The revolution had begun. Not only had Fox produced two hit movies featuring the X-Men, but by the time the third X-film hit in 2006, Sony had produced two hit Spider-Man films, and several other Marvel characters had hit the big screen with varying degrees of success: Daredevil, Elektra, the Hulk, the Punisher, and the Fantastic Four, not to mention two Blade sequels.
Suddenly, Marvel heroes were all over the big screen, and they were actually faithful to their comics roots and not goofy or ridiculous. They weren’t all good movies, mind you, but at the very least there had been a sea change, and it started with X-Men.
That there would be a third movie in the series was never in doubt, especially since X2 had so aggressively set up Jean Grey coming back as Phoenix, with the climax of the second film being their riff on Uncanny X-Men #102 when Marvel Girl became Phoenix.
What did become in doubt was whether or not Bryan Singer would be involved, as he was given the opportunity to helm a new Superman film, and he jumped on that. We will cover the results of that decision next week. Fox, meanwhile, was left without a director. At first they approached Matthew Vaughn, who wound up pulling out (though he would return in 2011 for the next team film in the sequence, X-Men: First Class). Brett Ratner took over the reins—Ratner had been one of the ones considered for X-Men back in the 1990s before they settled on Singer.
As with the previous film, Zak Penn was hired to write a screenplay, and someone else was also hired, this time Simon Kinberg rather than longtime Singer collaborator David Hayter. They wound up combining their scripts, this time Kinberg and Penn directly collaborating. Kinberg has continued to be associated with the franchise, serving as a producer on each of the next three films as well as Deadpool, Logan, and Deadpool 2, and also co-writing Days of Future Past and Apocalypse, with the upcoming Dark Phoenix being his directorial debut off his script. The final script for The Last Stand was inspired by two particular story arcs from the comics, 1980’s “Dark Phoenix” storyline by Chris Claremont & John Byrne in Uncanny X-Men and 2004’s “The Gifted” storyline by Joss Whedon & John Cassaday in Astonishing X-Men.
After two straight movies that started out with Beast and Angel as part of the team only to have them cut for budgetary reasons, they finally appear in the third film—which had a larger budget than the previous two films combined—played by Kelsey Grammer and Ben Foster. While Alan Cumming does not return as Nightcrawler—his role was too small to be worth all the time Cumming would have to spend in makeup, so the part was cut—all the big actors are back, though some not for very long. (Singer cast James Marsden in Superman Returns, and as a result, Cyclops’s role in this film is minimal.) Kitty Pryde’s role is expanded, re-cast again this time with Ellen Page, and also introduced in this film are Vinnie Jones as the Juggernaut, Dania Ramirez as Callisto, Eric Dane as Madrox the Multiple Man, Ken Leung as Kid Omega, and Shohreh Aghdashloo as Dr. Rao.
The next movies intended were origin stories, with X-Men Origins: Wolverine released in 2009, and X-Men Origins: Magneto planned. But after the lukewarm response to the former, they expanded out the Magneto origin idea instead into what became X-Men: First Class, which kicked off a series of movies featuring the X-Men in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Chronologically, the next movie in the sequence after this one will be The Wolverine, which focuses on Logan dealing with the events of The Last Stand. We’ll circle back around to Wolverine’s solo features later on in this rewatch.
“As Churchill said, ‘There comes a time when every man must—’ Oh, you get the point…”
X-Men: The Last Stand
Written by Simon Kinberg & Zak Penn
Directed by Brett Ratner
Produced by Lauren Shuler Donner & Ralph Winter & Avi Arad
Original release date: May 26, 2006
Twenty years ago, an ambulatory Xavier and Magneto visit the Grey house to recruit the teenaged Jean Grey to Xavier’s School. At one point, Grey uses her telekinesis to raise all the cars on the block, as well as a lawn mower belonging to someone who looks just like Chris Claremont and the water from a hose wielded by someone who looks just like Stan Lee.
Ten years ago, Warren Worthington Jr. walks in on his son, Warren Worthington III, who has just sliced the wings off his back. The elder Worthington is appalled to realize that his son is a mutant.
Present day, Storm and Wolverine lead a session in the Danger Room, a holographic battle against giant robots that includes Colossus, Iceman, Kitty Pryde, and Rogue. Wolverine is filling for Cyclops, who isn’t over Grey’s death yet. Cyclops also hears Grey’s voice telepathically, and abandons the school, going north to Alkali Lake on his motorcycle.
Worthington Labs announces that they have a mutant “cure.” This comes as an annoyed surprise to Dr. Henry P. “Hank” McCoy, a former student of Xavier’s who is the new president’s Secretary of Mutant Affairs. McCoy brings this to Xavier’s attention. Rogue is intrigued by the cure, as it means she could actually touch people. This is of particular interest as Iceman is showing interest in Pryde, someone he can actually make contact with.
The president also reveals to McCoy—who tells Xavier—that Mystique has been captured by U.S. authorities. She was breaking into the FDA to learn more about the cure.
Both Worthington and the president insist that the cure is voluntary, but Magneto commandeers a mutant rally in San Francisco and insists that this alleged cure is a tool of genocide. He and Pyro recruit several new mutants to the Brotherhood, including Callisto (who has super-speed and can sense other mutants), Arclight (who can create shockwaves), Kid Omega (who’s basically a human porcupine), and others. Callisto is able to sense Mystique’s location, and Magneto springs her as well as Juggernaut and Madrox the Multiple Man. However, one of the guards shoots a weapon with the cure in a dart. Mystique takes the dart for Magneto, saving him—but leaving her a regular human. Magneto shows his gratitude by abandoning her naked form in the truck, which is at once yucky, ungrateful, and stupid.
The source of the cure is a mutant named Jimmy. Any mutant who goes near him has their powers negated. (When McCoy is introduced to him by Dr. Rao, the scientist who developed the cure, he reaches out for a handshake and the fur falls off his hand.) Mystique had revealed to Magneto that Jimmy is being kept on Alcatraz, as is the cure.
Cyclops arrives at Alkali Lake to find Grey alive somehow. They kiss and then she kills him. Xavier senses Grey’s presence while in the midst of an ethics lecture. He’s talking about the ethics of a dying telepath inserting their consciousness into a brain-dead comatose patient, showing an actual brain-dead comatose patient in the care of his colleague Moira MacTaggart. This will probably be important later.
Xavier sends Wolverine and Storm to Alkali Lake, where they find many rocks and things floating around, as well as Cyclops’s glasses—and Grey! They bring her comatose body back to the mansion. Xavier reveals that when he and Magneto recruited Grey two decades previous, he had to telepathically repress her powers so she could keep them under control. The treatments and therapy they underwent resulted in a dissociative personality, with her more aggressive nasty side being a personality she called “Phoenix” for no reason that the script bothers to explain.
When Grey wakes from her coma, she comes on to Wolverine, who doesn’t resist at first, but then finally gets enough blood to his other head to recall that he should ask what happened to Cyclops. Unable to face what she’s done—and modulating back and forth between the Grey and Phoenix personalities—she departs the mansion.
Xavier is furious, blaming Wolverine for letting her go, but Wolverine blames Xavier for messing with her head.
Worthington wants the first person to get the cure to be his son, but Warren refuses, breaks out of the harness that keeps his wings in check, and flies away.
Callisto senses Grey and tells Magneto, and both Magneto and Xavier converge on the Grey house, accompanied by the Brotherhood and the X-Men, respectively. While Grey and Xavier engage in a psi-war, Storm and Wolverine take on Juggernaut, Callisto, and Pyro. Grey disintegrates Xavier (though he smiles right before she does it), and goes off with Magneto, while Juggernaut and Callisto have made short work of Storm and Wolverine.
A funeral is held for Xavier at the school. McCoy talks about shutting the school down, but then Warren walks in requesting sanctuary. Storm says that this is, indeed, a safe place for mutants, and the school is officially reopened.
Rogue, longing to be able to actually hold Iceman’s hand, not to mention kissing him, goes to get the cure. Wolverine gives her his blessing, to her surprise—she expected a speech from him about how it’s not a disease and this is messing with who she is—but he says he’s her friend, not her father, and he wants her to do what she thinks is right. When she arrives, there are protestors on both sides at the center where the cure is being distributed.
Wolverine then telepathically hears Grey’s voice, just like Cyclops did, and he goes off on his own to check out Magneto’s stronghold. How he travels the 3000 miles to Magneto’s forest redoubt (it can’t be that far from San Francisco, given what happens next) is left unclear. He fights (and kills) several of the Brotherhood, and also catches Magneto’s speech to the troops. The weaponizing of the cure is his rallying cry, proving that the government’s intention is to wipe them out.
He tries to convince Grey to come home, but is no more successful than Xavier, though Logan at least survives. Magneto casts him far away, but doesn’t kill him out of respect for Xavier’s memory.
