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Spoilered Thoughts On X-Men 3: The Last Stand
Posted by Diggler - 1/6/2006 23:07

The X-Men are back, with supposedly their final instalment before the Wolverine spin-offs start up. But should they have bothered?

X-Men 3's problems - of which there are many - lie fundamentally in its horrendously cack script. As a movie, it's the most ringing endorsement ever of how without a good, solid underlying story, matched with compelling dialogue, you might as well not even bother showing up.

So while you have Wolverine kicking arse on a regular basis...Iceman battling Pyro in a fantastic spectacle of CGI effects....Patrick Stewart rocking as always....and Ian McKellen rising yet another notch in the geek hall of fame with his iconic portrayal of Magneto, it all falls flat 'cos the underlying actions...and the underlying words...all ring false. It's just a shit story, and more importantly, is written absolutely terribly. It feels like the first draft of a script that needed 10 more.

I could easily list a hundred low points with this movie. Jean Grey's ridiculous resurrection scene. Cyclops' complete arse raping as a character. Vinnie Jones' complete embarrassment of all that is British. The horrendous new villains who are all so flat I can't even name a single one. The fact Mystique - easily the coolest villain of the entire trilogy - is completely castrated in the first act. The complete disappearance of Nightcrawler without a single mention (read the script, did he?). And perhaps worst of all, the fact that for the final climactic battle of the entire series...90% of the X-men heroes we've followed so far in this trilogy up 'til now, have all either disappeared or died, meaning we get a 6 man line-up of...pretty much all newcomers and nobodies.

Mystique's disappearance after the first half hour grates in particular

Don't get me wrong, Kelsey Grammer rocks as Beast, and he is pretty much the sole new addition to the saga that impresses. But the fact we haven't heard his name mentioned once in any of the previous movies - let alone seen him - means his appearance in this final be-all end-all of battles results in one big huge dollop of "meh". Ditto for Kitty Pryde. Ditto for Colossus...although at least he had one line in X-Men 2. Regardless, the point remains; what kinda face off can you have with these noobs? And Storm, dear lord...as shit as ever.

As the single A-lister supreme protagonist bad ass left, pretty much this entire movie rests on the shoulders of Wolverine as a result. And don't get me wrong, The Jackman delivers in spades what he's done from beginning to end in this trilogy. The problem with his storyline here though is really his counterpart. I can't speak for the comics, but Phoenix sucks balls as a villain in this flick. We're told she has immense unstoppable power capable of destroying the universe...yet you could have fooled me, as she does fuck all but stand still...WATCHING...for pretty much the entire movie. It's not until her very final scene where it all starts to come together, but by that point...does anyone give a shit?

Despite criticisms, Wolverine still rocked for me, boding well, if nothing else, for further adventures with this character

Despite all this, X-Men 3 remains about as enjoyable as any other standard, brainless Hollywood blockbuster. The previous two flicks were so much more than that though - they helped (along with the likes of Spiderman) breathe life back into the comic book movie as a whole, as well as being stunning character-focused stories in their own right. That's pretty much all gone here. It's one dimensional and it's flat. Although the action scenes are mildly impressive and the spectacle is pretty immense towards the end, it just - like I say - ultimately rings hollow.

This is also one in the latest trend of mainstream releases that feels completely and utterly edited to buggery. You'd think the Hollywood system would have learned something from Lord of the Rings, but evidently not. The Last Stand feels like at least a 2.5 hour long movie, that's been castrated down to 90 minutes. Scenes are over as soon as they begin. Characters are barely introduced before they're gone for good. Long loved characters are constantly killed off then never mentioned again (some even off screen). And god, don't get me started on that final chess board sequence.

There's even one moment where it literally goes from full on day time to the middle of night in one brief change of a camera angle. Did no one really notice that in the editing room? The flick just has massive huge WW2 mortar shell sized craters in its plot and character arcs where all the meat should have been. It's barely half a movie.

To his credit, Frasier is truly invisible in his role as Beast. A fab addition to the series

It saddens me that X-Men has suffered the Godfather 3 curse of a big, huge dip in quality for its third instalment. I don't hate this film as much as it sounds like here - there's still mild enjoyment to be had in even a poor X-Men flick - it's just of the mindless popcorn variety this time out, without the style and heart of its previous beauties. I still enjoyed the two old gits in particular, especially their flashback opener to the good old days. I also, as mentioned, dug the heck out of Beast, pretty much the only new character in this entire flick who I wished had been around since the beginning. For all its faults in storytelling, I also thought the final Alcatraz battle was pretty spectacular from a visual standout. I just never for one moment cared what happened.

All in all, this almost feels like a different series to X-Men 2, the true high point of the saga. That movie fucking blew my mind, while this one I'd all but forgotten an hour later. Here's to hoping the upcoming Spider-man 3 at least caps off that series in style, and gives us our first real triple whammy classic comic book trilogy...

...'cos this sure as shit ain't doin' it.

(Pictures courtesy of X-Men - The Last Stand)