Not worthy of the franchise. - X-Men: The Last Stand Reviews

***Warning*** There may be some spoilers in here so read at your own risk. If we rated this movie only on visuals, it would score high for me. Special effects were outstanding, which I would expect from any of today's films. The powers of every mutant were on full display, from Storm's use of her ability to control the weather, to Wolverines near invincibility. Some of the new mutants introduced were really cool and their powers were fun to watch. The scene with the bridge (you'll understand when/if you've seen it) was pretty cool, though ultimately it didn't make any sense. That, my friends, is the problem with this movie. Much, in fact probably a majority of the story points didn't make sense at all or were poorly planned out. It almost seems as if the writers of this film were solely concerned with getting in as many mutants as they could and packing as much random content into the movie as they could and get it all done by a certain date, or the world will explode or something. There CLEARLY wasn't a sufficient amount of planning that went into this story. I'll start at the beginning. First of all, I know that they hinted at the Phoenix story arc at the end of the second movie, but honestly that was just not enough to really present this awesome and complicated saga all within this third movie. In the literature, the Phoenix's existence within Jean Grey is much more invasive and conflicting. The emotions and powers of the Phoenix run from purely good to purely evil and everywhere in between. In this movie however, the Phoenix is really cast as an evil force that doesn't just invade Jean Grey, it is made out to be Jean Grey herself which just doesn't set well with me. Through out the movie Jean Grey is presented as this detatched, evil presence that holds zero redemption. She kills... a lot of people... which would be okay if they just presented it more as a conflict and less as a horror movie villan. The second issue that I have with the Phoenix is that they don't even attempt to explain why it is that she doesn't just go ahead and obliterate all of her enemies in one fell swoop. Like I said earlier, at least in the literature it was presented as this conflict between good and evil which held her back. In the movie, she doesn't seem held back much at all so you have to wonder why it is she floats along next to magneto during many of the battles and just kind of stands there detatched, not speaking or even indicating that she has a mind at all. She doesn't seem to have problems with killing people at all so why doesn't she just destroy them all and be done with it? There is not even an attempt to explain that. You can't just insert a mostly evil god into a movie and then just have them stand there half the time, filling space on the screen. If they wanted to do the Phoenix story properly they should have started strongly with working the story into the movies from the very first one, rather than trying to cram it all into the third one. Second issue, Storm. Halle asked for more screen time for Storm, and she did definitely get it. I am a Storm fan, and I was definitely happy to see more screen time for her, but only half of it was good screen time, and the good screen time just was not explored properly. Perfect examples of good and bad Storm screen time are: GOOD = scene where she is standing on the balcony of the mansion, and Xavier realizes that her negative emotions are affecting the weather causing a thunderstorn to approach, and he comes out from teaching to talk with her. BAD = Storm getting into multiple catfight type wresting matches with this strange african american or latino female mutant who has teamed up with Magneto. In that GOOD Storm scene, that would have been a perfect time to explore why it is that Storm is supposed to be one of the more emotionless characters in the X-men... IF they had presented her as that kind of efficient, emotionless second in command type from the beginning instead of the hip young fun character they made her out to be from the first movie. (Gina Torre's character, Zoe, in Firefly is much closer to where Storm should be.. though not even that much emotion) I have always thought that Storm is a good foil for the Phoenix/Jean Grey character, because they both have incredible power, but the difference is that Storm wants to be in control, and feels safe being in control, whereas the Phoenix aspect of Jean Grey likes to be out of control (almost identically to the Hulk), and strongly desires to be out of control. Storm is basically weakest when she is out of control, and Jean Grey is strongest when she is out of control. They could have explored this but they didn't. So what you get instead is an evil B horror movie villan in Jean Grey, and a spunky hip Storm who just happens to be in on more fights this time. As far as the BAD Storm scenes, there are a few of them and you just have to ask yourself, why is she cat fighting with this woman and why doesn't she just electrocute her on the spot? (She eventually does, but it takes a LOT of catfighting to get to that point.) Wolverine gets a similar treatment as Storm, where he's in a lot more of the movie even than he was in the previous movies (he is probably the most popular x-men character), but much of the added wolverine content is extremely sappy and does nothing to develop his character. We understand that there is a love triangle between him, Scott and Jean, but they just keep beating you over the head with that time and time again through out the movie. Most of Wolverine's scenes involve either him trying to get with Jean, or clawing people up. Even after two of the characters that he has known longer than pretty much anyone in the x-men are killed off, his role still seems fixed on those two things. One thing that Storm at least has going for her is that the deaths of those characters do begin to hint at a transformation for her, but Wolverine doesn't get developed at all. Now, I do like that they decided to try to approach Rogue's story a bit more, but unfortunately they took her in the COMPLETE opposite direction than that which most x-men fans would have wanted to see her go, so that ended up being a dissapointment. There are several other mutants who are introduced into this film, but they too recieve shoddy development and their dialogue is mostly cheesy and goes along with the whole sappy feeling that you get from this whole movie. So, I don't want to rant on too long but to sumerize. This movie is probably something you will want to see just to watch the special effects and see where all the mutants are now in this story, but you WILL walk out of the theater dissapointed. Virtually everyone who was in my theater was dissapointed. There are so many plot holes, and the execution of the Phoenix saga is weak. Much of the dialogue through the movie was so sappy and cheesy that many times people busted out laughing in the theater, and NOT the good kind of laughter (although there were a few sincerely humorous points of the movie). With all the killing off of characters they did in this movie, it would be hard to make another one so I won't be holding my breath for it, but if they do then i suggest that they do what the Batman series did with its most recent incarnation, and make it a bit less sappy or funny, and a bit more serious and semi-dark.