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X-MEN: THE LAST STAND (2006)
Not bad, but Heroes is looking better all the time Like the first X-Men movie, this second sequel is aaaaaaalmost there, but it's missing something. In this case, personality. The story's good (presumably culled from years and years of comic storylines), and there's a substantial turnover rate to relieve the filmmakers from having to think of new things they can show with a guy shooting energy blasts from his eyes. But the stock dialogue and performances (these are people showing up to work for their paychecks), and largely been-there-done-that effects and action hold it back. That plot: the US government has used a child mutant to prepare a shot that can immediately and permanently remove all mutations from anyone willing to take it...and a few who aren't, once it's weaponized and put it into plastic guns Magneto can't mess around with. In response, Magneto assembles an army of tattooed misfits, including what appears to be a goth tranny who can whip up shock waves. Oh and Jean Grey's come back to life, but she's freaky and weird now. X3 introduces so many new mutants (and thus, mutant powers) that most of them don't even get names; we see one or two quick demonstrations of their powers and their purposes are served. Conservation of mass is scoffed at by one mutant who throws like twenty big bony spikes (gotta be a couple pounds each) and another who regenerates, in an eyeblink, every limb Wolverine lops off, 46 minutes into the movie when he finally SNIKs out those claws for something other than a holodeck simulation. It's actually something of a relief that several major characters are, uh, removed from the equation before they can clutter things up further (though, since you'll note that Famke Janssen returns as Jean Grey, superhero stories have a tough time killing people off permanently). We hear a lot about "level 3" and "level 5" mutants - one guesses Professor X and Magneto are level 4's, and one wonders where Dr. Strange and Captain America would fit on this scale. The most prominent newbie is Kelsey Grammer as Beast, who's an intellectual blue gorilla - Grammer does the intellectual thing fine, but he still looks more like a guy in a bulky blue gorilla suit than a genuine slice of blue simian beefcake. Other prominent new mutants are Kitty Pride, who can pass through solid objects, taking others with her. Juggernaut, who's basically the Rhino - Vinnie Jones was a really fun villain in The Condemned, but here he's basically got "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!" which isn't much of a boo-hiss one-liner in the first place. And then there's Angel and his big feathery wings - what do the Jesus freaks of the X-Men universe make of this guy? Multiple Man, who can make seemingly unlimited, equally "himself" versions of himself out of himself (what happens if one multiple gets nailed with a mutant-cure dart? What happens to the rest of himself?). A few returnees like Rogue and Colossus see almost no action, though Rogue does have a bit more of a character-driven story; she's tempted by the mutant cure because she sees Kitty Pride as a threat to her relationship with her boyfriend. A better movie would've placed her motives on her own desires instead of his. The mutant cure is easily the movie's brightest idea, exploited well as an action-movie device and a philosophical discourse; the X-Men movies have been steeped in allegories to the mundane world (some more subtly than others) but the possibility of a "cure" for what makes different people different, and offensive to so many "normal" people to the point of persecution, well, they can really go nuts with this one. After all, while this series is ostensibly set in the same universe as all the other Marvel superheroes and villains, the X-Men are born with their powers - and their stories are set in a United States panicked by an epidemic of people born with uncanny powers, which assumes a fantastically different political and practical reality from that of Spider-Man or the Hulk. Other Marvel Comics movies (if not necessarily the works they're based on) are based around people bitten by radioactive spiders, injected with experimental serums, bombarded by radiation, augmented by a cool-ass robot suit or mechatentacles...people we can safely assume are more or less unique, and not representative of a maligned subclass of oppressed people who could do a lot of damage if they wanted to, with or without their votes. But that - and some characters with some sexuality to them - is about all that X3 brings to the table that wasn't already done in its predecessors, and in some ways it just retreats into a more standard FX-blockbuster mold. Magneto, who still does the same ol' shit with throwing cars around like Tonka toys, has always been more of a dangerous rival worthy of respect than a true, nasty villain, but he does treat the mutants who get stuck with the cure (even the ones who do it to protect him) like cannon fodder, like he was some sort of complete douche or something. Wolverine even gets stuck with that most accursed battle-epic cliché, the pre-battle speech ("We stand together. X-Men. All of us."). X3 cost an unbelievable 210 megabucks to make - unbelievable, because it doesn't look appreciably more expensive than, say, X2 (110 megabucks) or X1 (75 megabucks). I'm sure a fair bit of that went to Halle Barry, whose asking price probably skyrocketed over the course of this series, but the rest? Note to Hollywood bean-counters: Brett Ratner doesn't know shit about bringing a budget down. (c) Brian J. Wright 2008 BACK TO THE X's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE |