Synopsis:
While the government hunts for Magneto (Ian McKellen), a new problem has arisen. Much to the dismay of Mutant Affairs politician Hank "The Beast" McCoy (Kelsey Grammer), a pharmaceutical company has developed a serum that can permanently repress the mutant gene - a "cure". Mutants everywhere are divided. Some are outraged, others all too willing to be "cured". As Magneto rallies an army to combat the human oppression, tensions rise towards an inevitable confrontation.
To make matters worse, Jean Grey (Famke Jannsen) has been resurrected! Or has she? Things may not be as they seem when it comes to Xavier's (Patrick Stewart) gifted student, and her choice may decide the final outcome of the battle between humans and mutants.
Review:
X-Men: The Last Stand suffers from bad hair. No, really. Hugh Jackman's Wolverine looks like a Johnny Bravo impersonator, Ian McKellen has fallen victim to Storm's powers once too often, and Famke Jansen might as well have used a dyed mop. Figuratively speaking, the film as a whole seems to need a bit of a combover itself.
You could argue that X3 required a stylistic combination of the Rush Hour franchise (high-octane action scenes) and Red Dragon (stagey dialogue and tension), and Brett Rattner helmed both of those to reasonable effect. But X-Men seemed so much more under Bryan Singer, because he tended to favour strong characters over showy displays of their supernatural powers.
Sadly, Rattner does the opposite, and succeeds only in presenting a high-speed film with several dead-ends.
For example, one early scene told in flashback shows Xavier walking to adolescent Jean Grey's house, accompanied by Eric "Magneto" Lensherr no less. At no point in the film is the opportunity seized to explain fully how Xavier came to be in a wheelchair, or in fact how he and Lensherr parted ways.
There's a completely meaningless subplot introducing Angel, the winged boy. Other than the fact that Angel's father develops the "cure", there's no dramatic point to his salvation, seen midway through the film.
Another bugbear is the sudden introduction of Hank "The Beast" McCoy as a major political player - admittedly not entirely Rattner's fault since Beast was completely omitted from the first two films. But at no time is McCoy's past relationship with Xavier touched upon - or even discussed!
On the positive side, there are plenty of interesting left turns - mostly plot-related. Surprises abound for those expecting the merry band of heroes to survive intact. Some notable divergences from X-Men comic chronology keep you guessing well into it's the movie's last hour - which is so rare in big action films these days.
Most of the action is well shot, as expected. Nothing better than a good fight in a super-hero movie, after all. And it does offer a few moments of light-hearted self-deprecation. (Juggernaught exclaims sheepishly that he "don't swim", which is ridiculous, given his mammoth power).
But the subplots do suffer from an abruptness bordering on savage. Former uber-mutant Mystique (Rebecca Romijn) is literally left to rot on the floor; Rogue's mutant girl is supposed to personify the dilemma of the mutant, but only succeeds in making her out to be - well, a silly teenage girl, and so on...
Essentially the film is too short, even at 104 minutes! It feels like critically important sections of the subplots have been cut out of the running time, rendering much of the emotional voice of the characters mute.
Maybe all this seems a bit over critical. After all, not too many in the target audience are going to recognise X-Men creator Stan Lee in a one-second cameo (this reviewer giggled and pointed, embarrassingly). But X1 and 2 managed to create characters that audiences really cared about. To see them regarded so cheaply in the "climax" of the story is a little disappointing.
X-Men: The Last Stand is not a terrible action flick. But it's not a film that needs to stand alone. It is part of trilogy, and its two prequels left a huge screen to fill. Unfortunately, on that front, Brett Ratner drops the ball, and audiences will get a taste of what they are missing when Bryan Singer's Superman Returns comes to our screens in July.
- Anton Marshall