May 27, 2006

• X-Men 3: The Last Stand

  SPOILER ALERT

  
  

  Uhhh....yeah. They certainly seemed rather pushy about making it the last, what with some of the stuff they chose to do. 

  
  

  So I went to see this movie.  I don't think I can ever say what I thought of it in the words of the even bigger fans than me, but...wow.  Blah, I'm trying my darndest not to join the bandwagon, but it's difficult.  I'm so bombarded with everyone else's opiniond that I'm having difficulty finding my own, especially since it's quite similiar to a LOT of those opinions.  As I had predicted, this was Jurassic Park 3 all over again.  Except in this case, I had to deal with new mutants instead of new dinosaurs.  But everything else is practically the same.  Inexplicable scenes horribly thrown together just to make a popcorn movie at the expense of good character development.  Quite the pity.

  
  

  Okay so as a movie in general, it was great. There were some awesome scenes, even though those awesome scenes were still so short.  But as a movie that dared to call itself an X-Men movie?  It fell short.  It was NOT good.  I can declare all day long what I liked about it as that general movie, but still, this is an X-Men movie. I shouldn't have to make excuses for it.  It wasn't flat out horrible, but blah, it needed so much MORE.  I significantly lowered my expectations for the film after reading several reviews and spoilers (both willingly and unwillingly) and I guess I'm glad I did.  If I had kept myself spoiler free, I wonder if I would have thought the movie was worse or better.  I guess I'll never know.

  
  

  The movie went by way....WAY too fast.  The scenes were chopped up and thrown together.  And at an hour and 48 minutes worth of time, I guess that's all they could do was just throw things together tackily.  There was no smooth continuity and therefore, not much emotional or character development, though the actors still did do very fine jobs with what they had to work with.  Each seemingly significant scene was not more than few minutes long, so picture a lot of that...numerous short scenes lined up one right after another.  They killed off Cyclops early in the film.  Yeah, I knew it was gonna happen, but still disappointing.  He finds Jean at Alkali, or more seemingly "awakens" her when he blasts the water with his beams.  He gets thrown against the rock and we see beacon of light.  The camera then pans over to the source of the light:  a flaming Phoenix!

  
  

  NOT.

  
  

  Tackily and disappointingly, the camera pans to...well...Jean.  Just standing there.  I'm like riiiight.  So boringly put together.  Then you get a nice big kiss following the initial "shock" of her presence, and frankly, as depressed as Cyclops has been, you'd expect a much more emotional reaction to the love of his life suddenly not being so dead anymore.  Oh, but then again, the movie is all about squishiness and fastness, so there's no time for such things.  No such thing for emotionalism, even desperately needed emotionalism.  Anyway, the kiss is a passionate one and last several second before Jean is taken over by her bad side, a.k.a. Phoenix, and supposedly kills her true love.  That's 3 movies in a row in which poor Cyclops is totally underused.  Quite the shame for an X-Men leader.  So much for the greatest love story.

  
  

  The Danger Room scene was of course cool and much appreciated, but was underused.  Just thrown in there for the heck of it, as if it was there all along.  'Twas too short as well.  Total waste.  However, it was the only time I actually got to see Storm fly as realistically as I always wanted her to fly and I must admit, it gave me the shivers.  I actually forgot for a moment there how much I didn't want Halle Berry to be Storm, but when you fly like that, I can totally forgive you. Too bad for the rest of the movie, though, cuz her "flying" seemed more like being lifted up in air by those trusty wires.  Not convincing at all.  And that tornado spin you see in the trailers?  That was the most stupid looking move ever.  She should have just made hail the size of softballs to crack open some skulls. 

  
  

  Wolverine was of course wonderful, but that goes without saying.  Unfortunately, he seems to have robbed Cyclops of the Jean scenes that should have been his.  Beast was awesome too, but not used as much as I would have liked.  I totally loved his short-lived fight scenes, though; that was beyond cool.  It reminded me so much of the video game Beast, what with that huge slapping motion he does.  Too cool.  Angel was eh...cute and all, but useless and pointless.  Too much was missing about the relationship between his father and himself.  You get the idea that there's supposed to be this real bond there, but alas, we were robbed of that necessary character development as well. Rogue was wasted and was pretty much there to forcibly absorb Colossus' power to avoid getting demolished and then to just...well...stand and walk around while being jealous and hurt and stuff.  She ends up getting the cure and that's enough of that.  Iceman was awesome in his own way; it was great how we finally see his entire body ice up.  It looked better than I thought it would.  Kitty Pryde was cute and all, but every time I saw her it felt like I was looking at a 12 year old.  So hearing Juggernaut calling her a bitch seemed rather weird, cuz I'm like, who calls a kid a bitch? *shrug* Pyro was cool and had good fire moments.

  
  

  I won't go through all the characters, but I will mention Phoenix.  Or whatever version of her that was, anyway.  It didn't occur to me until I read someone else's review, but yeah, that whole Phoenix story was sadly massacred.  No fire bird, not even flames.  Not even the glowing eyes we saw in X2.  Her eyes just get black and she gets creepily veiny and evil-looking.  Famke did an awesome job portraying a Dark Phoenix, but geeze, this just wasn't the Phoenix Saga I had in mind, which was far more deserving of so much more.  It was far more complex, more meaningful, more emotional.  And in this movie, it was reduced to practically nothing.  Just some evil personality side of Jean I guess.  I mean heck, after disintegrating Professor X, she's a pretty stoic character.  Just standing around next to Magneto and watching stuff go on before finally revealing her powers once more, which basically consisted of frying people alive and turning them to ashes and just floating a bunch of things.  Lots of people and mutants were VERY quickly killed; you'd miss which ones if you blinked.  It's amazing the number of deaths there were in this movie, deaths of memorable mutants!  But that's about it.  She looked evil all right, and she had the personality perfected, but you can't help but yearn for a flame or two emanating from her.  But no such luck.  She's just a more evil Jean.

  
  

  All in all, the movie was decent and great fun as just a regular movie, but as an X-Men movie, it was just plain bad.  All I have now is my trusty 90's cartoons, I guess, because at least they deliver a whole lot more than this one did, namely the story of Phoenix.

  
  

  For a much more thorough, spoiler-filled review that better expresses my thoughts in a much more blunt way, read the following link posted by comic critic at the X-Men boards of Countingdown.com. 

  
  

  http://www.countingdown.com/movies/2756437/board?viewpost=3873483&folder=0

  
  

  Ta-ta.

  • 4:07 am
  • 3 Comments