It didn’t completely suck.
Of course, I believe that even the third film in a franchise ought to be held to a higher standard than “it didn’t completely suck,” but this is a good place to start with this film given all the uproar over Bryan Singer vacating the director’s chair, the hiring of Brett Ratner (Rush Hour, The Family Man, and the execrable Red Dragon), the rush to market to open the summer film season, and the cannibalization of a very important plot line from the comic’s source material.
It reveals nothing that any grade schooler, or anyone who has seen the bus shelter posters, didn’t know to say that this movie centers on the resurrection of Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) as Phoenix in a “what hath mutantcy wrought?” plot line that revolves around the production of a so-called “vaccine” for mutantcy created by Worthington Labs from the DNA of a mutant named Jimmy/Leech (Cameron Bright) (apparently if you’re a mutant one of the things you get besides powers is a cool nickname…who knew!) whose power is that mere proximity saps any mutant of her powers without, seemingly, doing any harm.
Firmly on the side that mutantcy is nothing that needs curing, this is the film in which Storm (Halle Berry) very nearly comes into her own most resembling the Storm of the comic books. The plot of the film is beyond predictable – protests arise around the vaccine, Magneto (Sir Ian McKellen) organizes a mutant army that will storm Worthington Labs to destroy the source of the vaccine in a very black and white view of the world, mutants and people die, and untenable choices are made by all.
Given the parallels that are often drawn or seen between mutantcy in the X-Men series and homosexuality, it’s no wonder that this particular plot has sparked discussion and controversy in the glbt community. The cure for mutantcy brings up a whole slew of questions: is it wrong to want to fit in? why is being different seen as so bad? if you are different, whether it be queer or another race, would you take a “cure” to fit into the dominant paradigm? More important, though, is this film’s actual theme: what is it that makes us who we are?
During her rehabilitation at the school, Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart) reveals to Logan (Hugh Jackman) that during her schooling he placed a series of blocks in Jean’s mind that ostensibly allow her to better control her powers. In doing so, he separated Jean from the parts of her personality that contain all the “joy, excitement, and anger.” And there in lies the crux of the problem as separating out these aspects of who she was from her conscious mind caused the creation of another personality, one that calls itself the Phoenix (Dark Phoenix in the comics). It seems to me that this removal of certain aspects of who she was speaks more to the theme of the film than the device, the vaccine, in which that theme is wrapped. Jean is but one of the flaws of this film.
A primary player, the only class 5 mutant ever discovered, Jean/Phoenix’s ability to control her powers is a pivotal element to the plot, yet except for a few scenes she remains essentially passive, watching Magneto carry out his plot and plans, watching the X-Men make their last stand to defend the boy at Worthington Labs’ headquarters on Alcatraz Island.
Another flaw in this film is the shear number of characters the film makers attempt to introduce. With the first two films we had but a few to keep track of; with this one we are force fed a number of new-to-movies-only-viewers characters (Callisto, Jubilee, Juggernaut, Arclight, Kid Omega, Multiple Man…so many, in fact, that if you lined them up I couldn’t tell you who was whom) that it is impossible to become invested in them. The only ones who make any real impact are Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) and Peter Rasputin/Colossus (Daniel Cudmore) who cameoed briefly in X2: X-Men United. Even Dr. Hank McCoy/Beast (Kelsey Grammer) is remarkable only because he looks so much like a mutant (blue fur, claws, and all).
The real sin of this film, though, is that it tries to do too much, to take on not only a huge jump in plots, major character introductions, character deaths (yes, there are some), and massive thematic tasks on both the personal/psychological level and the political that it does nothing particularly well.
Does X-Men: The Last Stand completely succumb to the movie law of threes? It does not. Is it an entry into the franchise that lives up to its two predecessors? Probably not, but it’s not a bad way to spend a couple of hours on a Sunday. My one piece of advice: don’t leave before the movie is over. This means watch all the credits. All of them. You won’t be sorry. 2.5 out of 5.
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