The Brotherhood attacks the Worthington centers. Mystique—or, rather, Raven Darkhölme—readily and eagerly gives Magneto up to the authorities, including the location of his headquarters. However, Magneto has left Madrox and hundreds of duplicates as decoys behind while he goes for Alcatraz, where Jimmy is being held. He rips the Golden Gate Bridge apart and uses it to ferry the Brotherhood to the island. The U.S. troops are stuck only with Madrox. The weaponizing of the cure has left McCoy with no choice to but resign his cabinet post.
Wolverine has returned to the mansion. How he travels the 3000 miles back home is also left unclear. Colossus, Kitty, and Iceman suit up along with McCoy—who digs his older X-uniform out of the closet—and Storm and the six of them fly out to San Francisco to face Magneto and his Brotherhood.
The government troops are armed with plastic guns loaded with darts that are filled with the cure. Magneto is impressed with their foresight, but he has hundreds of mutants on his side. He sends in the “pawns” first, the hordes of mutants who get wiped out by the cure darts. He sends Juggernaut in to retrieve Jimmy while Arclight and Kid Omega go after Worthington and Rao.
Kitty goes after Juggernaut, and uses Jimmy’s power-neutralizing abilities against him, as the suddenly-no-longer-super-strong Juggernaut knocks himself out against a wall that, with powers, he would’ve just plowed through.
Kid Omega kills Rao, and Arclight almost kills Worthington, but he’s saved by his son—who somehow managed to fly all the way across the country under his own power at roughly the same speed as a supersonic jet.
Colossus throws Wolverine at Magneto, which sufficiently distracts the master of magnetism so that he doesn’t see McCoy stabbing him with three cure darts until it’s too late.
After Magneto falls, and most of the Brotherhood is captured or cured or dead or incapacitated, only then does Grey—who’s been standing around doing nothing since she left her house with Magneto—decide to actually act. She disintegrates all the troops, half the island, and generally commits mass murder and mayhem. Wolverine is the only one able to approach her, as his healing factor keeps her from tearing him apart the way she does everyone else. After an agonizing exchange of looks and a lot of shouting, he stabs her with his claws.
There are now three headstones behind the school: Charles Xavier, Scott Summers, and Jean Grey. Magneto managed to escape in the confusion, and he sits in Golden Gate Park in front of a chess board, managing to move one of the chess pieces a teeny tiny bit.
McCoy is appointed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Rogue returns to Xavier’s School, even though she’s no longer a mutant—but now she can hold Iceman’s hand. And MacTaggart checks on her brain-dead patient only to find him speaking with Xavier’s voice and saying, “Hello, Moira.”
“Not everybody heals as fast as you, Logan”
Back in 1961, Akira Kurosawa did a film called Yojimbo. Like many of his films up until 1963, it starred Toshiro Mifune (they had a falling out during the filming of the excellent, underrated Red Beard) as a samurai who hired himself out as a bodyguard. The movie—which was also the basis for the Clint Eastwood film A Fistful of Dollars—was very successful, and spawned a sequel, Sanjuro. They are still considered two great films, among the many gems in Kurosawa’s crown.
There was a third film with Yojimbo, called Incident at Blood Pass, but Kurosawa wasn’t involved, and that film is justifiably the forgotten stepchild of the Yojimbo films. Only the ones by the great director are remembered decades later.
I think you can guess where I’m going with this, especially since Days of Future Past basically erased this film from the timeline and will take a mulligan on the Dark Phoenix saga and try it again later this year.
Just the decision to jointly adapt the “Gifted” and “Dark Phoenix” stories meant The Last Stand was likely to be overstuffed, but that isn’t the half of it. You’ve got the Grey backstory, plus there’s the Worthington family drama (which goes nowhere interesting after a promising beginning), plus there’s Cyclops and Grey’s reuniting and tragedy, plus there’s Logan’s love for Grey, plus there’s the ongoing Xavier-Magneto rivalry/friendship, plus there’s the Iceman-Pyro rivalry/no-longer-a-friendship, plus there’s the Kitty/Rogue/Iceman love triangle, plus there’s the mutant cure, plus there’s, plus there’s, plus there’s. There’s too much, and none of it coheres well at all.
Brett Ratner is a serviceable director, but he has none of Bryan Singer’s subtlety or ability to give you someone’s character in a brief, brilliantly insightful bit. The only person who comes across as complex in this movie is Magneto, and that’s mostly because Sir Ian McKellen can speechify with the best of them. (Also, the moment where he shows his tattoo from Auschwitz to Callisto is very nicely done, but it stands out as one of the few good moments in the film.) Having said that, Magneto just leaving Mystique behind the way he does is idiotic. Yes, he anticipates Mystique giving him up and setting up Madrox to take the fall, but Mystique knows everything about Magneto’s operation; she’s been his right hand. She’s a liability, and one who now has a very specific animus against him because his response to stepping in front of a dart for him was to abandon her.
The acting is, at least, strong. Halle Berry gives by far her best performance as Storm—her eulogy of Xavier is very well delivered—and Kelsey Grammer is the best casting ever as Hank McCoy. Ken Leung is always a delight, and Vinnie Jones as Juggernaut is just hilarious.
But man, is the script a disaster. By putting so much in, nothing gets a proper treatment. And so much of it makes no sense! It starts with the complete lack of understanding of the geography of the United States of America, as this movie acts as if the Bay Area is only two states away from the New York suburbs, not across a continent.
Why does Phoenix just stand there for the entire climax until everyone else is taken out? More to the point, though, why is the solution for Wolverine to kill her when there are two other solutions right there? First of all, why doesn’t Wolverine stab Grey, not with his claws, but with one of the cure darts? The island’s covered in them. Failing that, why not just let Jimmy stand near Grey? We’ve spent the entire movie hearing about (and seeing) Jimmy leech people’s powers, so why not use him to get at Grey?
Instead, we get the maximum-pathos climax that back in 2006 mostly just felt like a rerun of the climax of one of Hugh Jackman’s ‘tween-X films, Van Helsing, and trust me, the last thing anyone wants is to be reminded of that piece of junk.
Ratner tries his best, but aside from lots of pretty ‘splosions, he brings nothing to the table. After two movies that take the conflict and characters seriously, we get an action piece with the most perfunctory characterization. Why even bother having Rao as a character, and why cast the brilliant Aghdashloo in the role, when she doesn’t actually do anything in the movie? Cyclops was already underused in the first two, but the perfunctory off-camera death in this is just pathetic, an awful way to treat the founding X-Man, and it comes across as spiteful because he also was in the movie Singer left this franchise to go do.
Speaking of that, next week, we’ll take a look at Superman Returns, as well as another franchise that attempted a revival with a big-name director, Ang Lee’s take on The Hulk.
Keith R.A. DeCandido is one of the author guests at HELIOsphere 2018 this weekend in Tarrytown, New York (just north of New York City), alongside guests of honor Charles E. Gannon, Eric Flint, Cecilia Tan, Tom Kidd, and Mark Oshiro. Keith’s full schedule is here.
Was Thor: Ragnarok the first genuinely GOOD Marvel threequel?
I’ve always found this movie incredibly disappointing, and was actually relieved when Days of Future Past wiped it from continuity (although did DoFP leave the first two movies in play? Or are they gone as well?). In some ways it has the same problems as Spider-Man 3 — trying to jam too much story and too many characters into a single 2 hour film. Plus it has the Brett Ratner factor to contend with — at least Spidey 3 still had Sam Raimi, who’s an interesting director.
hoopmanjh: Well, I liked Blade: Trinity, and think it was better than Blade II, but even if you discount that, you’ve got Captain America: Civil War.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
That’s right: I forgot Civil War! Although I was seriously unimpressed with Blade: Trinity. And, to be fair, I thought Iron Man 3 was doing some interesting things, at least.
Hmm, I always assumed Wolverine didn’t use the darts or carry the kid (Jimmy) to Jean was because of her death-tornardo thing she had going there at the end. We see his clothes start to dissolve (but not entirely, since that would probably have changed the movie’s rating) so nothing other than adamantium and Wolvie’s healing negating the death would make it to the center.
That said, the movie IS a mess overall. Still enoyed watching it, though.
Kehcalb: At the very least, those two options should’ve been mentioned, y’know?
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Ugh, this movie. I had such high hopes after the Dark Phoenix tease at the end of X2. They should have done a pure Dark Phoenix storyline. Also, something really bugged me—what the heck is up with Jean’s hair? What, she super-grew her hair in the brief time she was “dead?” And not only that, but it was a hideous wig. She looked gorgeous with her short hair in X2.
