any of the ideas presented here developed to their full potential and at no point are they executed well.
It also lacks the cerebral, thoughtful, gritty, visceral approach to it's characters and themes that made the first two films so enjoyable and instead trades them in for cardboard cutouts, nameless action figures, junky action scenes, explosions and bland and colourless toothpicks.
You witness spectacular, flashy effects driven action onscreen and its fun to watch and goes by at a fairly brisk pace (to fast in my opinion) but unlike its two predecessors, there just isn't much weight to it.

The film also feels very rushed and there's never any time given to develop the ideas present. Characters arcs don't feel fully realised, the character development feels rushed to non-existant, lots of conclusions feel hasty and abrupt, a lot of the dramatic moments rarely have emotional payoff or feel earned.

What’s a intriguing about the mutant cure story is that neither the X-Men or the Brotherhood are completely wrong: The X-Men see the cure as an offensive drug as they don’t see their powers as something that needs to be cured whilist the Brotherhood see the cure as a weapon that’ll force mutants into extinction.

The dilemma the cure presents is also intriguing, do you take it or do you not? Just as several mutants see the cure as an insult to who they are, others, such as Rogue, see it as a potential lifesaver but much like The Dark Phoenix Saga that's never given the food for thought that it requires and deserves.

These two very compelling perspectives have the hallmarks of a thought-provoking plot but it’s never bought to forefront as the film also has The Dark Pheonix saga on it’s mind.
The clumsy way these two storylines are handled make X-Men: The Last Stand feel like two separate films.
This film doesn't let the emotions and drama play out
There’s also a thinly sketched, underdeveloped love triangle between Rogue (Anna Paquin), Iceman (Shawn Ashmore) and Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat (Ellen Page) that could have been cut from the film.

The way the film is edited together and paced feels like a set of vignettes or series of short films, a lot of the scenes in this film don't end, they just sort of stop.
This can be attributed to the fact that this film was a production nightmare: Bryan Singer initially was to return but left this film during pre-production because he decide he’d rather develop Superman Returns for Warner Bros./DC (don’t ask me why) and the film went through various director before eventually coming under the wing of Brett Ratner and it shows.
This film just feels choppy with too many ideas that aren’t given enough time to develop and be executed, it introduces a lot of new characters that are given too little to do and the ones that comes across as mildly interesting like Hank McCoy/Beast (Kelsey Grammer) and Shadowcat are only given a smidge bit of screen time. Popular characters such as Psyloche are given the short shift whilst also introducing pretty lame mutant such Kid Omega, Spike and Multiple Man, really?

With a runtime of just 104 minutes, this film doesn't have nearly as enough time as it should have to do all of its two storylines justice. The two storylines adapted from the comics could easily have complimented each other had the film taken its time

Meanwhile Angel (Ben Foster) is introduced as a vital part of the Mutant Cure storyline but he too dispears due to Mutant overload and it left me wishing he had more interactions with the X-Men.
As a result, he ultimately ends up feeling like an unfulfilled character and a wasted opportunity.

The film also unnecessarily kills off a bunch of characters. Cyclops and Prof. X’s deaths have no real build up to them they just happen spontaneously with no emotional payoff or time allowed to let their impacts sink in. Cyclops gets canned early due James Marsden playing a utterly useless character in Superman Returns.
Professor X's death is meant to be powerful and a real turning point for the film, but instead just comes out of nowhere and leaves us as an audience feeling stunned.

The film also leaves a Ton of questions unanswered e.g. are Cyclops and Professor X alive or dead? (Storm and Logan only find his glasses)? The film also never makes it clear as to wether humanity have accepted mutants into society. If they have then it’s incredibly vague, feels soooooooo unearned and provides no proper closure to the trilogy.

There are however some positive aspects e.g. the score by John Powell is excellent, the cinematography is gorgeous, the costume design is terrific, the special effects are very hit or miss ranging from being spectacular at best and incredibly cheesy and worse. The production design is impressive, the make up is beautiful and some of the action scenes are thrilling.

The acting was actually not that bad, Hugh Jackman continues to impress as Wolverine, bringing a much needed emotional heft to this otherwise haphazardly thrown together production.

and does try to bring the emotion needed for his journey with Jean Grey, Halle Berry gives possibly her best performance as Storm,

James Marsden barely makes an impact in his smaller role as Cyclops. This can attributed to the actor being cast to play an disposable love interest in

Patrick Stewart is great once again fabulous as Professor X,

Ian Mckellen as always, delivers a fine performance as Magneto, unfortunately on round three, his motivations come from really contrived writing. He witnesses the Dark Pheonix kill his best and closest friend and yet still takes her (someone he must know full well he can’t control) under his wing. He’s just setting himself up for trouble.

Famke Janssen is sensational as the evil Jean Grey.

Anna Paquin is also given the short shift in this film as Rogue, despite her talents. The cure is made available and automatically she wants to take it. This decision doesn’t work for a couple of reasons:
1. It comes out of nowhere’s with no thought or films presented for her.
2. It just goes back and, dare I say, retcons all the development she went through in the previous films.
Yes, her powers are sometimes a curse but they can also be a blessing. Logan tells her in one scene “I hope you’re not doing this for a boy” even though it’s soooooo painfully obvious that she’s doing it for Bobby.    

On newcomers to the series, Ellen Page is strong as Shadowcat, Kelsey Grammer is powerful as the Beast, Vinnie Jones is intimidating as the Juggernaut and Olivia Williams in positively wasted as Moira MacTaggert.
 

X-Men: The Last Stand has some interesting ideas, some terrific doing their best with what they're given but never really came together as a satisfying whole, 2.5/5.

The Anonymous Critic