I’m 46 and i enjoyed the first two movies (and I enjoy them more than the comics).
If we didn’t have the first two X-Men movies to compare and contrast with this one, it would probably feel okay-ish. But we do, and I think most people are going to find it a huge disappointment.
Superficially, there’s not much to complain about. big money has gone into this, and it’s all up there on screen. There’s plenty of stunts and action, lots of eye-candy and gee-whizz FX, and the decision to include a broader spectrum of characters (and their powers) means that it ought to feel bigger and better than the more-focused earlier movies. I think a lot of effort has been made, and with plenty of good intentions, but sadly it hasn’t paid off.
First and foremost, the movie lacks a good story and a coherent driving narrative (coherent by ‘adopted-from-a-comic-book’ movie standards). It’s bitty and episodic, scene after scene, without any overall shape and focus. Yes, we can see the pieces being moved around to set things up for a big, set-piece battle sequence at the end, but this is movie-making by numbers, not story telling. And a movie without a good story is never going to be a big hit.
Secondly, neither the writers nor the director seem to have any genuine affection for or belief in the material they are dealing with, nor any ‘feel’ for how to transfer the X-Men universe to the silver screen. They have understood that the X-Men and their ‘special powers’ can provide plenty of work for the special FX teams, and that there’s a simple good.v.bad angle to work with, but that’s about the limit of their empathy with this subject material. You don’t have to be a fully paid-up member of the ‘Bryan Singer can do no wrong’ club to see that he managed to bring to the first two movies a certain finely-tuned understanding of how to convert comic book panels into a fully-fledged feature film, and how to strike the balance between characters with a story to tell, and hey-wow action sequences. This understadning, and this balance, left the project when he did.
With a fantasy movie, you can take any premise you like - so long as you follow it through in a coherent manner. The makers didn’t manage to do this. As many have pointed out, the characters (chiefly but not exclusively Magneto) set abut their aims, and using their powers, in ways that just don’t make sense on any level. You can ‘justify’ the demolition / re-directing of the GG Bridge as a big chunk of eye-candy designed to get talked about. But you can’t justify it in any other way - in terms of Magneto’s character, his motivation, his needs or his objectives. And there are many other moments in the movie that similarly undermine whatever suspension of disbelief we try to bring to it.
X-Men: The Last Stand is a messy, bitty movie that looks like it was assembled by a committee with too much money to spend. A great shame, and a wasted opportunity to do something special to round off the trilogy. The only person who emerges from this mess looking good is Bryan Singer.
Though I liked the first two flicks (and the second more than the first), I was never enough of a fanboy to bother with the speculation about why Singer left the franchise for Superman. I wouldn’t have cared at all except it’s now clear X3 is a Big Dumb Action Movie, and I’m quite disappointed. Uncanny X-Men was by far my favorite comic, and the Dark Phoenix arc had me totally hooked when I was a kid (around 10 y.o. at the time). I thought the first two movies did a remarkable job of elevating a beloved childhood passtime of mine into something a bit more substantial, even worthy of general praise on occasion. Looks like Ratner flushed it all down the shitter for the usual brainless orgy of CGI and explosions.*
Anyone know? Did Singer simply get bored and head for something different, or was there some kind of disagreement that made Singer want to get out? Is he likely to be laughing now, crying, or couldn’t care less?
*Not that I don’t like CGI and explosions. I love explosions. I just came to expect more out of the X-Men franchise, and explosions needn’t equal “teh st00pid”.
Yes, but not in a good way. Her powers are essentially useless because she can only leech off others. She can’t even do any cool stuff around the mansion like the others unless she takes their abilities and risks their lives. She’s arguably the most human person at the school. Her taking the “cure” made perfect sense to me. Besides, she’s obviously horny.
Now, if she was super-strong and could fly… that might be different.
Yeah, it was all for nothing, anyway. Another (possibly the largest) major flaw in the film.
Yeah. Superman Returns. Potentially the biggest grandaddy of superhero movies of all time, if he doesn’t screw it up.
Originally posted by Loopydude
My links contain spoilers on an early version of the X3 script, among other things.
