cinema

X-men | The Last Stand

Just came back from watching this movie, so it’s pretty fresh in my mind. This is going to be a SPOILER FILLED review. If you’ve not had a chance to watch this movie, seriously GO AWAY, I’ll be right here when you get back, honest. You’ll enjoy what you read a lot more I promise you.

Right now that we got that out of the way lets get into it shall we? If I was to rate this movie on a scale of 1 to 10 I’d give it about a 6.5. It wasn’t really expecting a mind blowing epic assault on the senses. I’ve been disappointed far too many times in the past to fall for that once again. It doesn’t help matters that Brett was following on from what I believe as being one of the best comic to movie adaptations ever. Ratner was fighting a losing battle from the start to be honest. He couldn’t possibly live up to what Singer has set forth.

So what’s new in this movie?

The Characters

Well for a start the addition of several characters to the cast. There were loads of characters being chucked on the screen. Some I thought worked very well, others I thought were either forced or wasted.

The best addition was Kitty Pryde, whom I liked a lot. They’ve like cast the character 3 times in all movies which is funny but at the same time it was third time lucky IMHO. She plays her role exceptionally well and retains the innocence that the character requires. She also had one of the better lines in the movie.

I also enjoyed Kelsey Grammer’s portrayal of Beast was pretty good. Not spectacular though. It was as good as it gets I guess, but for me the Beast has a seriously distinct voice. He’s got a certain charisma, which to be fair they tried to portray it in the movie, however I honestly couldn’t make it click. It had nothing to do with the actor, and everything to do with my take on the character. The action sequences were pretty well done though.

Vinnie Jones as Juggernaut was also a pretty bold movie. They layered the muscles on him pretty well and the costume was very well done. Maddrox could have been used a hell of a lot more but hey there was enough characters in this movie as it was. The Spike character was a bit weak I found, while the zip girl (don’t even know what she was called) was ok but Storm really should have kicked her ass a good while before that. At least she didn’t utter some rubbish line like in the first movie.

Speaking of Storm, Halle Berry hasn’t looked that great in a good long while. I’ve not seen that prune of a movie Catwoman so I have no idea how bad she’s had to stoop, but needless to say I thought she was back on form here and she actually progressed her character as much as she could in the limited time she was given on screen.

It was great to see Bobby turn completely ICEMAN for once. I thought his nemesis was a complete idiot. The casting was pretty lame and his acting was far too hammy for my liking. He just didn’t look EVIL enough. He was the diet coke of evil.

The most forgettable character in the entire movie died in the most unspectacular fashion. I am talking about Scott Summers, aka Cyclops. I mean seriously. Here was an opportunity to do something special and show off this character but instead they killed him off in like the first 30 minutes. Whatever.

This movie also signaled the loss of several characters as well. The biggest loss for me was Nightcrawler who stole the show in the X-Men’s last outing. His opening scene remains one of my favourite intro scenes (since the Blade bloodbath scene).

The Angel plotline was really a complete sideline and I didn’t really feel for the character to be honest.

The Story

The single most important thing in a movie is the story. It’s a very simple concept that seems to fail time and time again in Hollywood. In this case there seemed to be far to much micromanagement. Too many forced changes by the actual studio which I felt hurt the movie completely. The story also housed several holes all over the place (most notable was frigging Wolverine’s holes in his shirt in the woods, if you saw this as well you’ll know what I mean).

I wasn’t all that gripped by the story to be honest. I did actually wonder how long the movie was going for, which is not a good sign that all is going well. I should be on the edge of my seat throughout the entire story. I should be wanting the movie to never end, or something like that. I’m not going to be anal about things and say that it didn’t really follow the comics, because it’s not as important to me as all that. I will say however that it didn’t keep me as excited as I would have wanted. Fair enough they tried to mix it up with a bit of the Phoniex but I felt the story was trying to do more than the budget could allow and fell flat of inspiring me.

Direction and Cinematography

Bryan was sorely missed in this movie. The direction was just not as crisp and creative as in the previous two movies. Classic schenes like Nightcrawler’s introduction or Wolverine kicking some major ass was seriously lost in this installment. I don’t want to be negative about it, but Brett Ratner is not a name I’ll be trying to follow closely in the future. I don’t know who to blame but this movie really felt like it wasn’t one man’s vision but rather a movie made by the studio.