Yeah, Logan could have grabbed a fistful of darts off the ground as he started to approach (although admittedly she’d see that coming and know he’s about to attack, when in fact he wants to talk her down), and in the first wave that hits him from her attacks the darts disintigrate in his hand. As for Jimmy, would he not be destroyed before he could get close enough to cancel out her powers? He wouldn’t eliminate the waves of destructive psychic energy themselves, just her ability to make them. You’d have to sedate her and get Jimmy beside her before she reawakened.
I don’t understand the tendency of superhero movies from this period to try to mash multiple classic stories into one movie. X2 tried merging Weapon X with God Loves, Man Kills, and mostly got away with it by ignoring large chunks of GLMK. X3 tried merging the Dark Phoenix Saga with Whedon’s The Cure, which hadn’t even been out long enough to register as classic (and while I enjoyed Whedon’s run, I don’t think it was classic), as well as throwing in bunches of mutants who seem to have been pulled out at random. Did the studio assume that the third movie must be the last, and so try to cram in as many stories as they could before the end? With Spider-Man 3 making the same mistake, I was starting to wonder if the decent Marvel films were an anomaly.
Just gonna echo everyone else to say yeah, this was too much crammed in to too little. If they’d taken out a few of the useless characters and pared the story back about a third, then a) we could’ve gotten Nightcrawler back (not that I’m bitter at all) and b) the plot would’ve improved quite a bit.
But they just basically crapped all over the first two films, and that’s just stupid.
I don’t think I’ve watched this all the way through since I saw it in the theater in 2006. So bad.
@1 – “(although did DoFP leave the first two movies in play? Or are they gone as well?)”
Technically they, along with Origins: Wolverine & The Wolverine, no longer happen as they did, but obviously some of the same events must have happened (Wolvie & Rogue joining the X-Men, etc) just … differently.
The worst crime of this movie is that they made Dark Phoenix the most boring character in the film. She was just Zombie Woman throughout the whole thing!
Cyclops death always felt like TPTB telling James Marsden ‘F You’ & it’s really something else that they made him part of his own tell off.
I collect superhero movies on DVD pretty diligently, but I just checked, and I don’t have a copy of X3, which indicates how let-down I felt by this movie. I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen it since I first saw it in the theater in 2006. (For contrast, I do own Spider-Man 3, but it’s still shrink-wrapped.)
Also, the Golden Gate Bridge thing in particular seemed silly, and possibly overpowered (although I’m not sure how it’d compare to what happened to the stadium in First Class).
A friend of mine named Bob scored himself an invitation to the premiere of this film for himself and a guest. He knew it was going to be terrible, but he went anyway, because free movie, you know?
So before the movie starts, Bob is sitting there with his guest, talking about how rotten it’s going to be and how Brett Ratner is the worst director working in Hollywood. Whereupon a woman seated directly behind him butts in and starts arguing with him that no, Ratner is actually a genius and the movie is going to rock.
It’s COURTNEY LOVE.
And Bob, who has never backed down from anything in his life, gives it right back to her: Ratner is a hack and there’s no way the movie is going to be any good. Meanwhile, the guy sitting next to Love, who is clearly her date, is scrunching down into his seat in embarrassment and not saying a word.
Eventually, the lights go down, the conversation ceases and the movie starts. And of course it’s awful.
When it’s over, Bob and his guest head for the door. The first thing his guest says is, “Man, I can’t believe you said all those things before the movie.” And Bob responds, “Hey, I don’t care what Courtney Love thinks.” And his friend replies, “Yeah, but with Brett Ratner sitting RIGHT THERE?”
Oh man. This movie. Like everyone else, I agree its greatest sin is in flinging storylines and characters together haphazardly and managing to do justice to none of them, but it committed so, so many errors.
Pretty much every mutant on Magneto’s side felt like a “Hey! Remember THIS character?” choice with no real thought put into it.
Jean was just there for cheap, botched attempts to evoke EMOTIONSSSS from the viewer, both when she nuked Xavier and when she gets stabbed by Wolverine. Neither manages to land, though Magneto being genuinely distraught at the death of his friend for like half a second before remembering he is The Bad Guy is… something, anyway. The inkling of a good scene was there, but leave it to Brett Ratner to whiff on it.
Also, X3 continues the series-long tradition of “How do we factor Xavier out of the plot as quickly as possible?” Though, at least this time, he gets some vaguely interesting scenes in beforehand, presenting the closest thing Ratner’s script manages to get to ethical complexity.
All in all, it’s a jumble of set pieces bolted onto each other in the hope that big high-budget action sequences and a John Powell score could just magically create a good movie out of the chunks. That hope was… misguided.
I don’t hate this movie and can enjoy it for what is, a fun superhero romp. Is it incredibly overstuffed? Yes, but I enjoy most of the ingredients. Ian McKellen is fantastic as always, and I appreciate that the film was daring enough to kill so many main characters. I wish more Superhero films were willing to do that. Yes, some could have used a more somber send off, but Xavier’s death is well done with two emotional scenes immediately after the fact, and Magneto speaking up for him in a later scene. As for why Jean doesn’t do anything, I think she and Magneto, though he wouldn’t admit it, are somewhat afraid of her powers and will only use them as a last resort.
Finally, even if one doesn’t like the film, one has to admit John Powell’s score is incredibly epic, albeit with perhaps a few to many layers much like the film actually!
Not as good as the first two films, but I personally enjoyed much of it back when it first opened. Granted, it’s hard to come up with an objective analysis when you’re bombarded with climax after climax. My first reaction was one of joy. It would take time for me to notice the flaws.
Nevertheless, I appreciated moments like Xavier’s “demise”. At the time, I felt it was an earned moment. Taking out Xavier out of the action in the first two films always had a feeling of plot necessity. Killing him off at the time seemed like sensible story decision, effectively taking out the X-Men’s biggest safety net and raising the stakes. At least, that’s the way I understand Penn and Kinberg’s choice.
I’ll admit to enjoy some of the spectacle, specifically Jean levitating the house before killing Xavier, and Magneto lifting the bridge.
In retrospect, they could have done two or three films out of this one. And all of them would likely perform better story-wise. Also, it feels weird going back to a 90-100 minute film after the length of the previous one. You can tell Fox was clamping down on production, keeping a closer eye on all creative decisions, especially given the bigger budget (this would reach a boiling point on the first Wolverine solo film).
Nowadays, I wonder how would the film turn out under Singer’s command. Would he follow through with the Phoenix storyline the same way, or would he try and introduce the Shi’ar angle? To me, the biggest problem in doing that is you’re inserting space opera material into a franchise that at this point was still mostly focused on mutant/human relations and the analogy with social rights movements, including gay issues. In 2006, there’s no way either Singer or Ratner would try and do anything resembling Marvel’s space franchises (plus, Fox was already putting Silver Surfer in a Fantastic Four film).
Was this the first movie to ever grace viewers with a post-credits scene? I believe it was. I tend to watch credits all the way through on any film, which is how I found out.
@15 and @16 Honestly, the only thing I remember after all this time is Magneto’s reaction after Xavier is gone and when he showed the Auschwitz number.
I agree that it was too much in one film. If I remember correctly, the dilemma of choosing to be not mutant wasn’t given a closure.
#17
Maybe the first superhero movie with a post credits scene, but not the first ever. I remember as far back seeing Masters of the Universe do one back in the ’80s. Skeletor swears he’ll be back! And… it never happened.
Let’s see, what are the nicest things that I can say about this very mediocre movie….
The Angel: Well, the stuff at the beginning…..the scene where he’s attempting to cut his wings off is quite powerful.
“and Kelsey Grammer is the best casting ever as Hank McCoy”: Yup. Seriously, Grammer as the Beast and JK Simmons as J Jonah Jameson might just be the two best pieces of casting in a superhero film.
I agree that the only good things about this were Magneto (particularly when he displayed his tattoo) and the casting (whether or not they did enough with the good cast is another question). Vinnie Jones in particular, according to my soccer-loving fiancée, was a good match for Juggernaut as he was well known for his aggression on the field. I contest that Juggernaut isn’t a mutant and they duffed that up, but oh well. The rest was unenjoyably awful.
I don’t like Jean Grey on a good day, so a whole film focused on her (though how much does she actually talk?) was too much. Also, I could forgive them turning Professor X into a morally questionable mentor if they did it well/gave it more time, but there was no time. Everyone has to fight a former friend their beloved mentor manipulated into having a mental illness and it seemed to barely register with more than a couple people. Had a friend’s friend try to explain to a party why Professor X is awful and it all came from this movie. I felt almost personally insulted (I think my response could be summarized as “You’re wrong. That movie is wrong and we do not speak of it”).
I saw this once when it came out and I remember booking it on foot to the theater with my high school boyfriend cause oh damn! Can’t miss the X Men! I was so young, if only I had known, I could have run the other way and we could have spent that money on something better, like socks or…literally anything else.
@14: That…no, I have no words. Way to go, Bob.