Oh, if you believe the tales, there was acrimony. Here is the Ground Zero link (complete with shrieking fanboy Talkbacks) from Aint-it-cool-News. It’s AICN, so don’t take it as gospel, but FOX execs allegedly had many issues with the X-Men series, and they took forever to negotiate Singer’s deal. Singer eventually got annoyed, and Warner pitched him a sweet deal to come save the Superman film, which had gone through three directors already, IIRC. FOX then wanted to rush principal filming on the third film so that it could compete with the Superman film, which raised fanboy hackles.
Here’s a Variety article that provides the basic details, but little on the motivations.
Of COURSE the cure’s not going to be permanent. You can’t lose your big villian like that! And there’s no reason to assume that Leech or the cure bullets destroy powers as much as they supress them. It’s also quite possibel that powers that dramatically restructure the body, like Beast, couldn’t be unsupressed without harming him, or that Magneto was simply too powerful. Am I making excuses? Sure, but a little bit of that doesn’t harm a movie. If you wanted it to be like the comic, tough beans. It’s a seperate universe. Think of it as an alternate reality from the books. I was happy with the exclusion of the Dark Phoenix Force and reworked it as a product of Jean’s own mind. Much easier to understand for the average moviegoer.
As for Rogue getting rid of her powers? I can’t believe she wouldn’t do it in a hearbeat. I’ve never understood the martyr complx mutants carry. “Well, looking like a monster is part of me. I won’t give that up and live a normal life…it would get rid of all of my angst.”
Killing Scott was needed in two ways: one, he had to die and go over to Superman. Second, it showed how far gone Jean was when she came back. Killing the Professor took away the X-Men’s crutch. No more Xavier to run home to anymore if Magneto comes calling. I saw it as a step towards independence for them.
Well, McKellan’s a good actor, but there’s no reason he has to appear in every X-Men movie (assuming there are any more of them). Surely there are some other villains they could use. Heck, I’d like to see Spider-Man jump in, kick all their asses, and jump out again.
If there’s another movie, I can imagine the Sh’iar showing up and all the mutants cooperating to defend Earth, or Charles Xavier in his new body turns into Onslaught or something.
Heck, I’ll deliberately gain 300 pounds if they’ll let me play the Blob in X-4.
I don’t know, I found it as an ending to the series (even though I didn’t see the final scene after the credits).
So Magneto was able to barely move a metallic chess piece… that probably means that he’s either too strong for the cure (remember there are different levels of mutants, and he’s at least a level 3 or 4), or that the cure is not that permanent. Still it would take time for him to completely regain his powers.
While some poster complained that they didn’t show Mystique naked… I’m more surprised that Phoenix was able to destroy everything, except Wolverine’s pants!!! Dammit!!! Talk about censorship there, it made no sense!
He’s old. Mutants are not immortal (no matter what Magneto wants, he’s going to die as an old man, if nothing else). Most of his henchmen were either killed by Phoenix, killed by the X-men, or turned into humans. Most of them also had weaker powers than him, so they may not get their power backs anytime soon (if ever). He managed to alienate the only other mutant that would side with him in a moment, Mystique. Even if she regains her powers, I doubt that she’ll go back to him. In short, even if he regains his powers, he cannot be a menace by himself, he needs to get into the minds and hearts of other mutants. Mutants that were killed, destroyed, or he alieanated. It’ll take years, if not decades, for another crop of mutants to show up and side with him. Again, he’s old. He can deliver the perfect speech about mutant power and then keel over because of a heart attack.
So, um – why is this thread titled “xtf?”. What all does that have to do with the title of the movie? Or anything?
And I got a paragraph mix up there… In the third paragraph I’m talking about Magneto, of course, not Wolverine.
Yes, please!
Retitle the thread. Otherwise, all sorts of others will get opened this weekend.
No, it doesn’t. 
It did to me. I “got” it in half a heartbeat, but I can understand why someone who liked the movie wouldn’t.
I was enormously pissed that Beast said “I’ve been fighting for mutant rights (or something like that) since before you had claws.” to Wolverine, when that’s not even close to being true. Wolverine has had claws his entire life, and he was born sometime in the 19th century. He could easily be several times Beast’s age.
