X-Men: The Last Stand (review)

X-Men 3

Well, it wasn’t a total drag. Unlike the first two X-men movies, a completely different creative team did X3. Bryan Singer and his team left for greener pastures, Superman Returns. This left a creative void with the now troubled project. With another director dropping out besides Singer, FOX brought in Brett Ratner. Ratner’s name sent waves of anger through the X-men fanboy message boards. (He was one of their early choices for X1, BTW)

There are many problems with the movie and not all of them came from Ratner. I believe FOX had a hand in making this one not as good as X2. While the movie wasn’t a total disaster, there are some things that rubbed me the wrong way. For one, the dialogue, in many places, was terrible. The music was down right dreadful, the only theme worth anything was the Grey/Dark Phoenix theme, which was a natural progression from John Ottman’s masterful Jean Grey theme in X2. The story felt rushed in many places and needed to be fleshed out more. I’m sorry, but the short running time hurt this film significantly. I also felt that the Dark Phoenix saga got short changed here, and got tied up too neatly.

What worked…

All the various relationships that were started in the first movie worked in the film. The Wolverine/Rogue arc came to a head and had a nice bookend toward the middle of the film. It was a father and daughter relationship without it being too corny. Ian McKellen ruled his part and nearly took over the film with his character. Patrick Stewart, Kelsey Grammer, and Hugh Jackman all get thumbs up for making the so-so script better than what it really was. The action scenes also worked.

Could have been much better, but not a total turd burger.

Grade: C+

Even though she would have killed me, I still would have “hit that”.
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If I stand here like this, people will think I’m cool. I’m sure of it. Boy, my nose itches; I wonder if I should scratch it? I wonder what my wife is doing…I should get back to my job; wait a minute I have no job. I should just stand here and think…
If I stand here like this, people will think I’m cool. I’m sure of it. Boy, my nose itches; I wonder if I should scratch it? I wonder what my wife is doing…I should get back to my job; wait a minute I have no job. I should just stand here and think…

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“Anyone got a light?”
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“I will not see Catwoman again!”