This movie has guts, plain and simple. Ordinarily, I would have been outraged at some of the decisions that were made in this film. To see certain X-Men characters killed was unthinkable when I entered the theater, and had these deaths not occurred in just the way they did, I probably would have hated this movie. But they killed unthinkable characters in simply mind-blowing ways and never looked back. I repeat: this movie has guts.
Unfortunately, Bryan Singer (who directed the previous two installments of the series) chose to walk away from The Last Stand to direct Superman Returns. The joke would be on him, however, as X-Men would out-earn Superman and also got more love from fans. In Singer’s absence, we have Brett Ratner, of Rush Hour fame, who could have ruined this film, but does a surprisingly good job.
The story is a little all over the place, throwing in shout outs to fanboy favorite mutants just for the sake of including fanboy favorite mutants. The inclusion of more mutants comes at the sacrifice of character and story depth, which the first two films were chock full of. While it’s neat to see mutants like Juggernaut, Beast and Angel, it’s a shame that the story was more or less as deep as the Saturday morning cartoon version from the 90s. An alleged cure for the mutant gene is found, causing the humans of the world to demand mutants all “cure” themselves and rejoin “normal society.”
There are some substantially silly-looking special effects and the series wraps itself up almost too neatly in the end. The best part about X-Men stories is that things are always left a little bit open. There are two “shockers” at the end (one before and one after the credits) that keep potential sequels on the board, but some course correction is never a bad thing.
The little things add up to be a minor nuisance, but the boldness of the film helps you forget about it. X-Men: The Last Stand is a good way to end the series without closing the book on the characters.
This movie has guts, plain and simple. Ordinarily, I would have been outraged at some of the decisions that were made in this film. To see certain X-Men characters killed was unthinkable when I entered the theater, and had these deaths not occurred in just the way they did, I probably would have hated this movie. But they killed unthinkable characters in simply mind-blowing ways and never looked back. I repeat: this movie has guts.
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