[spoiler]Xavier – did die in the books (though it took forever, and Jean didn’t do it), but the bonus scene at the end reveals that he transferred his consciousness into the guy he was talking to his class about near the beginning who had a perfectly good body but no mind. He did something like that in the comics, too.
Cyclops – didn’t even see Jean attack him, or his body. He never dies in the books.
Jean – we only saw Wolvie extend his claws and then punch her in the gut, followed by him holding her in his arms and bawling. We never actually see her dead body, and she could easily heal from that if she wanted to. She did eventually die in the books (during the Phoenix bridge; that damn thing took so long and kept starting again that you can’t call it an arc).
Bunches of mutants and soldiers annihilated by Phoenix.
When Wolverine infiltrates Magneto’s camp, he dispatches the sentries, but he might not have killed them.
I thought it was awesome the way Iceman (who I think is still in his teens, so the thing with Shadowcat isn’t really a problem) turned into his ice form to beat Pyro.
Leech should have been a Morlock, but this way worked too; and the way Shadowcat beat Juggernaut repeatedly was awesome.
Angel was way underdone, as was Colossus, and they really should have shown more of Beast’s intelligence. He’s a secretary of a federal department, and becomes ambassador to the UN, but that doesn’t really show his intelligence as much as it should; it’s more his skill with politics. However, he was a damn good fighter.
What the hell was with the battle at the end? They show lots or powers being used, but they switch around so much and they’re so far away that you can’t actually see what’s going on! Would it have been that hard to do a few more closeups, not to mention actual duels with the various X-Men instead of just rapid melee?
Magneto may have started to regain his powers at the end, but he is a class 5 mutant, so that may not apply to everyone. Also, how does the ‘cure’ work? I’m pretty certain that any explanation can be circumvented pretty easily.
I am of the opinion that when Iceman and Rogue held hands, the camera shifted away too quickly for us to be able to tell whether she still had her powers. I think she’s also a pretty high-class mutant, as she can absorb anybody’s powers, but maybe that’s just me.
The fastball special with Colossus, Wolverine, and the Sentinel in the Danger Room was really cool, but I think it would have been neater if they’d done it as it was in the books, with Colossus just winding up and throwing Wolvie really high, instead of whirling him around.
With the Sentinel head in the Danger Room and Trask in power, does anyone else sense a major part of the next movie?
Who was the guy who shot those huge spikes out of his hands?
[/spoiler]
Overall, I think that X2 was the best, followed by XMen and then this. It was a good movie, but not as good as the others.
The movie has its flaws, but it has to be viewed as the end of a trilogy, not a standalone piece. X-2 made it quite clear that a big battle was coming, and that there would be a reckoning between Xavier’s school and Magneto’s followers. The portion I quoted is a bit like criticizing “Return of the King” for being a setup towards a big battle. On some levei it is, but to dismiss it as such is to miss the point.
I’d have preferred that they hold off on the Phoenix storyline for now and just do the conflict I mentioned, but that’s not what happened. It wasn’t as good as the first movie, but I think it was as good as the second, and certainly worth the price of a matinee show.
[spoiler] Well, they do show that Phoenix kills by pulverizing the bodies. They may not have a body of a dead Scott because he is probably pulverized. He could be alive, but then that wouldn’t explain the sadness that Jean had (she killed the one she loved).
Xavier survived because his power was his mind, and he was able to transfer it to another body, but Scott had no such power. I still think he’s dead.
Let’s see… Wolverine killed her, she could have recovered if she wanted to, but perhaps she didn’t, she really wanted to die… and her body is probably buried under her tomb next to Scott’s and Xavier’s empty graves.
Could you explain how you see another movie? I see it as an end of the series, not as a setup for another one.[/spoilers]
I don’t get the title either. Is it supposed to be something like x the final?
It’s a play on the common abbreviaton “wtf”.
Sorry for my coding error up there…
I guess it’s suppose to be a play of words with WTF (what the fuck)… XTF (X the fuck)?
Wolverine’s origins have not been addressed in the movies so Beast (or even Wolverine himself) wouldn’t know that he’s actually most of a century older than him and it wasn’t until the early nineties when Mags ripped the adamantium out of Wolvie’s body that anyone knew about the bone claws so it stands to reason that they wouldn’t know in the movie 'verse either.