X-Men: The Last Stand (Film Review)

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) is the third in the series of movies based upon the sixties comic book created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby about a group of people born with genetic differences which they use to combat evil but also have to combat the general populace's prejudices of them.
The first X-Men was an above average comic book movie which unlike many Hollywood blockbusters of today broke two rules: 1. it failed to deliver in the action stakes, providing generally limp and uninvolving sequences with below average special effects and 2. it spent more time than usual getting to know the characters and what made them tick, especially the edgy loner, Wolverine and his love triangle with Jean Grey and jealous boyfriend Scott Summers.


The first two X-Men movies were made by Bryan Singer, who had proven himself With The Usual Suspects, and he amped up (and improved) the action in X-Men 2 while retaining the dynamics between the characters. The finale of X2 (as it was called) was inspiring, prearing us for what would (in the third movie) be an adaption of the greatest X-Men story from the comics: the Dark Phoenix saga.

Unfortunately, Singer moved on from X-Men when he was given the opportunity to relaunch the Superman franchise. Brought in to this franchise was Brett Ratner who had previously helmed the two Rush Hour movies and Red Dragon. It is possibly that he was brought in because he had previous experience with action, drama and comedy. It is hard to tell where the problem lies then, but the latest X-Men movie fails to deliver on any of these counts and is especially disappointing considering if Singer had continued.

It is possible that some of the blame lay with the producers. The first director, Matthew Vaughn had to leave the movie during preproduction and Ratner was stuck in an unenviable position with very little startup time. The first two X-Men movies were developed in conjunction with Singer and writers David Hayter on X1 and Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty on X2 (who are also working on Superman Lives). The Last Stand lacks the character depth and development on the first two movies and instead relies on the basic plotting and convergence of the mutant cure and Phoenix storylines.

One of the main problems with all of the X-Men movies is they are top-heavy with too many characters. This movie has something like twenty mutant characters all vying for screentime. Maybe not surprisingly many of them are killed off during the course of the movie. This leads to very few genuine character moments and the penultimate moment between Jean and Wolverine comes across as an after-thought rather than geuine emotion. Other characters who should have developed on from X2 are given brief character moments and then dropped from the movie completely - among them Scott, Prf. Xavier, Rogue and Mystique.

As with the previous movies, Iceman is severely under-utlised and the great comic book sliding ice road effect (done with great style in The Incredibles) is still missing from the mix. Joss Whedon's favorite character, Kitty Pryde gets a brief moment to shine (but is also short thrifted) and Mystique, one of the most popular characters is removed from the story after the first act.

As with most current Hollywood blockbusters, the special effects are what count. The effects in X3 seem lazy and unoriginal, in many cases simply repeating what had been done in the previous movies (such as Magneto flying cars) but with greater scale. We also have an opening Danger Room scene straight out of Terminator 2.

X-Men: The Last Stand is an entertaining movie with some witty one-liners and some decent performances from Famke Janssen and Ian McKellan that stands to probably make as much money as its predecessors for Fox. Unfortunately, it is one of the few Marvel comic book adaptions that has not had the strength of its convictions and either produced an interesting but flawed movie (such as Daredvil or Hulk) or a wildly successful movie on all levels (such as X-Men 2 or Spider-Man 2).