X-Men

[Jonas]

X-Men (and X-Women) take a last stand (and seat) in "X-Men: The Last Stand."


X-Men: The Last Stand


BY ROGER EBERT / May 26, 2006

Cast & Credits
Logan/Wolverine: Hugh Jackman
Charles Xavier: Patrick Stewart
Lensherr/Magneto: Ian McKellen
Ororo Munroe/Storm: Halle Berry
Dr. Jean Grey: Famke Janssen
Beast: Kelsey Grammer

Twentieth Century Fox presents a film directed by Brett Ratner. Written by Zak Penn and Simon Kinberg. Rated PG-13 (for intense sequences of action violence, some sexual content and language). Running time: 104 minutes. Opening Friday at local theaters, with selected midnight screenings tonight.
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The government has a Department of Mutant Affairs in "X-Men: The Last Stand," and it is headed by the mutant Dr. Hank McCoy (Kelsey Grammer), also known as Beast. The Mutant Community seems on its way into the mainstream, the goal long envisioned by Prof. Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), the head of the school where young X-Men learn to develop and control their powers. The school purrs along proudly with Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) as a role model, but then a kid named Leech surfaces, and all bets are off.
His body produces an antibody to mutation; inject it into X-Men, and their mutant powers disappear. They become regular folks with the same limited powers the rest of us use to scrape by. Leech is played by Cameron Bright, whom you may remember from "Birth," the movie where he was a child whose body was occupied by the mind of Nicole Kidman's late husband. Bright has large dark eyes and ominously sober features that make you think he might grow up to become chairman of the Federal Reserve, or a serial killer.
He's invaluable to the billionaire Warren Worthington II (Michael Murphy), who lives in shame because his son Warren III (Ben Foster), also known as Angel, has a 16-foot wingspan. A flashback shows young Angel in a room full of blood and feathers, having tried to cut the wings from his back. This self-hate is nurtured by Worthington, whose shame about his son translates into hatred of mutants in general. He buys Alcatraz, imprisons Leech, begins to manufacture the antibody and campaigns for a "cure" for mutation.
But what if mutants don't want to be "cured"? What if they're happy the way they are, and cherish their differences? Xavier has always tried to encourage that kind of thinking, but Magneto (Ian McKellen), his archenemy in X-Man land, takes a more direct approach. He wages war against Worthington and all those who would foist a "cure" on the mutants. Although Magneto has always been the villain of the series, this time he makes a good point.
So strong is Leech's anti-mutant power that a mutant need only stand near him to lose his or her abilities; maybe the antibody works through pheromones. Meanwhile, Mutant Cure Clinics spring up around the country and are picketed by pro-Mutant militants. Extremists arm themselves with guns that can fire the antibody, and go out to shoot themselves some mutants. Beast, as the administration's Cabinet minister in charge of mutant affairs, is caught in the middle.
There are so many parallels here with current political and social issues that to list them is to define the next presidential campaign. Just writing the previous paragraph, I thought of abortion, gun control, stem cell research, the "gay gene" and the Minutemen. "Curing" mutants is obviously a form of genetic engineering and stirs thoughts of "cures" for many other conditions humans are born with, which could be loosely defined as anything that prevents you from being just like George or Georgette Clooney. The fact is, most people grow accustomed to the hands they've been dealt and rather resent the opportunity to become "normal." (Normal in this context is whatever makes you more like them and less like yourself.)
"X-Men: The Last Stand" raises all of these questions in embryonic form, but doesn't engage them in much detail, because it is often distracted by the need to be an action movie. Consider, for example, the lengths Magneto goes to in order to neutralize young Leech. The kid is being held on Alcatraz? Very well then, Magneto will stand on the Golden Gate Bridge and use his powers of industrial-strength levitation to rip loose a whole span of the bridge and rotate it so that it joins Alcatraz with the mainland and his forces can march on Worthington's fortress.
Countless innocent citizens die during this operation, falling from the bridge or otherwise terminating their commutes. It seems to me that Magneto in this case is -- well, a terrorist. So fanatic is his devotion to mutants that he will destroy the bridge in the service of his belief. Xavier, however, is like (how does it go?) the vast majority of mutants who are peaceful and responsible citizens.
One of the distractions in all the "X-Men" movies is that the X-Men are always getting involved in local incidents that have little to do with the big picture. They demonstrate their powers during disagreements and courtships, neighborhood emergencies, psychological problems or while showing off. After three movies you'd think they would have learned to coordinate their efforts, so that Storm (Halle Berry), for example, is not suddenly needed to brew up a last-minute storm and save the neighborhood/city/state/world.
My guess is there are just plain too many mutants, and their powers are so various and ill-matched that it's hard to keep them all on the same canvas. The addition of Beast, Angel and Leech, not to mention Multiple Man, Juggernaut and the revived Dr. Jean Grey (reborn as Dark Phoenix) causes a Mutant Jam, because there are too many X-Men with too many powers for a 104-minute movie. There are times when the director, Brett Ratner, seems to be scurrying from one plot line to another like that guy who had to keep all of his plates spinning on top of their poles. All the same, I enjoyed "X-Men: The Last Stand." I liked the action, I liked the absurdity, I liked the incongruous use and misuse of mutant powers, and I especially liked the way it introduces all of those political issues and lets them fight it out with the special effects. Magneto would say this is a test of survival of the fittest. Xavier would hope they could learn to live together.