@14:
@17/Eduardo: Post-credits scenes have existed for decades, long before they became associated with Marvel. Ones I can think of off the top of my head are The Muppet Movie (whose closing bit always cracks me up), its sequels, and Young Sherlock Holmes (although that film had continuous footage under the entire end credit sequence leading into the post-credits scene, so it’s a marginal case). I have no doubt there were other, earlier examples. I think they used to be more common in comedies, sort of a final punch line for dedicated viewers.
I have mixed feelings about this film. A lot of it was superficial, too much crammed in at once. Kitty, Angel, and particularly Colossus never emerged as characters, which is unfortunate given that so many of the first two films’ characters were eliminated in one way or another.
But it didn’t live down to the doomsaying I read online. There were a lot of good character and dialogue scenes, at least in the first half or so. And for the most part, I didn’t think the Phoenix arc was as minor a part of the film as some said. It drove events every bit as much as the cure arc, at least until we got to the Alcatraz battle. There, it didn’t make sense that she just stood there until it was over. Dark Phoenix really should’ve been revelling in the chaos. Although maybe she was, in her own way — knowing that her own intervention would be too final, she held back to enjoy the show as the lesser beings battled. Still, it would’ve been nice to see that in her face, at least.
I couldn’t buy how easy it was for Logan to kill Dark Phoenix. Sure, maybe Jean took control long enough to let him stab her, but would the Phoenix personality have any trouble reasserting itself and healing the three stab wounds?
But even if the film doesn’t leave one entirely satisfied after the fact, it was effectively done and had some impressive sequences. Charles’ final confrontation with Phoenix was a shocking, devastating moment, and the depiction of her destructive powers, here and in the climax, was disturbing and scary, more so than anything I’ve seen since Akira (not a dissimilar story, come to think of it).
I think it manages to achieve some moral ambiguity as well. While freedom and the right to self-determination are worthy things to fight for, does that mean there aren’t times when good people must legitimately make exceptions? That theme resonates throughout the film. Xavier is willing to impose control on Jean’s mind, but for the sake of others’ safety. The president is sympathetic to mutants but is willing to deploy the cure weapons for national security. Magneto denounces the cure but is willing to use it on those who stand in his way. Perhaps that could be chalked up to a villain’s hypocrisy, but then we see the heroes use that very cure to defeat him, even though they hate the idea as much as he does (and their desperation, reluctance and decision are superbly conveyed in the wordless exchange of glances between the X-Men — chalk one up for Ratner’s skill as a director of actors).
Rogue accepting the cure is a decision that makes sense in the context of the movie version of the character. I mean, was it really fair for Storm to insist that there was nothing wrong with her when her power is often more of a disability than a benefit? Is it possible to take activism to a too-extreme, absolutist degree that isn’t fair to the individuals who might find it preferable to make a different choice? This is another way in which the film effectively explored the ambivalent issues involved, showing us all sides and giving no simple answers.
Storm was the one who seemed the most off, though she’s had an erratic characterization throughout the series, becoming more like Halle Berry in a white wig with each installment (in accent as well as the rest of her persona). I guess there was a certain through-line with her anger toward humans for their persecution, but that was just about the only throughline other than her powers. (And I really didn’t like her hairstyle here — white on top with black roots. That made it look like a dye job rather than Ororo’s natural hair color.)
One other plot hole: why was there never a sign in the first two films that Magneto knew of Jean’s great potential and was interested in awakening it? Maybe he wasn’t willing to risk unleashing the Phoenix, not until the cure made things desperate enough. Maybe he wouldn’t have risked awakening her given the choice, but once she was awakened, he was determined to try to control that power.
Oh yeah, one thing I loved was the lighting on Jean during her Phoenix moment on Alcatraz, just before the end. The way her hair blowing around her head was lit, it looked like fire. Some people have complained about them not doing the big firebird, and yeah, that would’ve been cool, but the lighting effect on her hair here was more beautiful than any CGI fire effect could’ve been. Chalk up another point to Ratner for cinematic style.
Seeing the Danger Room at last was cool — not to mention the Fastball Special. I never realized it would be like a shotput, whirling the throwee around before launching him. I wish I’d thought of that before I wrote my X-Men novel. I had trouble visualizing the mechanics of it, particularly since in my version, dainty Rogue was the pitcher.
When I came out of the theater the first time, I was somewhat disappointed, but on reflection, I realized that there was a lot about this film that was worthwhile, thoughtful and well-done. The story is brought to an effective climax, and there are some terrific character moments. It’s very flawed, to be sure, but I think it’s an okay film, in some ways even a good one.
Oh man, can’t wait for your Ang Lee Hulk review. I’ve always felt it was the most underrated superhero movie. It does what few other movie adaptations have dared to even try: it actually feels like a comic book. That’s thank to the blocking, lighting choices, dual screens, angles, etc. With that said, a comic book with a weak story will always fail, no matter how interesting it might look.
Well I enjoyed the movie. I felt the real misstep was that it was too committed to the reset button to kill off characters. Cyclops death scene was nowhere near ambiguous enough -and left several of my friends wondering when he was going to come back in this very movie-, Xavier’s death-rebirth was set up with the braindead guy which robbed it of all power, and Magneto was somehow not dead in the final battle. As a comics fan I get that death is about as permanent as chalk on a blackboard, but for a movie they fluffed it totally.
Having said that, I enjoyed the movie’s twin message on how easy it is to to go rocketskiing down a slippery once you’ve set out the first well intentioned steps. Magneto kept becoming less and less a well intentioned extremist and even more horrible a genocidal maniac than in the previous movie, now even throwing his own people to the wolves when he needs to. Each little step a small one following on from the previous step but together making a giant leap. And on the other side “The Cure” which goes from something helpful for those who are truly badly affected by mutation to a social expectation to a military weapon (and a prima facie case of why the military nor law enforcement allowed to have some things) and a likewise instrument of potential genocide.
The mucking about with American geography did not bother nor occur to me, and as someone whose own country’s geography has been so messed around with by American film makers (if they remember it exists) I merely say to Americans “boo-fucking-hoo, pal, quit moaning and live with it.”
By the way, it occurs to me that this is the only film in the series to feature all five of the original X-Men — Cyclops, Marvel Girl (Jean), Iceman, Beast, and Angel — even though two of them don’t survive it. Maybe that’s part of why they used Angel, even though they didn’t do much with him — they wanted to complete the set.
@23/Christopher: Good callback to Akira. Jean’s attack on Xavier is so effective that I find it’s pretty hard for the rest of the film to live up to that level of devastation, not only physical, but also emotional.
This sequence also has one of the best written Xavier lines, one very relevant that directly addresses a mutant’s own responsibility in using his powers:
XAVIER: Look what happened to Scott! You killed the man you loved because you couldn’t control your powers!
Few actors deliver this as effectively as Patrick. Playing Picard for all those years paid off.
I always hate character deaths . Cyclops’ death was worse than Xavier’s because his was just gratuitous. This movie was way over stuffed to many story lines that go no where. I enjoy several sections but it doesn’t work as a whole. I’m glad they erased it from the timeline.
Oh gee, why would a girl who can’t touch anybody without killing them want to be rid of her power? Seems to me this is totally a decision for the individual mutant and everybody else, mutant or normal, should Just Butt Out.
The potential for misuse is obvious but on the other hand this is a possible solution for mutants with powers so extreme they are a danger to themselves and others. And for dealing with mutants who make criminal use of their powers.
But then there goes your conflict and your franchise.
@26/Christopher: I recall that certain segments of fandom made a big deal about this movie featuring the original five. To me, it was ultimately unsatisfying because yeah, they were all IN the movie, but Bobby’s from the younger generation, Hank is from the previous, and Warren doesn’t have any relationship with any of them. OK, they all appear at some point in the movie, but if there’s nothing connecting them, why bother? It’s like they shoehorned the characters in just to take credit for doing it.
Well, they mostly put Beast and Angel in because the budget was doubled so they could finally afford it. And Beast, at least, was superb.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
My head cannon of this is that Cyclops was kidnapped by Mr Sinister and not killed.
It starts with the complete lack of understanding of the geography of the United States of America, as this movie acts as if the Bay Area is only two states away from the New York suburbs, not across a continent.
Was the screenwriter or someone like that from Europe or the UK or something? I’m not trying to generalize or anything, but that seems like a very European error to make. You know, “In America, 200 years is a long time, in England, 200 miles is a long way,” that kind of thing. People from the British Isles and certain areas of Europe tend to underestimate how large the US actually is and how long it takes to traverse, is what I’m saying.
For instance, a friend of a friend was once asked by his bosses in London if he could “Pop over to Las Vegas” for a business meeting. He was currently in Indiana, nowhere near an airport, and said bosses didn’t understand why this was an inconvenience.
