The new X3 director has wrecked a great movie series. Character development was so minimal that unless you had seen the first two X-Men movies you couldn't care a less as they preceed to off 'Cyclops', and Professor Xavier (Patrick Steward) in the first few minutes.
The base plot is that a mutant boy whose ability is to cancel other mutants powers has been discovered by a drug company, who are using him to (and the words gene thearapy are never used) create a 'cure' for the mutant X gene. 'Magneto' (Ian McKellen) reacts as expected to this, and that is the entire main plot.
Meanwhile Dr Jean Grey has survived the dam burst from the 2nd movie and come back evil. Large amounts of movie time is spent as Wolverine tries to rescue her from this 'dark subconcious mind' that has taken her over. What this translates to is some action scenes of Wolverine beating up some of Magneto's while underlings trying to get to talk to her, while 'Dark Phoenix' spends most of the movie mooning about in the forest, or staring off into the distance at various times while Magneto discusses the situation and his plans with his other underlings.
They only kept 'Rogue' (Anna Paquin) in the movie so they would have somebody at the Xavier School to go and take the cure, over the objections of her boyfriend. But once again, this was handled so shallowly that it could be cut completely from the movie and the time used for better development of the main story.
'Angel' whose buff chest was on all the promotional material was a minor background character who has exactly four scenes in the movie (none of which are shown on the posters), five if you count the end credits where he flies over the San Francisco bridge. He was also connected with several badly done scenes. The first one (as a 10 yr old) has him trying to remove his wings with drawers full of various sharp instruments and wood working tools (all chromed!). Very stupid and dramaticly over the top. The other discontinuity is where he is shown at the school (on the East coast) the Good Guys jet off (leaving him behind) only for him to fly onto the scene (in San Francisco!) a short while later to rescue his father (who had just been thrown off a building). Another badly manufactured scene, they just kill the assistant accompanying him.
Another major change from the previous movies is that they have introduced the concept of 'Levels'. All the major characters seem to be '4's (apart from Jean Grey), but they have added hoards of mostly faceless level 1's and 2's. Who all strangely seem to be either leather clad punks or hobo-like street people. In the final battle scene there is one moment when the whole stupidity of it sticks out (and the cgi), as several of these faceless minions do a perfectly synchronised jump over a barrier and I also spotted several animated action loops as they move across the field of view.
So all in all a movie that is visually stunning, but fairly emotionally empty.
6 out of 10, and try not to think too much about how much better it could have been.
For a movie that's part of a series, limited character development is fair, if you're supposed to already know the character, ala Xavier and Cyclops, so I could easially overlook that bit as you probably shouldn't be sitting down to watch X3 without having seen the first 2. (just like picking up a comic series with 1-2 books to go in a thread is usually a bad idea)
I thought the 'plot device mutant' really wasn't used effectively, and had 2 scenes. They could probably have done well having a scene with the humans capturing him amongst the jump around the timeline scenes that covered backstory. Something other than Xavier's "I did it to protect/help you" speech might have been more in character for him when pheonix was back at the school, although it fitted with how well he used pheonix in the movie anyway, as she was pretty much a plot device with no real part except to kill the proffessor and to be sacrificed at the end.
I thought Rogue's part was quite a key element to the plot, and should have been done better. She's a teenage girl with many issues of connecting with other people that just want's to be able to get close to someone without hurting/killing them (opinion from first 2 movies). There is little wonder that she would jump at the opportunity to be cured of this terrible thing that life has dealt her.
As for the problems it had with too many 'main' characters, indeed. There was little focus available with it, though it was pretty easy to follow the magneto's side vs xavier's side vs human groupings, the individuals got a bit lost in it.
I really didn't think the mutant power levels being categorised to a group of numbers was something that should have been done. just saying that she's more powerful that any other mutant you know would have done
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Gazza the undecided
Posted on: June 21st, 2006, 11:58am
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hmmm i just saw this movie and i must say it had all the elements of a great movie but.
There was a lot going on and it just didnt really gel for me the obvious okay they died but no corpses seen in two cases and the crappy fleeing mind stuff for the other just annoyed me. After all unless you see a corpse in the ground you just dont know, even then....... A little more character development maybe i dunno.
I thought xavier was just getting interesting then he was gone feh. The pheonix served no purpose to the movie i think that was a problem if the phoenix wasnt even there and they just did away with the whole sub plot if would have made more realestate for human, bad mutant, good mutant anguish drama etc
having said all that i enjoyed it it just could have been much better
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Reply: 2 - 4
Gazza the undecided
Posted on: June 21st, 2006, 11:58am
Guest User
hmmm i just saw this movie and i must say it had all the elements of a great movie but.
There was a lot going on and it just didnt really gel for me the obvious okay they died but no corpses seen in two cases and the crappy fleeing mind stuff for the other just annoyed me. After all unless you see a corpse in the ground you just dont know, even then....... A little more character development maybe i dunno.
I thought xavier was just getting interesting then he was gone feh. The pheonix served no purpose to the movie i think that was a problem if the phoenix wasnt even there and they just did away with the whole sub plot if would have made more realestate for human, bad mutant, good mutant anguish drama etc
having said all that i enjoyed it it just could have been much better
Lympago Forums › Reviews › Film, TV and Video › X-Men: The Last Stand Review Part 2 *Spoilers* (Moderators: leece, rdm)
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X-Men: The Last Stand Review Part 2 *Spoilers*
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