X-Men: The Last Stand
Reviewed by Lisa Schwarzbaum



LESS 'X'-CEPTIONAL ''Last Stand'' grapples with the fallout of a ''cure'' for mutants like Storm (Berry) and Wolverine (Jackman) -- a smart premise it undercuts by dumbing everything else down


When the mighty band who made X-Men: The Last Stand strode into Cannes recently to promote the third and avowed final chapter of the Marvel Comics franchise, Hugh Jackman fluttered the hearts of Logan/Wolverine groupies everywhere by mentioning a spin-off for his rebel with adamantium claws. Clever move, that: With one throwaway comment, the star generated headlines with little more than a wink. More graceful still, he drew attention away from the diminished artistic returns of X-Men: The Last Stand, a brute-force enterprise that doesn't distinguish between cramming entertainment down our gullets like fast food (i.e., undifferentiated action, humor aimed at crotch level) and offering a good meal. And I report this both as a fan of the first two and a staunch supporter of mutant rights, especially when applied to Hugh Jackman.
Certainly something dismaying has happened in the three years since Wolverine, Storm, Rogue, Cyclops, et al. fought back so heroically against discrimination, governmental invasion of privacy, and the hated Mutant Registration Act in X2: X-Men United. Because while filmmaker Bryan Singer's exciting 2003 follow-up to his own notable 2000 launch of the comic-book saga demonstrated the surprising power of a sequel when an artist is at work, The Last Stand, directed by Rush Hour industrialist Brett Ratner, exemplifies what can happen when movies are confused with sandwich shops as franchise opportunities: More items on the menu — or in this case, an even greater variety of superheroes with specialty-act powers — is not the same thing as originality of recipe.
To be sure, there's a lot on the shared plate of Jackman's Wolverine, Halle Berry's Storm, Ian McKellen's Magneto, Famke Janssen's Jean Grey, Patrick Stewart's Professor Xavier, Anna Paquin's Rogue, and the rest of the irregular regulars at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. For one thing, at the end of X2, Jean was supposedly quite dead. But it spills no secrets to note that she's insistently alive in X3 in the form of her alter ego, the voraciously destructive Phoenix, a woman even more dangerous in her out-of-control telekinetic (and, as the good doctor Freud would point out, sexual) powers than Jean was before. (In anticipation of Phoenix's rise from the ashes, writers Simon Kinberg and Zak Penn offer a charming flashback to an earlier time when the Class 5 mutant was a frightened suburban girl, and Xavier and Magneto were dapper, well-moisturized friends.)
An even bigger headline for the differently abled community, though, is the discovery of an antibody that can ''cure'' mutants and restore them to ''normalcy.'' But what is normal? ''You can't cure being a mutant — there's nothing to cure,'' insists Storm, making the allegorical connections to homosexuality about as vivid as a fictional character with the power to control the weather can, short of taping a PSA. Rogue, meanwhile, who complains bitterly that she ''can't touch [her] boyfriend without killing him,'' is an interested potential client; through her, the deaf-community debate about the implications of cochlear implants finds a voice. And as for Magneto the radical separatist (and Holocaust survivor), the government interest in such a homogenizing serum signals nothing less than a coming pogrom. ''They want to exterminate us!'' he declares to his followers, rallying his revolutionary forces to subdue all who would advocate tolerance and multi-culturalism, including Professor Xavier, as well as Henry McCoy — a.k.a. Beast — the charming, rational geneticist with the big head of blue fur, played with modesty, panache, and much peacock- colored prosthetic assistance by Kelsey Grammer.
This is interesting stuff. So why does The Last Stand feel driven to dumb itself down, as if embarrassed by its own ideas? There is no time for reflection in this overstuffed sequel — civil war, special effects involving the destruction of the Golden Gate Bridge, volcanic emotions between Jean Grey and Logan, volcanic enmity between Magneto and, well, everyone. And there's no time for character charm in a production that simultaneously X-es out the old and brings on a baby-faced potential ensemble cast for X-Men: The Next Generation, including Hard Candy's compelling Ellen Page as Kitty Pryde (who can phase through solid matter) and a super-buff Ben Foster from Six Feet Under as the winged hunk Angel. There is, though, time for a kick-to-the-groin visual joke, following which Wolverine taunts a foe with ''Grow a pair of those.'' If The Last Stand were more confident, the movie wouldn't need to constantly grab 'em.

[Jonas]

I'll have to say I was dissapointed when I saw this movie. Being an Uncanny X-Men comic book fan, they screwed up! This movie really sucked!!!

[Batgirl]

I liked it....

[brooklyn6]

It wasn't good. They killed the story ...