For the record, I don’t actually know who the screenwriter is or where they are from, it just made me wonder.
@33/Denise L: Simon Kinberg was born in London but grew up in Los Angeles. Zak Penn is from New York. I think the geography thing was just poetic license. Storytellers often fudge real-world details and gloss over logistics for the sake of the stories they want to tell. The trick is to do it without breaking suspension of disbelief, though. I don’t think this movie quite succeeded at that.
#19 Adventures in Babysitting (which came out a month before Masters of the Universe) had one as well. Although Airplane! beat both of them by 7 years. I don’t know if even that one’s the earliest, either. I expect the list on TVTropes is fairly exhaustive, but it’s not organized chronologically.
@23: Should’ve read a little further before replying. Anyhow, of the ones that have been mentioned, I think The Muppet Movie is the earliest.
This is the last X-Men movie I saw. Did the following movies get good again?
KRAD- The book Red Harvest, by Dashiell Hammett, was the basis of both Yojimbo and A Fistful of Dollars. It’s a fun read.
I don’t know if anything else inspired Hammett. I’m sure something, somewhere, did.
The geography bit is a combination of events always happening at the Speed of Plot and a director who doesn’t care enough about the story he’s telling to care about important details.
ETA: italics
Much as I think the hype about the previous film is overdone, I think the vitriol aimed at this film is over the top. I get the point about too many characters and storylines, but I think for the most part it services them all and gives them their moments. It wastes Angel, and the shafting of Cyclops is completed by having him dying in the first half hour off screen. (I spent at least the next half hour expecting him to turn up again and didn’t quite believe it until Wolverine’s “We lost the Professor and we lost Scott” rallying speech. Another great moment by the way.) And I notice the recap is in complete denial about Psylocke randomly appearing as one of Magneto’s followers, to the point of talking as if Kid Omega and Arclight are on their own when they kill Rao and try to kill Worthington, and gets casually killed by Dark Phoenix. It is a shame that that’s resulted in us never getting a “proper” version of Psylocke.
But otherwise…Rogue gets a few moments and it’s to the film’s credit that they didn’t shy away from showing the other side of the cure as the scriptwriters apparently wanted. Wolverine and Storm have to step up and be the grown-ups, and Beast fits into the line-up effortlessly. Iceman, Kitty and to a lesser extent Colossus get their coming of age moment. Xavier gets a few chances to shine before his shock death. Magneto and Mystique are well drawn, while Pyro remains a young punk. Magneto abandoning Mystique might make no sense tactically, but it’s perfectly true to his character: His repugnance of normal humans has never been more well-drawn, and that’s what makes “curing” him a fate worse than death.
I seem to recall there was a cut bit where Jean is showing looking at a group of scared crying children during the destruction of the Golden Gate Bridge, which was meant to explain Dark Phoenix’s inaction at the climax until the troops aimed their guns at her. Some people complained that Dark Phoenix is meant to destroy herself, not have Wolverine save the day, but to me that missed the point: The point isn’t that he sticks his claws into her, it’s that she lets him. There’s a nice ambiguity about the climax with the X-Men fighting to protect the cure. Whatever their personal feelings on the issue, they know that if they let Magneto go ahead then all anyone will remember is a bunch of psychotic mutants murdering people.
I don’t know how well-known outside the UK, or among people under the age of thirty, it is that Vinnie Jones was a very famous (or, more accurately, infamous) association footballer of the 80s and 90s. Allegedly one of his old team-mates once said “I see Vinnie Jones in these films and he isn’t acting. That’s exactly what he was like on the football field on Saturday afternoons.” (That said, I did briefly meet him in the early 90s and I suspect at least some of his hardman persona was an act. Also of note, he once appeared on a celebrity version of Gladiators and picked a fight with resident hardman the Wolf, a guy who could probably have played Wolverine.) It’s ironic the film went to the trouble of casting an English actor because of the connection with Xavier from the comics and then they’re only briefly in the same scene and the back story isn’t used. Still, at least they didn’t do something really dumb like claiming he grew up with a character he’s had no scenes with at all…
The fact that there’s so much going on in the film leaves me frustrated that we’ve never had a proper follow-up. We eventually got The Wolverine, which was a spin-off, and then Days of Future Past in which they’re equivalent of the TOS cast in Star Trek Generations and then get erased from history anyway. You’ve got Magneto, Rogue and Mystique all losing their powers, the X-Men trying to keep Xavier’s dream alive without him, the fate of the cure, that ambiguous last moment with Xavier, Bobby and Rogue’s relationship, what happens to Angel now…all of it still up in the air over a decade later and now never to be addressed because someone’s sliced through the whole trilogy with a red pen in a sulk. I actually decided to sit down and write the script for a sequel after the movie, the ended up “novelising” it and sticking it online at which point people kept asking for more and I’m now up to X12 even though I think I ran out of good ideas at least three stories back… I had planned it in vague terms before I saw the movie, only to find that they’d pinched my cure storyline and wrecked my idea for a Wolverine/Cyclops team-up. But one of my main thoughts was that after that death with Xavier you couldn’t just have him casually walk back into the mansion, you needed the death to mean something. So I had this idea that his mind is in the brain-dead man’s body but he isn’t actually in control of the body, he can only speak telepathically out of it and advise them, and his full return then formed the basis of the sequel. And then the films actually did just have him casually turn up at the end of The Wolverine, still in a wheelchair for reasons never explained, and you pretty much need to have listened to the commentary to understand what that tag scene was even supposed to mean. Sigh.
i was thrilled when the next X-men movie wiped this one out. The whole point of the mutant storyline is the importance of each person, no matter how different they are, and this movie’s casual discarding of masses of individuals was really offensive.
speaking of offensive, let’s move on to the equally casual and central sexism: the Grey/Phoenix plotline enacts all the tired old tropes about men needing to control women for their (the women’s) own good, including the “uncontrolled woman is a danger to all she loved” plot, to the extent of Wolverine killing Grey “to save her (and everyone else) from herself” and incidentally to burnish Wolverine’s image as the tragic loner, just in time for his standalone film. And all of it done so fast and with so little thought. Yuck.
One of my biggest complaints about this movie (at least one not mentioned here yet anyway) was that I was expecting that this would be the film where Rogue ends up having to drain another mutant to death and ending up with her flight and super-strength powers. I was only familiar with the 90’s X-men cartoon however. They could have ditched about five of these superfluous plots and included what I assumed to be this shoo in instead.
BTW I must confess that when I read the recap of the first X-men movie I mentally pronounced Xavier as Havier and Magneto as Magnet-o. It amused me at the time but now I can’t stop myself doing it automatically (to be honest it still amuses me though).
PS That picture of Beast above… You would not expect to see Kelsey Grammer to be wearing such skin tight leather trousers in any other movie. Despite all the blue I can’t mentally disconnect him from Frasier.
@36/Matthew: Well, to get technical about it, most old movies prior to the ’50s or ’60s had nothing but post-credits scenes, because they put all their credits at the beginning. ;)
Here’s an article about the history of post-credits scenes, and yes, The Muppet Movie was basically the origin of the modern post-credits scene, although there were antecedents as early as 1960. Various comedies in the ’80s used them as closing punch lines (including Airplane! and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), but the article cites Young Sherlock Holmes as the first post-credits stinger to serve as a sequel hook (not counting text stingers like “James Bond will return in Goldfinger” or “Next year — Superman II“). It also points out that Daredevil was actually the first Marvel movie with a stinger.
@37/sps49:”Did the following movies get good again?”
Not right away, and not consistently, but yes.
“The geography bit is a combination of events always happening at the Speed of Plot and a director who doesn’t care enough about the story he’s telling to care about important details.”
Brett Ratner gets a lot of blame piled on him for this film, but my understanding is that he was brought in late in the game, after most of the story structure of the film was already locked in and too much pre-production work had been done to make many changes without breaking the budget. So he did the best he could with what he inherited.
@38/cap-mjb: Psylocke appeared in X-Men: Apocalypse, played by Olivia Munn and sporting a very comics-accurate costume. She didn’t get any character development to speak of, but she was a major player in the action sequences and was actually identified by name this time. She’s rumored to have a role in the upcoming Dark Phoenix as well. Since the “Psylocke” in The Last Stand was a bit part who was never named onscreen, it was easy to disregard her and try again.
This franchise has never hesitated to reinvent characters who were mishandled or reduced to cameos in earlier films. The Last Stand ignored Steve Bacic’s “Hank McCoy” cameo in X2 to give us a proper Beast. The off-model versions of “Emma” and Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine were both ignored and supplanted with more accurate versions in later films. Days of Future Past gives us a proper Bolivar Trask in the 1970s played by Peter Dinklage, even though TLS had a name-only version of Trask played by Bill Duke. Apocalypse introduces new versions of Angel and Jubilee even though it’s set 25-30 years earlier than the previous movies that featured them.
