X-MEN: THE LAST STAND

“I’m The Juggarnaut, BITCH!”

The original X-MEN, released in the summer of 2000, was a relatively important movie in a few ways. It revived the boom of film adaptations of super heroes. The genre had declined severely after Warner Brothers released BATMAN & ROBIN in 1997, which was considered by many to be the worst movie in a long time. The film brought in a little over $100 million in the U.S., a little more than half of it’s predecessor BATMAN FOREVER’s take two summers before. The question arose in Hollywood, if Batman, arguably the most famous of super heroes, could not be sold, then who could?

Director Bryan Singer took over the X-MEN project, and it was a gutsy choice by Fox. He had two movies under his belt, and THE USUAL SUSPECTS was the only memorable one (it was also made five years ago). The executives at Fox handed him a $75 million budget, modest for the time of film, and gave him a cast of mainly unknowns. How Singer made such a mark in Hollywood without receiving hardly any credit for it is somewhat stunning. His casting of Hugh Jackman as the morally conflicted and immeasurably cool Wolverine paid dividends. The film was a success, and it spawned a sequel three years later that delved deeper into the story of the X-MEN and gave the fanboys what they wanted: more action.

A universal sigh of despair hit the internet about about two years ago as Bryan Singer decided to leave Fox and the X-MEN series, which had already began production on a third film, to head to the Superman camp. A replacement was hired in spring of 2005, but yet another replacement was needed as the would-be director had to leave the project. Fox chose Brett Ratner, whose credits include the RUSH HOUR series, to take over the reigns of the unsteady film. His instructions were to just not screw up what Singer had started, and do it quickly; he had eleven months to finish the product for a Memorial Day 2006 release.

Not being an X-Men fan myself, I went into X-MEN: THE LAST STAND without expectations other than wanting a visual feast and nothing too hard to understand. If this was Ratner’s goal, he succeeded. The film is a lean hour and forty-four minutes, a half-hour shorter than X2. The fact that the film is only 104 minutes is surprising considering how much more Ratner and screenwriters Zak Penn and Simon Kinberg bit off than they could chew.

The biggest of X3’s story line features a cure being found that eliminates the mutant gene found in every single mutant in the world. Yes, every single one, no matter what type of mutation they have (be it if they can run through walls or walk on water). Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and his X-Men want the good intentions of the antidote to be seen by everyone: the treatment is voluntary and is intended to do good (such as curing a man covered in blue skin and fur). Magneto, the X-Mens’ archenemy, believes that there is nothing to cure in mutants and that the government is trying to exterminate the mutants.

Another plot arises when Jean Gray rises from the grave. She returns to THE LAST STAND as Phoenix, a mutant whose powers are greater than anyone can imagine. Her powers have been harnessed up until this point, but now she just wants to have some fun I guess. She lifts a lot of things up, makes a lot of things explode, and has a detached psychotic look in her eyes. I sat back and took it in, absurdity and all.

The film doesn’t really have an intelligent bone in its body other than Magneto’s story line. I wondered while he was moving the Golden Gate Bridge to connect it to Alcatraz (no joke), whether or not he was a terrorist. He goes against everything the government says violently, and he kills anyone who gets in his way of destroying the “cure”. Other than that, the story is lacking. Human touches are sprinkled on the movie throughout, and in all truthfulness spread out a little too far (again, Ratner bit off more than he could chew in 104 minutes). The shaky script is easily forgotten when the tremendous action scenes burst on to the screen. They are nothing mind-blowing conceptually, but they are too damn good looking not to enjoy.

The warm weather is just around the corner, and that is Hollywood’s cue to release their biggest, loudest, most absurd, and most entertaining movies of the year. I am but a simple sixteen-year-old, and I can’t help but love them. X-MEN: THE LAST STAND is everything an action movie should be (sorry for the cliché): big, loud, absurd, and entertaining.

B+