Wednesday, August 1, 2012

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.
 

6 comments:

  1. How dare you. This movie takes all that Singer built up over two films and epically raped it beyond reconizition. Hey, where's Nightcrawler by the way? Mmmmm???? Where's half the mutants in this movie??? Sabertooth??? What are they doing, playing poker?

    And I like how you say this is their final adventure. That's the worst part. The film sets it up so there COULD be an X-men 4, just without half the cast. Wolverine is still there. Storm is still there. Iceman is still there (before he goes off to join Spiderman and his "amazing" friends). And heeellllo we didn't even get to see Doctor Sinister or Cable yet!!!!!!!!!! Ohhh Ratner has a looot of neerveeeee...

    This movie deserves to be burned, nothing more. It does a worse job ending off a series than Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 and the worse part is... it makes the X-Men prequels completely worthless. Because you know no matte what Professor X and Magneto accomplish in the First Class Sequel, it will all in the end, amount to nothing. And heeellloooo did you adress well, how Magneto abandoned Mystique. Yeah he just left her naked in the middle of nowhere, no powers, no clothes , no help, no nothing. Yeah reaallll smooth. Good to know loyalty is appreciated in the League of Evil Mutants.

    And the most depressing thing yet, an X-men 4 would also have to have us look at Magneto, a powerless Magneto, which just makes me cry inside when I remember the stuff he could do. This is why you don't change horses midstream.

    Hey for the next Movie Marathon you should review the Bionicle Trilogy. The fourth movie simply does not exist, ok? They're all on Youtube, free of charge. I would do them myself, but as I am a longtime fan my reviews would be terribly biased.

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    1. 1) I like how, even though you hate this movie, you still want to see another one. Because, that makes sense!

      2)If they had all the mutants from the previous films in here, then they could never move forward. You know, like most sequels should.

      3) Brett Ratner deserve absolutely ZERO flack about this film. He was forced to do this storyline and he handled it pretty well. If anything blame the writers.

      4) Change happens. Deal with it.

      5) "This is why you don't change horses midstream". Seriously?

      6) How dare I? How dare you for coming on to my blog and telling me my opinion in wrong. My opinion is just as correct as yours. I liked this movie, you didn't. That's fine. I liked it. You didn't. Deal with it.

      7) I will not review Bionicle next.

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  2. oh wow somebdoie's butthurt. But Alex, when you simply ignore half the bad components of this movie and just say it's good because it has pretty effects and is attention grabbing, well people get pissed. Now you really sound like a big hypocrit right there. For one, if Ratner had "such strong direction", couldn't he just see that the scipt wasn't working and ask for a rewrite? Nobody forced him to do this. He took a job, knowing what he'd get into. And I highly doubted he needed the money.

    And really, it doesn't matter how the script got thrust into his hands. The fact is the story is horribly written and tries to be this big film to end off the series, but you never ever get this feeling that yeah, this is the end. In fact it still feels like the X-men are just starting out. Having three films to take place consecutively one after the other with no time gaps really make you feel as if the X-men had not accomplished much. I mean it feels that this trilogy never really got off the ground really. And being a longtime fan of the series, this really pisses me off. Despite the fact that it's called "The Last Stand" and is supposedly the X-men movie to nd off all X-men movies, it surprisingly leaves farrrrr too many loose ends to copunt. And when I did not say I wanted an X-men 4, just that they could, and may will, make an X-men 4 just to clean up all the shit left over from X-men 3. I mean sure if they make an XM 4 I'd see it, but really with X-men 3 as god awfully written as it is, I'd rather not watch the franchise suffer more, unless if they clean up their shit and fix the franchise once again. Besides, Marvel has pulled the whle "Back to life" shit far too many times. And to be honest I'm really hoping for a live action Infinite Crusade style movie from them.

    Good for you. The Matoran Universe is too much to wrap your headaround anyways.

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    1. Look, I respect your opinion and I'd wish you'd respect mine. I'm not "Butthurt". I'm trying to be professional. I might not be able to review films made for five-year olds, but at least I update my blog more then once. Seriously, I you leave just on more obnoxious comment, I will ban you.

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  3. Nice review Alex. This movie was a huge disappointment considering what had come before it with X2. Yeah, it's still entertaining and has moments of fun, but it's also terribly campy in a way that seems to almost slap Bryan Singer in the face.

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  4. I actually agree with you about this movie. I just think it tried to be more than it was and it failed at times. It was a decent movie.

    I actually believe Marvel learned a lot from that series' mistakes and that's why they've had so much success.

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