@42/CLB: Well, let’s face it, from at least First Class onwards and maybe even before that, continuity between films has been non-existent to the point that it’s best to treat all of them as a soft reboot. Every director has their own interpretation of the characters and doesn’t care if it meshes with the way they’ve been portrayed in other films, even down to First Class featuring cameos of characters like Cyclops and Storm, who shouldn’t exist yet.
@43/cap-mjb: Cyclops and Storm weren’t introduced to the reboot continuity until Apocalypse, which is set in the ’80s.
@44/CLB: We saw characters who were obviously meant to be them when Xavier was scanning the world’s mutants, even though they should have either been very young or not even born at the time.
@45: Umm, maybe Xavier was having a precognitive moment…? ;)
Maybe I’m just too attached to the source material but holy shit does this movie suck! (My opinion, of course)
Where do I even begin?
While I do not disagree with those that say there is just too much going on in this movie the main problem for me is a total lack of understanding of these characters and how their comic book counterparts would react to these situations. What do I mean? For instance, having Wolverine kill Phoenix. During the Dark Phoenix saga there is a huge fight outside the Grey household between the X-Men and Dark Phoenix (this is right before the Shi’ar kidnap everyone and the whole battle with the royal guard on the moon that leads to Jean killing herself for the good of the universe). There is a point in the fight where Wolverine has Dark Phoenix dead to rights, claws right at her face, fight over, she’s toast. For a moment Jean is able to take control of the phoenix force long enough to tell Logan to do it and he can’t. He can’t do it. He hesitates just long enough for the phoenix force to take back control and blast him. Yet here in this movie we have Wolverine being the only one who can save the day yet again by killing Jean.
We also have movie Wolverine’s ridiculously fast healing factor on full display during the scene. The reason I liked the first two acts of The Wolverine so much (let’s face it the third act was total shit) was that they slowed down Logan’s healing power so that it was more like in the comics (at least when I was reading them, I have no idea what his healing factor is like in the comics now, oh wait, that’s right, he’s dead now. Or have they brought him back yet? LOL). While Chris Claremont was writing the books at least Wolverine would get totally fucked up all the time. By the end of some of the fights he could barely stand let alone walk away. But here we have his healing factor regenerating whole parts of him that are melting away almost instantly!
Switching gears here, While Professor X’s death was handled nicely Cyclops’s was totally FUBARed. Look, I have never been a Cyclops fan (I’m obviously a huge Wolvie fanboy, lol) but seriously, what the actual fuck? In the comics all the characters got their moments to shine but in the movies its Wolverine who saves the day and everybody else is just there. This especially pissed me off in Days of Future Past when they sent Logan back in time instead of Kitty Pryde. Anyways, sorry Scott, no one seems to know how to use you in the movies (Cyclops wasn’t bad in Age of Apocalypse but since that movie sucked ass, yeah).
Again, maybe I’m just too fond of the source material. The Dark Phoenix saga is one of my all time favorite comic arcs and one of the few comic book stories to bring a tear to my eyes. Wolverine giving Rogue his healing power after getting his ass handed to him by the Silver Samurai and Lady Venom (another fight where Wolvie gets totally fuck up) shortly after she joins the X-Men and finally earns his trust is another. And of course there’s Belit’s death in Conan the Barbarian issue #100. Man, that frame of Conan with the tear rolling down his cheek as the Tigris burns in the waters off the shore gets me every time.
Sorry if I spent too much time talking about comics in a blog about comic movies, lol. Also, @@@@@ 14, LMAO!!!
I remember that, when this movie was being made, word was out that Fox president Tom Rothman had decreed several major story developments, including sexual attraction between Wolverine and Storm (because they were the big stars, I guess), and that a bunch of major characters die (because that was his idea of gravitas). This is the kind of thing I think of when people complain that Marvel/Disney exerts too much control over its directors.
Ah, this movie :) I remember being more or less okay with it when it came out (and I also remember they referenced, what at the time, was a very popular Juggernaut meme, which now just seems dated) – didn’t hate it, didn’t love it, but enjoyed it more or less. The cure aspect for me was the most intriguing plot line and I can completely understand why Rogue would seek it out and doesn’t need to be judged for it. I can also understand why a mutant would NOT want the cure.
Poor Cyclops, though. I also can’t stand the played up Jean/Wolverine love triangle, in part because I’ve never been a bad boy seeker, so the whole idea that there was this deep connection between the two of them, meh.
@49/Lisamarie: Maybe instead of calling it a “cure,” they should call it transitioning. Make it an option for individuals to choose or not, as they wish. Of course, to be egalitarian, you’d need a process for transitioning the other way, becoming a mutant.
(Although the language pedant in me is annoyed that “transition” has become a verb. I feel the gerund should be “transiting.”)
Well there was Magneto’s mutagenic ray in the first movie. I agree this should be a personal choice. Butt out Storm, not everybody has a cool and controllable power like yours.
@51: Except Magneto’s ray didn’t work. It killed Senator Kelly, and it would’ve killed all the delegates that Magneto intended to mutate.
Well there was that little drawback
@52 We can’t know that, the sample size is too small to draw firm conclusions about the lethality rate. The “cure” doesn’t seem to be a long term solution either, it must be said. Maybe the real curse of being a Mutant is nobody can be arsed to do long term studies on treatments that are given to them.
Lisamarie @@@@@ 49
The love triangle comes straight from the comics. Jean and Scott were always the happy couple until Logan showed up with the second wave of X-Men. It continues for around 20 issues or so until after a huge fight with Magneto in the Savage Land the X-Men get separated with Phoenix and Beast making it back to the mansion to tell the professor that the rest of the team are dead.
Meanwhile, the rest of the team though (Cyclopes, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Colossus & Storm) end up in Japan and think that Jean and Hank are dead. While in Japan Logan ends up meeting Mariko (if you’ve seen The Wolverine you know who I’m talking about) and then eventually Scott and Jean are reunited just in time for Jean to go all Dark Phoenix. They’ll later retcon Jean’s death and eventually her and Scott end up getting married. Logan and Mariko almost end up getting married but her father who is a crimelord in the yakuza fucks that all up.
Of course from what I understand both Jean and Logan are later killed off (again in Jean’s case) but I guess Jean is back again but now a teenager once more? I stopped reading comics for the most part around 20 years ago, the damn things just got too expensive to keep up with. Plus the late 90s was a horrible time for the comics industry storywise, it was all about the great big giant crossovers where you had to buy every single book either Marvel or DC published to get the whole story.
I thought I could handle complexity but comics are just to much for me, people die and comeback, alternate universes, legacy heroes. I can’t cope.
@54/random22: “We can’t know that, the sample size is too small to draw firm conclusions about the lethality rate.”
Yeah, but there’s no ethical way to test that. The X-Men weren’t about to just let Magneto go ahead and use the ray on the delegates and count how many survived afterward.
@55/billiam: All five of the original X-Men were brought forward to the present and active in the comics for several years, some of them alongside their older selves, but that storyline was recently wrapped up, I think. And I gather that the adult Jean has recently been resurrected yet again. Really, with a character called Phoenix, it’s a surprise it took this many years for her to come back this time.
@56/roxana: The complexity isn’t really a function of comics per se, it’s a function of long-running serials. Most long-running TV soap operas have similarly convoluted continuities, just because of the need to keep generating plot twists and bring back popular characters and resolve inconsistencies and so on. Star Trek continuity keeps getting more convoluted the longer the franchise runs. And so on. In comics, it’s mainly just the Marvel and DC superhero universes that have that complexity, because they’ve been running so long. There are a few other comics continuities that have been running for decades, like the Ninja Turtles, say, but they aren’t all like that.
@55 – my eyes crossed trying to keep track of all that, lol.
@50 – true, the language matters.
Well…. One person’s ethical is another person’s acceptable losses. They were only politicians. [Joking, but not as much as I would have been a couple of years ago]
A more troubling problem is that you need to burn up one strong mutant in order to convert the masses. Until Magneto fixes the power supply issue then I think I have to agree it is a non starter.
I still have conflicted feelings about this film: of the first three, it’s the one I came out of the cinema arguing the most about, and by a long way the one with the most weaknesses… But it’s also the one I had the most visceral emotional reaction to.
On the downside, too much seemed incoherent and idiot ball – especially the strategy of hordes of disposable mutants charging the guns. Had none of them seen a WWI movie? They might have well have been Orcs.
I know it’s pretty much the original sin of the X-movies to make Magneto so blatantly in the right that it takes superhuman effort to backpedal him enough into absurdly hypocritical detestibility that he can hold up a neon ‘I’m the villain’ sign to reassure everyone they don’t have to take his arguments seriously, but this one really takes the biscuit on that.
