Brikar

What happens when a popular, talented director leaves and the studio decides to fast track a movie just to try and prove that their executives have bigger dicks than the popular, talented director?

You get "X-Men: The Last Stand", an empty cash-in of a film that happens to have the same cast as previous X-Men films, but none of the heart or depth or artistry. Over the course of this rather short film, nearly every major character will be given a brush-off death or severely compromise their personal ethics for shaky reasons at best. Several characters will simply disappear for much of the film, while others will sort of stand around waiting for someone to tell them what to do.

Part of the plot is ripped, stripped and dumbed down from Joss Whedon's excellent work on "Astonishing X-Men" and another part is torn and abused from the ultra-popular "Dark Pheonix Saga" of decades past. Neither one is fleshed out or dealt with any kind of real way, so what we end up with is a movie with two plots that just serve as triggering mechanisms for elaborate action sequences that are fairly entertaining.

In the end, Magneto is the only character given any kind of fair treatment, but even he isn't immune to the damaging effects of this script from the writer of "Inspector Gadget". Others are fully assassinated in their brief screentimes, and yet more simply stand on the cusp between the background and the foreground as the movie pretends like we should care about them. Let me tell you something, movie, I don't just automatically care about Colossus just because he's Colossus. You need to give me a reason to care about him.

Does the film have positives? Yes. The action and effects are all well-done, and mostly entertaining. When the Phoenix decides to stop standing around glowering pointlessly at everything, and really lets loose, so does the film. Magneto tearing out the Golden Gate Bridge is dang cool, too. John Powell's score is effective, and probably the best score of the three movies. As much of a legend as Michael Kamen is in the world of film scoring, his score for the first "X-Men" film is just flat and uninspired, with only a single redeeming moment at the film's climax. For X2, John Ottman gives a serviceable score but nothing more. Powell lets loose here with a sound more epic than any thing the film serves up visually or emotionally.

Other positives: Halle Berry finally manages not to embarrass herself as Storm (save one scene) and Hugh Jackman continues make Wolverine exceptionally fun to watch. The trailer for "SNAKES ON A PLANE" was great, too.

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iamspenagain

I thought the story as a whole was excellent, but I STILL don't know what the point of Angel was. Why was he in the story?

I really didn't have a problem with Scott's death, except that nobody seemed to care about it for a good 20 minutes, and Xavier's death had a big impact on the movie (though, admittedly, not nearly as big as it should have had). It was refreshing to see a franchise film pretend it's not, though many of the characters were mistreated horribly. Still, the characters the story focused on were developed well. I just took Magneto's reluctance to use Phoenix as him being afraid of her power, though that should have been fleshed out more, too.

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If I could, I would marry a Magnum bar.

Bean

Angel isn't the only one who didn't need to be in the movie. Pheonix had absolutley, positively no reason for being there. Not only did they take one of the best characters from the comics (Angel) and throw him in a role that seems to be solely "trailer fluff", they took what is IMHO the greatest storyline in the history of the comics (Dark Pheonix) and turned it/her into a sidenote. Every single scene she was in once she hooked up with Magneto could have gone on fine without her.

They had three stories in this movie, none of which came together in any sensible fashion.

There was Angel coming to grips with his abilities and finally deciding he wanted them.


There was the aforementioned Pheonix/Jean Grey, not to mention the Wolverine Cyclops aspect of that same story.

And then there was Magneto, the Brotherhood and the cure.

While at casual glance it seems like all of these plots are involved with each other, they aren't in any way dependant on one another. In fact, the latter two could have been fleshed out into complete and separate movies of their own by even a talentless hack like Ratner.

To sum it up, I WANT MY 8 BUCKS BACK RIGHT FUCKING NOW!

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"I haven't faced death. I've cheated death. I've tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I know nothing."

--James T. Kirk

Brikar

There was also the Rogue/Iceman/Shadowcat triangle that they glossed over neatly. That could've gone well with the Angel storyline, but instead they decided to give zero depth to either of them and turn Rogue into a race traitor. The same with Professor X. Did you stay to see that insulting bit after the credits?

__________________
"A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown."

http://olympusmans.blogspot.com
http://benforrealz.blogspot.com