Saturday, May 27, 2006
Review: X-Men - The Last Stand
WARNING: This review contains major spoilers, so if you're pregnant, under twelve or sensitive to that kind of thing, you might want to be careful.If I was to sum up Twentieth Century Fox’s X-Men: The Last Stand, I’d call it a low-rent remake of Return of the Jedi. It’s a big-budget bonanza designed to tie up the remaining threads of a trilogy, it strides to make epic emotional connections as the characters we’ve followed face their destiny, and it sacrifices a lot of good potential for drama to make way for big action spectacles.
The Last Stand essentially picks up where 2003’s X2 left off. Our characters are still very much feeling the effects of the death of team-mate Jean Grey - who sacrificed herself to save the gang at the climax of the last movie – especially Cyclops, who is understandably still having trouble coming to terms with his loss. But successful superhero movies don’t get by on emotional issues alone, so here comes the plot: a scientist, whose own son is a mutant, has discovered an antibody which ‘supresses the mutant X-gene.’ In effect, a cure.
The reaction to this news is somewhat mixed. Most of the mutants take offence to the fact that their kind is being labelled as a disease, some – like Rogue – are happy that they can now be rid of the affliction that has plagued them all their lives, and the more radical section led by Magneto decide it’s another step towards mutant extermination, and decide the best way forward is to launch a counterstrike. Thus, the X-Men must decide which faction to side with: humanity, or the Brotherhood of Mutants. It doesn’t help matters that Jean Grey has suddenly risen from her watery grave, and seems intent on giving anyone who crosses her path the emo stare. The last stand has begun.
X-Men 3 has had a pretty rough time during production, what with Bryan Singer leaving to take on Superman Returns for Warners and then Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake) coming in and almost immediately leaving, leaving the not exactly fan-favourite Brett Ratner (Rush Hour) to take the reigns. I admit that I was one of the ones against Ratner taking over, but now that I’ve seen the movie, I can’t say much is really his fault, at least as much as I know, anyway. It’s directed with a minimum of flair and just the right side of competence really, very much a point-and-click job. However, I think the best thing he’s done with the film is make it like Bryan Singer’s first two movies. Another director – possibly Vaughn – might have taken it upon himself to stamp his own style and imprint onto the film, and in the proceeds could have distanced it from the other films. In fact, claiming that Brett Ratner really has a style might be a bit too much, but he worked for this film.
However, that doesn’t mean the film is a huge success. I don’t think much of it is a success at all, but let me explain where I’m coming from. I am one of the people who grew up reading the X-Men, or rather mainly Wolverine, enjoyed the first movie and loved the second, both with reservations. They’re not perfect, but I don’t think they’re bad movies, and I think the second one is very good, and they did an interesting job of taking the X-Men into the real world, even if that did mean some changes, some for the better, some for the worse. However, one of the big things that makes X3 consistent with the first two films is that it performs a big injustice to Cyclops as a character. That’s the thing with these movies, Wolverine is the star. That’s not necessarily their fault, after all Wolverine has been a beloved character for a long time, and in the mainstream, probably the second most popular Marvel property behind Spider-Man. However, in the comics, Cyclops has always been the leader of the team and a big part of the success, which has unfortunately been ignored in the films.
I’m not sure who to blame for Cyclops in X3, to be honest. He was so underwritten in the first two movies, that it must have been tempting to do what they did with him because he seemed to not matter. On the other hand, what they did with him takes a large chunk of the power of Jean’s story away immediately. And if you’re going to finally use a character in a major way, the last part of a trilogy might be the place to do it. In any case, the bottom line is that Cyclops spends the first ten minutes or so of X3 pining for Jean, before travelling to Alkali Lake where he discovers she’s alive. Unfortunately, she then kills him. Ain’t love a bitch?
The thing is, he’s not even killed on-screen. They kiss, we see his skin go weird in the same way that people who touched Rogue does, and we cut away, leaving us to wonder what exactly happened until the scene where Wolverine finds his glasses. It’s a quite tender scene really, where Cyclops takes off his specs to have Jean suppress his optic blast, and showed the tragic potential of that relationship in relation to her own power. Then she kills him. Oh well.
In terms of the plot, the mutant cure that it centres around is a pretty good device. In essence, it’s seemingly created because the mayor from Batman Returns doesn’t like the fact that his son (the doe-eyed Angel) has wings. As a side note, for a character that’s being introduced in this film as one of the major new ones, he doesn’t get to do a lot, and has maybe ten minutes of screen time. But that’s neither here nor there. The prospect of a cure for mutancy is a powerful thematic device, because it allows us to immediately ask ourselves questions about how we would act if we were a mutant, or if we lived amongst mutants. If we lived our lives being persecuted, would we take this chance to be normal and live a normal life, or would we take offence at the prospect of being “cured”? Would we even take up arms over such a threat? Or, to use one of the X-Men as an example, if we were like Rogue, who cannot touch anyone without hurting them and has seen her once boyfriend moving on to pastures new i.e. Kitty Pryde, would we still want to be a mutant in the face of this cure?
It’s these kind of themes that made me respect the first two movies so much. I appreciate Wolverine and the gang in action as much as the next person, but these were movies that actually made you think about these kind of things happening, something that always put the X-Men apart for me. This comes into play again, concerning Professor Xavier, in a plot thread I’m not sure about. It starts with the opening sequence, where we see a young Xavier and Magneto visit a pre-teen Jean Grey. The sequence has been talked about a lot, and features brand new computer effects which allow Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen to play their younger selves, using some kind of weird process. It mostly works for the scene, but there’s something a little odd about it. It’s like seeing CGI people; the technology has got most of it down pat, but there’s something about them that makes it a little too perfect, and a little too eerie. Unfortunately, this makes the scene a tad distracting.