And yet… It’s one thing to have a subtext about X = LGBT, and cutely familiar real-life lines like “Have you tried not being a mutant?” This film was the one that drew me into that with sickening existential horror. ‘The Cure’? I know people who’ve suffered appallingly from ‘gay cure therapies’ even these days. Way back when I was first coming out, I had an older friend who’d been through years of ‘aversion therapy’. And sitting watching this, I thought of them and then thought of armed forces casually shooting around something that would rip out my ability to love my husband. Empowering people to do that on a whim, in a crossfire, as a punishment?
I can think of few films – let alone big dumb action movies – that so made me feel physically sick and blazing with righteous fury. So, yeah: this was casually spraying around a monstrous genocidal obscenity and burning it with fire was too good for it. I’m not totally sure the film knew what it was doing, but I have to give it points for that sort of effect.
Any thoughts on the alternate ending that had McCoy staying on at the school as the new Headmaster and Rouge not taking the cure? I actually thought it worked better than the ending in the theatrical version.
Speaking of ‘Yojimbo’ and ‘Fistful of Dollars’, don’t forget about ‘Last Man Standing’, starring Bruce Willis as a drifter named John Smith who plays two sides against each other in a Mob war in a prohibition era Texas town. Its the least of the film versions of that story, but enjoyable still.
Equating Mutants to Real World minorities similarly fail on one simple basic point; real minorities don’t have superpowers to defend themselves with and they aren’t really a threat to the majority.
What really irritated me was Storm. Storm, honey, you got a great power and most importantly full control over it. YOU don’t have to be aware every minute lest you accidently kill somebody you love with a careless touch. Shut Up.
@62/roxana: Yeah, usually it’s the majority that’s a threat to the safety and survival of minorities.
Ah, I never found this movie that bad. It’s a mess, but it’s entertaining at least.
I did find very stupid that they would call that porcupine dude Kid Omega… it’s like calling Iceman “Wolverine”. And yes, making the Phoenix just a represssed personality was a waste.
Jimmy is more Leech than the Leech in last film, power-wise.
Oh, Rao is Aghdashloo! Robert Knepper moment for me.
@13 – hoopmanjh: It’s not overpowered at all, based off of Magneto’s poweres in the comics.
@14 – Stephen: Yeah, but how did Bob react to that reveal?
@23 – Chris: I loved seeing the Fastball Special, although in the comics it’s never been portrayed as a shotput. Colossus just picks up Wolverine and flings him.
@24 – yourdadsbff: That is exactly what sucks the most about that Hulk film: that they tried to make it look like a comic. It ended up looking very, very cheesy. A film adaptation of a comic book has to be a film first, even as it’s faithful to the material.
@27 – Eduardo: As much as I am a Picard fan, and a bona fide trekkie, I’m pretty sure Sir Patrick could have pulled this off even without playing Picard. He’s a classically-trained actor that already had a lot of experience when he was cast as Picard.
@33 – Denise: Yeah, your friend’s bosses were pretty ignorant.
@37 – sps49: Well, I loved First Class, and Days Of Future Past was pretty good. Apocalypse, not so much, but it has its good moments.
@38 – cap-mjb: Psylocke’s role in Apocalypse is minor, but it’s not that bad.
By the way, folks, I’ve decided that going forward we’re not going to double up on the movies now that we’ve moved into the 21st-century films, so this coming Friday, we will just be looking at Superman Returns.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@64/MaGnUs: “And yes, making the Phoenix just a represssed personality was a waste.”
I believe that was what the Phoenix originally was in the comics — simply a result of Jean having her powers amplified and being driven mad by the power. The idea that it was a separate, pre-existing alien entity was a later retcon so they could bring Jean back and absolve her of the Dark Phoenix’s actions.
Besides, when you’re adapting decades of comics continuity into a movie, you want to streamline things and stick to the essentials. The X-Men films are stories about humans and mutants, not cosmic entities from the stars, so it made sense narratively to have the Phoenix be the ultimate expression of mutant power run amok. The waste was in the execution, the failure to adequately tie in the threat posed by the ultimate mutant power with the debate over the mutant cure.
Chris, I know everything you’re telling me. I just believe it was a waste.
@67/MaGnUs: Well, it’s basically what the second movie already set up, with its subplot about Jean’s powers starting to intensify as a result of her exposure to Magneto’s ray in the first movie (IIRC), and with the Phoenix entity appearing in the water at the end. So that approach was decided on well before The Last Stand was made. Just so you’ll know where to direct your disappointment.
That doesn’t mean they couldn’t have included the cosmic aspect afterwards.
@69/MaGnUs: I just don’t see what “the cosmic aspect” would’ve added. The story was already cluttered enough without bringing in aliens, and that just would’ve been too great a non sequitur in the context of the ongoing saga about mutant rights and persecution.
Besides, the only reason the Phoenix Force ever existed was to let Jean off the hook. It was a copout. What matters to the story is Jean succumbing to the temptations of runaway power. It doesn’t matter where that power comes from, so for the purposes of a movie — a medium that demands conciseness — it was best to keep it simple.
And you’re completely entitled to your opinion on the matter. Mine just differs.
@71/MaGnUs: The problem is, I don’t know your opinion. You’ve said four times that you think it was a waste, but you haven’t said one word about why. This is supposed to be a conversation, a mutual sharing of ideas and perspectives. So tell us, why do you think it would’ve been better to go cosmic?
It’s just a matter of personal taste. I like how the story was developed in the comics, regardless of it being a retcon, and would have liked to see it go there in these films. I am not saying they should have dove into the cosmic aspect right away in this particular installment, but they could have left that door open, hinted at it.
For one, I wouldn’t have mixed The Cure and Dark Phoenix, and would have focused just on the latter, with the door open to it including the cosmic element.
Being almost totally ignorant of the comics, I had no idea Dark Phoenix was eventually turned into some kind of cosmic element until now. To me that actually makes it a little less interesting from a character standpoint – I can see where it might add some additional world building (and for all I know there were a bunch of really cool stories that came from it), but in some ways, to me at least, it does seem more interesting to have Jean needing to struggle with what is a real part of herself.
But this is also somewhat in line with what was talked about on the Rebels thread about how in *some* ways bringing in all sorts of base breaking, galaxy shattering Force powers and making Anakin’s fall part of this huge, galactic wide, prophesied thing makes it seem less relatable and interesting than just being about his own personal struggles and demons.
@73/MaGnUs: Well, the next X-Men movie, due out in November, is Dark Phoenix, which is Simon Kinberg’s attempt at a do-over in the new timeline, since he wasn’t happy with how The Last Stand turned out as a result of the cure storyline being grafted on. Reportedly the new version does involve space travel and at least one alien character played by Jessica Chastain (though not Lilandra as was initially rumored), and is closer to the original story than TLS was. However, it’s reportedly a “grounded” adaptation that avoids going “too cosmic,” and early reports suggest it’s more of a character-driven drama than an action film.
@@@@@ 66
That isn’t how I remember it. Jean was possessed by a cosmic force known as the Phoenix that gave her cosmic powers well beyond her TK or telepathy. After all she destroyed an entire planet and consumed the millions of alien inhabitants that lived there. That was the reason that then editor in chief Jim Shooter (if I remember correctly) made the mandate that Jean had to die and not just have the Phoenix force removed from her as Chris Claremont had originally planned.
The later retcon was that instead of having the Phoenix possess Jean it basically became a new version of Jean Grey. Jean’s body was too badly damaged by the solar radiation while she piloted a shuttle with her TK to save the rest of the team (Logan wasn’t about to let Jean sacrifice herself like that and had to be restrained by the rest of the team). So the Phoenix put Jean’s original body in a type of healing cocoon (much like the one Adam Warlock uses) and created a new body based off of Jean’s, including personality and memories. Jean’s original body was found hibernating in the cocoon at the bottom of the harbor that the shuttle crashed into years later when the powers that be decided to reunite the original X-Men as X-Factor.
@@@@@ 74
I actually love the more cosmic shit from the Marvel universe. Galactus and the Silver Surfer from the FF. The Skrull/Kree wars from the Avengers. The fricken Guardians of the Galaxy. Captain Marvel and Adam Warlock. All that shit. So Jean being possessed by a hugely powerful cosmic being was great imo.
One other thing, the Dark Phoenix saga wasn’t just a single story that played out over a few issues of the comic. I just checked and Jean became Phoenix in issue #101 and her death on the moon was in issue #136. That storyline played out over almost 3 years in real life time. 3 years and 35 monthly issues. Now that’s a story!
@76/billiam: I’d have to reread the stories to be sure, but from what I can find online, it sounds like there was an ongoing debate between the writers and editor during the 3-year storyline over whether the Phoenix should be part of Jean or an external force. So I think the “cosmic being” revelation may have been a retcon within the storyline, when the tide shifted that way. But the creators eventually decided that the Phoenix was an integral part of Jean and she was thus responsible for its actions, which is why the editor mandated that she had to die.
