X-Men: The Last Stand

Being the last movie in a trilogy is a critical balancing act. As the final act, it has to bring together all the plot threads and character development created in the previous two films and it has to be able to tie them together in a way that makes sense. More important for a film with a very critical fan-base, though, it has to do all these things while keeping the people happy that will pay to see it.

X-Men: The Last Stand, the last installment in the X-Men movie trilogy, was released in theaters on Friday, May 26th. Being a fan of the previous movies, as well as a fan of the comics they were based on, I bought my ticket in advance for the midnight show on Thursday. The movie opens with a flashback of Professor Xavier and Magneto visiting the Grey family to recruit a young Jean in the school. The character interactions were fantastic, as they proved to be throughout the entire movie. My problem lies in how the story played out.

I knew going in that things would be different. After all, Brian Singer, the director of the first two films, left before production to direct the upcoming Superman Returns, taking with him Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris, the writing team from X2. Singer’s replacement was Brett Ratner, director of the Rush Hour films. David Hayter, the writer of the first two movies’ screenplays, was replaced by Zak Penn, who helped write the second movie, and Simon Kinberg, whose credits include Mr. and Mrs. Smith and xXx: State of the Union.

These changes, while at first glance are no big deal, alter the dynamic enough that the movie just does not live up to what the first two movies created. Anyone that has read the comics will find some things sounding familiar, but “massaged” in such a way that, to a fan of the comics, may feel like a perversion of truth. For instance, Jean Grey becoming the Phoenix has shades of “the Phoenix Saga” from the comics, but one of the chief characters in that story, Cyclops, has been almost completely cut out of the movie except for a small segment in the beginning of the movie. The movie’s plot (and I use that term loosely) centers around a cure for the mutant “X-gene”, the source of which is itself a mutant, played by that creepy kid from Godsend, Birth, and Ultraviolet. My problem with this lies in the mutant’s ability to nullify the X-gene. In the comics, his power was temporary, but in the movie this isn’t even hinted at until the very end.

As a fan of the previous two movies, as well as the comics they were based on, my eye may be a little over-critical in regards to these minor problems, but these movies were created for people like me, people that grew up reading these characters’ stories. As an action film, it stands up as an exciting opening to the summer movie season, with plenty of CG special effects. Unfortunately, as an X-Men movie, it misses the mark. This X does not mark the spot.

written by Bryan Berkovic