X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

[Chuck Mayer]

Title: X-Men: The Last Stand

Tagline: Take a Stand

Genre: Adventure, Action, Science Fiction, Thriller

Director: Brett Ratner

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Famke Janssen, Kelsey Grammer, Anna Paquin, Rebecca Romijn, James Marsden, Shawn Ashmore, Elliot Page, Aaron Stanford, Vinnie Jones, Daniel Cudmore, Ben Foster, Michael Murphy, Dania Ramirez, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Josef Sommer, Bill Duke, Eric Dane, Desiree Zurowski, Adrian Hough, Haley Ramm, Chris Claremont, Stan Lee, Cayden Boyd, Tanya Newbould, Anthony Heald, Cameron Bright, Connor Widdows, Kea Wong, Shauna Kain, Luke Pohl, Julian Richings, Lloyd Adams, Richard Yee, Via Saleaumua, Meiling Melançon, Omahyra Mota, Clayton Watmough, Ken Leung, Julian Christopher, Brad Kelly, Makenzie Vega Norfolk, Mi-Jung Lee, Benita Ha, Ron James, R. Lee Ermey, Lance Gibson, Aaron Pearl, Chelah Horsdal, John Pyper-Ferguson, Brenna O'Brien, Justin Callan, Alex Ferris, Peter Kawasaki, Ron Blecker, Emy Aneke, David Smith, Olivia Williams, Tony Stef'Ano

Release: 2006-05-24

Runtime: 104

Plot: When a cure is found to treat mutations, lines are drawn amongst the X-Men—led by Professor Charles Xavier—and the Brotherhood, a band of powerful mutants organised under Xavier's former ally, Magneto.

That's what I've been expecting for almost a year now. A piffle of a film following two benchmarks in superhero films. A shame, but Fox was more interested in the bottom line upfront than making the best film. Based on that corporate decision, if most of the reviews follow Shawn's (and I imagine his will represent the upper echelon), I am saving my money. This'll be the first summer in a long while that I've been able to go 3 straight "opening" weeks without seeing a film.

I am hoping Singer delivers on his film.

 

[Larry Sutliff]

I watched both X-MEN films this week in order to get myself hyped for X3, and both are really good character driven films(especially 2). It's a shame if all of that development has gone to waste for the third film. Keeping my fingers crossed, but I'm expecting to be disappointed.

 

[Shawn.F]

Fingers crossed myself on Superman Returns.

 

[Bryan Ri]

Funny you mention that, Chuck. Last summer, it seemed like every opening weekend from the end of April to the end of June, I was at the movie theater. First Hitchhikers, then Kingdom of Heaven, Star Wars, Batman, War of the Worlds, etc.

This season, I've so far skipped out on every big film, from MI:3 to Da Vinci Code, both films I was initially looking forward to.

I'll still be at the theater opening weekend for X3, but I'll be leaving my brain at the door.

*Fingers crossed for the brilliant Bryan Singer*

 

[Malcolm R]

X3 will be the first film that draws me into the theater this summer. Then it's a long wait until "Pirates of the Caribbean 2"...then a longer wait until fall.

 

[DavidPla]

Positive review of "X3" by Moriarty... some spoilers. Basically he says it's a good film on par with the first two films.

http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/display.cgi?id=23392

 

[Amy Mormino]

The Moriarty review, which while not an unqualified rave is very positive, is significant both because Moriarty is a fairly accurate judge of the quality of "popcorn films" and because AICN has previously seemed convinced this film would fail.

 

[Paul_Scott]

wasn't Moriarty the one who reviewed the script?
that's where a lot of the initial bad buzz came from.

I also heard Ebert & Roeper gave it two thumbs up. I'm thinking a lot of 'action business' will be enough to distract a lot of people from poor characterization, cheesy one liners, weak motivation, etc

 

[Larry Sutliff]

Great news that Moriarity and Ebert liked it.

 

[MikeRS]

I think it's gonna be more than that.

HIGH STAKES
-Dark Phoenix story thread
-all out mutant war
-major deaths aplenty due to this being the "final" entry in the series
HIGH STAKES

High Stakes can make any storyline be percieved as more tense, monumental and event-filled, regardless of the technical proficiency and quantity of action set-pieces.

It can also iron out (or hide) any narrative deficiencies.


Ratner has also inherited a damn fine cast

Hugh Jackman
Patrick Stewart
Ian McKellen
Famke Janssen
Rebecca Romijn

These actors are the true reason the franchise will survive it's original director jumping ship.

 

[Paul_Scott]

well, I posted that before I read Mori's review, which was quite surprising in it's upbeat enthusiasm. But prior to that, most of what I have heard, jibed with my gut feeling that there is too much story jammed into too little screen time to adequetely pay these high stakes scenarios off.
But then , Mori says he felt that DP did play out fine, so I guess the proof 'll be in the puddin' next friday.
In a way, I should be easier to please than a lot of you, 'cause I have problems with some fundemental elements of the second film.

and I gotta say, the action scenes that i see from this one look ...fun.

here's hoping...and if it's good, maybe a longer, even better director's cut is in the cards- containing some of the sequences and bits that Jon liked int he novelization.