As for the cosmic stuff, of course there’s nothing wrong with it in the context of the comics, since the Marvel Universe has been a mashup of multiple genres since the beginning. The book that started the Marvel Universe as we know it, Fantastic Four, was initially more a sci-fi/horror comic than a superhero comic, so that was built into it from the start, before the X-Men were introduced. But the film series was a different context. That universe had been more narrowly defined by the existence of mutants, not just as one of numerous sci-fi elements in its world, but as the singular outstanding factor that made it different from our world. So throwing in aliens would’ve been a more drastic change of pace in that context. That’s got nothing to do with whether cosmic stuff is cool in general, because of course it is. It’s just a matter of what best served the story being told in that specific movie series.
I like the cosmic stuff in Marvel too, but I don’t think it would fit the tone of these particular movies. If Wolverine had had his yellow spandex, then yes. Black leather and blue jeans…not so much. Apparently they were going for something more down to earth. Yes, movies with laser eyes and shapeshifters and a magnet man can be down to earth. ;-)
So, in a minority here, but I actually like this one the best of the original three. It is the most well done and the most watchable. It just kind of flows well and has some beautiful visuals.
Although, KRAD, you do a pretty good job of summing up *reasonable* critcisms of why people might be disappointed in this movie–once I tried to look up why people hated this one so much, and I found all these message boards full of people spewing off how they introduced all these characters that weren’t really like the comics versions, or how Juggernaut was a mutant and not magic, etc. Which, as the third in a film series that has been taking some artistic license in regards to details like that since the beginning, you’d think one could be over that by now.
There were things I didn’t like on the first viewing-the death of Cyclops and Prof X, implications of Xavier messing with peoples’ brains and creating Phoenix, etc. But when you get over that (and honestly, I was so disappointed with the treatment of Cyclops in these films that for me he may as well have died in the first one), it’s a pretty good film. And I think for the third and final of a trilogy, some deaths can add some weight.
People say Rattner is a hack or whatever, but I think to take a script with whatever problems it may have and make a movie that is inherently more watchable and well done than the other two shows what a good director he is. I honestly think a lot of the hate this film gets is from people who are so firmly in a Singer camp that they think no one else can make these movies. Although I would like to take an opportunity to point out that if one of the problems people have is with the death of Cyclops, that’s Singer’s fault for taking Marsden, not Rattner’s.
Christopher @@@@@ 78
I agree with you that the original X-men film trilogy would have been way too early to introduce the more cosmic elements of the X stories. Especially since the X films are w Fox and not the Marvel EU. It’s why I think it was too early for them to do the Dark Phoenix story at that time but they kind of forced their hand with the ending of X2.
Funny thing is I think that it’s also too early to be doing Dark Phoenix w the rebooted films. I feel like we could use a whole movie w Jean using the Phoenix powers for good before she goes all evil. But since I didn’t think much of Age of Apocalypse I don’t have much hope for the new film anyways.
@64/MaGnUs:
From what I understand, Bob’s reaction was one of momentary discomfort, reverting swiftly to the sort of blithe unconcern one would expect of a guy who goes to a screening of a movie he fully expects to suck and then refuses to be intimidated by Courtney Love for saying so. ;)
@80/crzydroid:
I was far from an expert on the X-Men comics when I saw the films, and I thought Last Stand was clearly the worst of them just on the basis of its own shortcomings and the way it squandered the promise of the previous two. And also because Ratner is simply a hack. Look at those extras in the protest scenes: They’re supposed to be impassioned, but they just look bored. He either didn’t notice or couldn’t be arsed to do anything about it.
And I don’t follow the logic that, just because Marsden accepted a role in another Singer picture, we don’t have a right to feel disappointed that his character was disposed of in a way that was utterly cheap and perfunctory.
Oh, and while we’re on the subject of the cosmic elements of Marvel, let’s not forget the utterly pat introduction of the symbiote in Spider-Man 3, which entailed it simply falling from the sky and into a storytelling universe that had heretofore betrayed no hints of extraterrestrial life whatsoever. The laziness of that move was rightfully lambasted by critics and audiences alike, although I have to admit that I almost admired it for its brazenness (and its seeming homage to The Blob).
@75 – Chris: Yes, I’m quite aware of that. Apocalypse didn’t come out as good as it could have been, so I’m not holding my breath for this one… but we’ll see.
@79 – X-Husband: But my point is that they could have gradually made them less “grounded”. Look at the MCU, it starts with Iron Man, which is as grounded as it gets in that context, and then it built from there. Yes, X-Men provided the basis for that (in terms of public and industry gestalts), I guess we just needed some time.
@82 – Stephen: Fair enough.
@83 – Stephen: I think you’re Bob. ;)
@81/billiam: “But since I didn’t think much of Age of Apocalypse I don’t have much hope for the new film anyways.”
Well, for what it’s worth, they’re reportedly trying for a more dramatic, character-driven film in the Logan vein as a response to criticisms of Apocalypse‘s excessive dependence on CGI spectacle. I’m willing to give them a chance to show they can learn from their mistakes. Heck, if any movie franchise has proven that it can use its past stumbles to motivate it to do better in the next film, it’s this one.
I actually quite liked Apocalypse as a kind of fun romp (aside from Magneto constantly getting a pass for all the stuff he does) but particularly I enjoyed what they did with allowing Jean/Phoenix to be more healthily integrated in this version of the timeline. I can’t remember if I picked this up somewhere, or if the movie states this, but it seemed to me like the point here was that allowing Jean to accept this part of her ends up having a better outcome than locking it away.
But regarding these 3, I like 2 the best, but I think 3 had the potentially most interesting plot, specifically the cure aspect. And having re-watched them recently, I do agree Cyclops really gets almost nothing to do in any of them, and then is disposed of basically as an afterthought. Whatever real-world reasons there were for this still don’t make the movie any more satisfying.
@86 – Chris: Oh, I’m definitely willing to give them a chance… they’ve done several good films, and I’m also a longlife X-Men fan, so… I’d like to see a sort of mix of Logan and First Class/DOFP, a good balance between spectacle and characters.
@74
Without the cosmic aspect, we lost some good scenes, like Rogue x Gladiator fight. Some of those scenes could only be made with greater Marvel backstory and shared universe. I remember reading it as a kid and thinking it was awesome, and that’s why I loved comics and book series, like WoT and Riftwar, so much.
The scene I’m talking about is the aliens, called shi’ar, coming to Earth to deal with the Phoenix force, which they know can do great evil (Phoenix has just wiped out an entire planet, committing genocide). The commander of their ship asks what they know of this “Earth”. At first the officers say that other alien empires, like Skrull and Kree, have visited it, but there’s nothing exceptional about it, they haven’t discovered FTL travel. Then one officer loses his or her shit and says that Galactus has come to that place four times and hasn’t eaten the planet. Freakin Galacturs, devourer of worlds. The shi’ar commander then decides to lay low, go to Earth in stealth mode and just take away the Phoenix in a covert operation instead of doing all the “bring me your leader” routine, in fear of these beings that could defeat Galactus so many times. The name of these beings they were so afraid of? The Fantastic Four (the shi’ar didn’t know the FF4 mostly tricked or convinced Galactus to not eat Earth, they never actually defeated him outright in combat).
I just loved these references the comics made to each other back when I read it (early 90s).
Bit late to the party, but…
CJB: You’re confusing your cosmic retcons to absolve a character.
Hal Jordan being possessed by a cosmic force, Parallax, was a retcon to let Hal off the hook for becoming a mass murderer.
Jean’s retcon was that Phoneix/Dark Phoenix was actually a clone while Jean was in a cocoon in Jamaica Bay.
…Which I see Billiyam had already said in posts that show up on my computer where I’m typing this…but not on my iPad were I read the comments….sigh.
Sorry for the repeat.
89: I think you’re talking about the cartoon’s version of the story…Rogue, for example, wouldn’t be created as a character for another 5 years or so after the original version was published.
To try and defend Magnetos (the scriptwriters) decisions, I think the prisoner van scene shows his total fanaticism. He just won´t consider a regular human one of his people, period. Objectively it makes no sense not to take Mystique along at least for the immediate moment, but when I saw the movie I actually accepted it and even found it powerful. Telling Phoenix to hold back until the battle was turning against them could be because he is wary that once she releases her powers it could get out of hand. Though I think she used her powers earlier in the movie without him worrying.
Darkhölme by the way is not a word in Swedish or German or any other language I know of that use the ö. Maybe she is a fan of sleaze heavy metal.
KRAD: Excellent essay! I agree entirely with your take on this movie. It is overblown and underwhelming.