2006-07-12

X-Men: The Last Stand

The X-Men franchise showed so much promise. The first film in the trilogy was so dark and gritty, such a character study of Logan and his mental and emotional baggage. Where did it all go wrong?

X2 threw more mutants and action at us than we could handle, eschewing character development in the process. X-Men: The Last Stand, carries those traits along, and adds bad writing, poor chemistry, and a change of director. To top it off, it features the most over-the-top and unbelievable action and stunts of the trilogy (yes, I am aware we are talking about a movie about mutants).

To succeed in the face of this and suspend disbelief the writing and direction needed to be spot on and we needed some emotional depth to motivate the insanity. Instead, it just fell flat. The best characters get offed early, and even Wolverine comes off as a skinny pretty boy (how the might have fallen).

If you've seen the first two, you will, of course, see this film. It is a spectacle to behold on the big screen, but that's as far as it goes. Here's to more mutant films in the future... one mutant at a time and some character development.

1 comment:

Brock said...

Yeah, I think you're pretty spot on with this review. This was definately a series that had a lot of promise, but unfortunately, missed out.
While I probably like X2 quite a bit more then you do, I think the issues you mentioned are without question the problem this movie suffers from.
I also think that the action is not only unbelievable, but also outright pointless. One of the biggest moments in the film, when Magneto uses the Golden Gate Bridge to usher the mutants on to Alcatraz, is just pointless. Clearly, the studio heads or the director himself wanted to "amp up" the visuals. But most of those mutants could fly...and we're talking Alcatraz here. It's visible from the harbor!