Fanboys probably won’t be too Xcited about this film. A fanboy, for the un-geeks out there, is a man or woman who lives, breathes, walks, talks, sleeps, eats and Xcretes something – usually a movie, television show, video game, or comic book. In this case, it’s X-Men, the popular Marvel comic and movie trilogy. Fanboys were upset that the Shire wasn’t scoured at the end of “The Return of the King.” Fanboys are the ones who, when Ben Affleck played lawyer-turned-superhero Matt Murdock, said, “Hey, Daredevil isn’t supposed to suck!”
They’re the purists. And while “X-Men: The Last Stand” is a fun, action-packed film crammed tightly into 104 minutes, fanboys aren’t going to dig some of director Brett Ratner’s decisions.
The twist is, “The Last Stand” is the one film in the trilogy with the most comic book feel to it. The movie, after two plot-establishing flashbacks, starts off where “X2: X-Men United” ended. Cyclops (James Marsden) is despondent over the death of his lady friend, Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), who died at the end of “X2” saving her fellow XMen.
Also mourning Jean Grey is Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), the feral Canadian with a metal-laced skeleton and “claws” that extend in trios from the back of his hands. Both men loved her, but, as Cyclops says to Wolverine, not everyone heals as fast as Wolverine does. Unable to move on, Cyclops sets off to the scene of Jean Grey’s death, Alkali Lake, to brood. Thus, the melodrama begins and doesn’t end until the last “snikt” of Wolverine’s claws.
It’s this melodramatic treatment that mutates this film from a motion picture into a beautifully rendered onscreen graphic novel. In comic books, the drama must be packed into a few pages between the action sequences. “The Last Stand” is treated in much the same way. There are so many characters that need screen time, the relationships that are developed between the key players just don’t have enough time to be given their due, so the filmmakers pack in the melodrama to make up for it.
After Cyclops speeds off, word comes out that Worthington Labs, a bioengineering firm, has discovered a “cure” for the mutant gene. Any mutant who takes the cure will instantaneously lose his or her powers and become one of “them” (i.e. human).
Mutantkind breaks off into three groups: the everyday mutants who are sick of their powers and want the cure; the militants, led by Magneto (Ian McKellen), who will fight the advent of the cure tooth-and-mutated-nail; and the X-Men, led by Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), who are conflicted by the prospect of siding with the humans they’ve sworn to protect, many of whom want to see mutants wiped out.
Exacerbating the situation is the return of Jean Grey from the dead as the uninhibited Phoenix, an alter ego that had been contained within her psyche since Xavier took her under his tutelage. Phoenix has emerged from the depths of Jean Grey’s subconscious Id, much to the delight of Freudians everywhere. Returning to the side of the X-Men is Storm (Halle Berry). Even though she is given much more action in this film, Storm still lags behind the other characters in the superhero deed department, coming off as a mild tempest instead of Hurricane Halle. Rounding out the X crew are Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), who finally turns into ice, man; metal strong man Colossus (Daniel Cudmore); Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page), who can walk through walls; and Hank McCoy, a.k.a. Beast (Kelsey Grammar), the imminently likable blue fur ball who serves as an ambassador between mutants and humans.
The bad guys have some newcomers, too, notably Juggernaut (Vinnie Jones), who, once he gets some momentum, can run through anything. But, much like the mainstays of the franchise, the newcomers are lacking in character development as well.
Even with the want of character development, the movie is still a bang-up time. This is the first of the three X films to really capture the action sequences. When the mutants battle it’s all about their powers, from Wolverine hunting Magneto’s mutants in the woods to Beast’s acrobatic thrashing during the final battle, a scene that feels drawn directly from the latest X-Men comic.
The irony is, the fanboys will probably dislike this movie because Ratner and his script treat it like a comic book. In the comics, permanency is relative. Characters die or lose their powers, but they almost always come back in some form or another. In the movies, these things are permanent, especially if the actors are telling the truth in their post-production interviews when they say that this is, indeed, the X-Men’s last stand. And in this film, some X-Men mainstays are permanently altered.
The fanboys have so much to love about this movie, but they will undoubtedly hate how some of their favorite characters have been X’d out.