 

[JonZ]

I dont think that will happen as Im pretty sure that Ratner said only a very short sequence, lasting only a couple minutes was cut. Most of what was on the page of the shooting script will be on screen, which is too bad.

A couple things I liked that were cut were things like Iceman giving Angel his codename. Bobby shows him to his room and says "Welcome to Xaviers... Angel"
Pyro taunting Iceman with "Im melting! Im melting" during their fight and feat of strength by Colossus in the final battle(I cant say without giving something away). Like I said they were alot of little things that arent on screen but with some extra time IMHO would have been some really nice touches.

Rushing this thing has been talked about to death and its just disappointing you know.

The novel is out now for those interested.

I have my 12:01 thurs night ticket.

And dont forget everyone, there is a scene after the credits.

 

[TheLongshot]

Reading the Talkbacks clarifies Moriarty's review. He still stands by his comments about the script and Tom Rothman. Basically, it sounds like he has accepted the flaws in the script and was looking at the execution, which seems to work for him.

Meanwhile, Jeff Wells made some comments about it (no review) that it is pretty much a middle of the road film. Not great, but not awful either. From him, I take it as a complement.

Jason

 

[Kristian]

duplicate

 

[Kristian]

The Hollywood Reporter's review is up, as well as Variety's.

I'm really interested in hearing what Ebert & Roeper had to say about the film (my local station didn't air the show over the weekend, so I'll have to wait until the website uploads the sound clips). If I recall correctly, they gave two thumbs down to the first film and they weren't as impressed with X2 as others were.

 

[Chuck Mayer]

Another review from CHUD (from one of their best writers and most honest contributers - though his best stuff is usally on the boards).

Click me. He is neither sniping nor fanboyish. But it's a good review, so I thought I'd share.

 

[James@R]

They gave it two thumbs up. (I believe they also gave X2 the same.)

http://tvplex.go.com/buenavista/eber...per/today.html

 

[Kristian]

Yeah, I was aware that they had given it thumbs up, but I wanted to hear their reasons for that. Thankfully, the audio clip is now up at the site.

EDIT: And now I've listened to their review and they seem to like it in a "good, not great" sort of way. Which is around the level of expectation I have for Friday... I gave up the hope a long time ago that this movie would be as good or better than X2. I'm hoping it will be at least on the level of the first film, which I was never in love with, but was definitely entertaining.

 

[Norm]

After reading this, I'm pissed! I see the Rat did whatever he wanted! I think these are major spoilers but I covered them anyway.


SHH!: How did you pick the mutants though, particularly the new characters with new powers?
Ratner: I just went through the comics and the materials and thought, "This is cool." They're what I thought was cool, and I just wanted to go in and put some color into it. It's a multi-racial comic, and Halle Berry was the only person of color in the last few
movies, so I wanted to bring some flavor, as they say. They were inspired by the comics. For instance, Spike started as Kid Omega, but there was another character. I found one character that I liked and then I took the powers. For instance, Callisto has the power of another character who moves fast and has the telepathy thing. The girl from the wall looks like Psylocke but she has the power of one of the other characters. So I mixed and matched powers to service the story. Instead of having ten more actors in the movie, I just said, "You're going to have these three powers."

SHH!: One of the major changes from the comics was changing Bill Duke's Trask to be a government agent rather than the creator of the Sentinels
. Why did you decide to change that?
Ratner: Yeah, because it has to service our story, I mean, this is not a comic book. This is a comic book movie, but the comic book is not the script. If you see what Bryan Singer did, if they followed the comic book, Wolverine would look more like me, a short stocky bulldog, you know? So you have to interpret the comic and work for the cinematic world. As far as Bill Duke's character, I didn't want the government to be villainous.
I didn't want them to be a cliché, which was in the other movies but is what worked, but I didn't want to do it again. I didn't want it to be about the government, I wanted it to be about this cure
. The President wasn't quite Bush, but he wasn't quite Clinton. I was kind of like trying to find a middle ground. I didn't want the villainous Trask in the comics to be a villain.
http://www.superherohype.com/news/fe...ws.php?id=4281

 

[David Rogers]

The newest CHUD review seems to confirm what I've feared ever since I heard Singer'd left the project. It's a real shame it seems Ratner converted X3 into a Mortal Kombat style comic/game movie, rather than continuing the highly effective and successful comic/game movie model shown to audiences in X-Men, X2, Batman Begins, Spider-man, etc... That model would be a focus on characters rather than powers and gimicks, and on making the heroes normal people with powers, rather than merely defining them by their powers.

Now I'm beginning to think I shouldn't pay to see it, since that'd just show the studio executives I'll slavishly follow the brand despite the damage they're doing to it...

Grrr, why do they have to make movies so hard to like damnit! How hard is it to care about a pic as more than an investment vehicle? Oh well, at least Singer's Superman looks like a lock for solid.