Xavier and Magneto are there to see Jean about coming to the school. She shows then her immense power, lifting all of the cars in her street, as well as various household objects (watch out for the obligatory Stan Lee cameo, true believers!). Fast forward to present day when Jean is found and taken back to Xavier’s, and we find out that Xavier installed “psychic barriers” in her mind to prevent her from accessing this power, which would make her more powerful than Xavier himself. Now, I’m in too minds about this thread. On one hand, I like it because it installs doubt in the previously perfect Xavier, and creates conflict, which is always good. On the other hand, it makes him seem like a dick, which takes away the power of his death scene, which we don’t really care about, half because it’s not really done that well, and half because we’ve completely lost faith in the character because of what he’s done to Jean.
Jean herself, that’s a different story together. In the comics, the ‘Phoenix’ entity came about because of some alien dealings after she died. In X3, it’s revealed that it’s always been in her subconscious, rather like the reinvention of Two Face in Batman: The Animated Series. Thus, when she awakes, this subconscious part takes over and she wreaks havoc. Well, havoc might be too strong a word, as she never really gets that far, which is probably the most disappointing facet of the movie. It’s almost reduced to a sub-plot, only really coming into focus during the end, where she’s dispatched by Wolverine in a very ordinary manner. The thing is, and this is where Return of the Jedi - and to some extent, Revenge of the Sith – comes into play, the whole Phoenix story very much leaves us wanting much more.
This is where the story should have gone into truly epic territory. The second movie was building up to it, still a relatively small film in a lot of areas, but you could see where it was going. This movie needed to have Jean going crazy, showing the “class 5 power” (as we’re told she has) really kicking the ass of everything in its path, as opposed to turning a few soldiers into dust and throwing a few things around. The movie just never raises itself to this level, even with Magneto storming Alcatraz. The final battle is some of the best material in the film, with some truly fun action scenes, but by the time Wolverine stabs Phoenix, you start to realize it’s all over very quickly and something is wrong.
Where I relate it to the aforementioned Star Wars movies, is with the themes of turning to that dark side, to coin a phrase (!), and then the overall redemption. Obviously, I’m not necessarily holding up Sith as a level of quality in this area, as it fumbled that whole bit rather badly, just as a guideline. What Jean needed to do is to go down that dark side like never before, and take the ultimate route of joining Magneto, before being the final person to stop him before he does his thing and tries to destroy mankind again, thus earning her redemption and creating that rather pesky thing called a character arc. When Logan kills Jean, we don’t feel pain, we don’t feel horrified, we don’t really feel surprised. It’s just another climax to an action sequence, and seems like a complete cop-out. A bit like Sith, really.
As opposed to the fumbling of the Phoenix, one of my favourite things about the film was Beast. Originally, I wasn’t sure at all about the look of the character, but seeing him as flesh and blood on screen, especially while fighting, was wonderful, and Kelsey Grammar brought a brilliant degree of class and humility to the role. It was a bit jarring to see his opening scene, where he is hanging upside down from his office ceiling, although it helped me realize that this is almost a literal adaptation of the animated series.
The Danger Room sequence was fun, and worked well to introduce the X-Men as a team, although I’m sure the scene was taken almost verbatim from the comics or the cartoon, as it seems very, very familiar. Not showing the Sentinels in proper form was a bit of a cop-out, but I suppose there’s only so much money they can throw at the screen, and I guess the Golden Gate Bridge sequence used a lot of that. That scene itself was fun, and a great idea, but never seemed to hit the right epic note. It almost seemed like taking an idea that was amazing in theory, but executing it with almost pedestrian competence, so it was more ‘Oh, that’s cool’ instead of ‘Holy shit!’
All the actors did reasonably well. McKellen and Stewart were the cornerstones as usual, along with Hugh Jackman, although I thought Wolverine in the film was written a bit too stereotypically, although perhaps not enough it seems because like in X2, it showed him crying! Sorry, fanboy moment. However, the worst actor in the film was Vinnie Jones. When he wasn’t speaking, he was fine. But as soon as that cockney accent came out of his mouth, my fiancée and I broke into uproarious laughter, especially during ‘I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!’
One thing that perplexed me was Mystique. This was a character who was used to great effect in the first two films, but was very quickly shifted out of the way, like Cyclops, quite unceremoniously. From the first two movies, you had the sense that she had such a dislike for humans and how they had treated her, and support for the mutant cause in general, that to see her betraying them just seemed completely out of character. I can see Magneto as a character who can betray someone easily and not think about it, but to see her do that as an act of revenge seemed petty, and not an act I would associate with her character.
The only other aspect I can really think about that really had an effect on me was the music, which was uniformly terrible. Not to go back to the last movie, but John Ottman’s score for X2 – particularly the main theme – was a highpoint in superhero movie scoring during a time when even people like Danny Elfman, creator of the legendary Batman '89 theme, couldn’t bring themselves to create appropriately great music for a character like Spider-Man. But the music here, the main themes, the incidental music, it was all absolutely terrible. I think people sometimes forget the effect a great piece of music can have (just watch the Superman Returns trailers without John Williams’ score and see how your view changes), and here, that effect is lost because of the complete direness of the music.
At the end of the day, I didn’t hate the film. I enjoyed it as an experience, but there were so many missteps in it that are impossible to ignore, whether it be the fault of the director, the screenwriter, the producer or whoever. As a dumb action movie, it’s a fun movie. As a more serious and character-driven film, it doesn’t work. The best way to approach this movie is to look for some good superhero action and some cool set-pieces. If you expect to care about the characters, you might want to look somewhere else. But if you just want to switch your brain off and watch Colossus throw a Wolverine fastball, this is the movie for you.
Enjoyment: 7
Quality: 5
Read or Post a Comment
<< Home