X-Men Movie Marathon: Episode 4: X-Men: The Last Stand

    The X-Men Movie Marathon continues with the one everyone hates. Ok, the other one everyone hates. This is X-Men: The Last Stand!

    The "final" film in the X-Men series, The Last Stand is considered by many to be the second worst X-Men film. The worst will get to later. It was released back in 2006, when another superhero movie, Superman Returns, was, in my opinion, getting a bad rap. It's sorta-funny because, Superman Returns had quite an impact on The Last Stand. 
    In their final adventure, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Storm (Halle Berry) try to keep the X-Men together after it is announced that there is a cure for mutants. Not only that, but Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) has mysteriously returned from the dead and has lost complete control of her powers. Jean joins Magneto's (Ian McKellen) Brotherhood, which now includes Pyro (Aaron Stanford), Juggernaut (Vinnie Jones), Callisto (Dania Ramirez), Multiple Man (Eric Dane), Spike (Lance Gibson) and Siryn (Theresa Rourke Cassidy). Wolverine and Storm team up with Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page), Beast (Kelsey Grammer), Colossus (Daniel Cudmore) and Angel (Ben Foster). Together, they try to stop Magneto from destroying the cure.

Cool guy.

    Taking over the reins from Bryan Singer, the director of the three-quel is Brett Ratner and the film defenately shows from it's change. This film is much more action-oriented than the previous two films. Regardless of how you feel about the film and Ratner's influence on it, it must be noted that he is a strong director and that the film looks very nice. This is a very well-made movie.
    Less well made however is the story. Which is just too bad. When push comes to shove, this movie had a whole lot of potential. The Dark Phoenix Saga is known as one of the greatest comic-book storylines of all times. Not only that, but the cure storyline really works. In fact, it's probably the best part of the film. How it influences the characters and how Magneto goes after it should have been plenty to support the film. However, Jean Grey's storyline undercuts the film. It's one of those storylines where whenever it comes on screen you just wish it would move on. It, at best, feels shoehorned in in a bit of fanservice. It's poorly handled, not interesting and doesn't make a lick of sense.
    It leads to the biggest problems people seem to have with this movie. The deaths and the cures. Now, even though this is a 6-year old movie, Spoiler Warning anyway. Professor X (Patrick Stewart) is killed by Jean Grey on-screen. Maybe. I didn't really care as he was mostly acting out of character in this movie anyway. Cyclops (James Marsden) is killed by Jean Grey off-screen. This was most due to Superman Returns. When Singer jumped ship to direct that film, Marsden jumped with him and couldn't film that much of this movie. Hence Cyclops's off-screen death in the beginning of the movie. Then, later on, both Mystique (Rebecca Romijn) and Rouge (Anna Paquin) get cured. Again, I don't really see the problems in these. After all, if my mutant power was that I killed everyone I touched, I'd get cured too.

Must... resist... Juno... joke.

    And yet, The Last Stand still works. Even with all it's flaws, it's still a well-acted, well-directed movie with great action and, like I said, the cure storyline is pretty great. I get why people hate it as much as they do and it is easily the weakest film in the trilogy, but still, it's not that bad. It works and is entertaining, which is more than I can say for the other bad X-Men movie. X-Men: The Last Stand gets 4 stars out of 6.