Movie Magnetism!

[chaosvizier]

And so the summer blockbuster season continues with what might be the biggest hit of all: X-Men 3: X-ality. Is it X-treme enough? X-cellent enough? Over-X-aggerated? Find out now!

X-Men 3: The Last Stand



Movies based on comics are vulnerable to hyperbole and exaggeration, simply because that is the nature of comics- everything is huger, more vivid, more powerful, more energetic. Heroes are paragons of humanity, or supernatural entities; villains are ruthless and evil and the embodiment of cruelty. Some scripts follow this simplistic formula to the letter and create simplistic movies. However, some comics have created environments in which there are higher concepts and moral dilemmas to be addressed. Batman embodies justice above the law; Spider-Man is just an ordinary kid who becomes extraordinary; V brings anarchy and freedom to a subdued populace. The X-Men have always been a symbol of bigotry and prejudice, as "normal" humans are confronted with a "mutant" race that threatens them with their differences.

The previous two films address this issue on smaller scales, building up the characters and their interactions and histories and setting the stage for larger conflicts between mankind and mutantkind. This third film explores the larger scale issue: war between the species, with genocide high on the list. And the film does try to live up to its name, "The Last Stand", as fatality soars high on all fronts.

The plot: Humans bad. Magneto bad. X-Men get between a war of baddies. Also, Wolverine turns down hot sex. WTF?

The pros: A movie like this relies on special effects to carry many of its points across, and this series has never been a slouch in that department. Likewise, the continuation of the story is decent, with the original characters continuing their roles as before. The movie does not waste time with rehashing what has gone before; the audience is assumed to be aware of previous events and, as a result, what all the characters are about. The introduction of new characters, both hero and villain, allow for expansion of the armies and a little change when things start to go awry, as they are wont to do. And the issues addressed are heavy: A "cure" for mutation becomes available. It turns mutants into normal humans again. Many mutants think it is an oppression of their rights, and Magneto believes it is a declaration of war, in which the final outcome would be the genocide of all mutants at the whims of "human" government. But some mutants see the cure as a blessing, giving them a chance to live a life free of prejudice, free from disfiguring or disabling mutations that make them outcast. Extra props for Kelsey Grammar as The Beast, though; definitely wins the "Best New Character" award.

The cons: Ignoring things like canon and accuracy and similarity to the source material, the key problem is that this movie is too short. At a mere 90 minutes and change, there is no room for character development, especially when so many new characters are introduced and brought to the forefront. Kitty Pryde is a young girl suddenly thrust into the firing line; her "character" scene lasts all of 90 seconds. Colossus? I don't think he even got a character scene. And while the deaths of Xavier and Cyclops transform the dynamic of the team, even those setups are short and undeveloped. The use and misuse of Phoenix by both Xavier and Magneto is perhaps the only interesting and developed storyline beyond the main plot of humans curing mutants. In other points, the bridge scene was showy but unnecessary, and Magneto's Brotherhood of Wankers was even less interesting than the wankers he had in the first film. The Brotherhood of Lo Pan would have those jerks for lunch.

The verdict: It is good, but it needs more. Ultimately, the worst of the three, which is a shame, because the potential for it to have been the best is definitely there.

Disclaimer: Of course Jean went crazy. The first mutant she met who liked her was a weirdo in a purple suit. Purple! Jebus.

Disclaimer: For a movie entitled "The Last Stand", they sure left a lot of openings for a followup. I can't wait for "Final Fantasy X-Men: Final And Last Mean Nothing To Us".

Disclaimer: "Oooh, my mutant power is writing without a pen! I just think and words appear in my notebook!" You belong in the Brotherhood of Cannonfodder Mutants.

Comments

[the-wanlorn.livejournal.com]

But think about how awesome that would be (thought-pen-person) for communicating Sekrit Escape Plans if they ever get captured!!

My main complaint with movie was that it seemed like they were trying to fit two movies worth of stuff into one short movie. If they hadn't done that, I think this one would've been a much better movie than X2.

[chaosvizier.livejournal.com]

That's exactly it- a lot of story, and good ideas, and good character side plots, but none of them really fully explored or realized. Rogue? A tiny, but poignant, part of the tale. Angel? Same thing. Kitty Pryde? Worth going into in greater detail. Phoenix? A fairly important and extensive storyline. Man curing Mutant? The big plot that really can be a movie by itself without all the sidebars. The death of Xavier? Heavy, and significant on many levels. With all that complexity, this movie could easily have stretched out another 45 minutes and given more depth to everything. It's a wasted opportunity, in the end.

[ajmcoqui.livejournal.com]

Hear hear - you're completely correct about them trying to shove two movies into one. I thought there were a ton of missed opportunities in the storyline, and it would have been better to make a Pater-Jackson-length film to develop them, than to give them short shrift as the released version of X3 did. Let's hope there will be an extended version on DVD soon.

[chaosvizier.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. Peter Jackson's X-Men...

MAGNETO: *slams bridge down on Alcatraz and marches across*
LOGAN: YOU SHALL NOT PASS!
MAGNETO: You just totally stole my line.
BEAST, to KITTY: Keep Leech secret. Keep Leech safe.
MAGNETO: Stop that, all of you.
STORM, to humans: Fly, you fools!
MAGNETO: Now you're being ridiculous.
JUGGERNAUT: I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!
MAGNETO: Finally, some original dialogue...

[killiara.livejournal.com]

Only 2 movies?

Dark Phoenix deserved her own movie. AND IT WASN'T MULTIPLE PERSONALITY SYNDROME, IT WAS AN INTERGALACTIC ENERGY BEING WHO GOT CORRUPTED BY JEAN GREY'S SUBLIMINATED ANGER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (backs away from capslock of rage)

The Mutant Cure storyline was the first one that appeared in the recent "Astonishing X-Men", cowritten by *geek alert* Joss Wheaton. This also deserved it's own movie.

Magneto's war against humanity ... that deserves several movies, in all honesty.

The first five minutes of the movie ... Days of Futures Past, anyone??? First five minutes of an excellent time travelling X-men storyline where Kitty Pride totally kicks ass to the point of impressing Logan gets turned into a danger room exercise. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? That's the movie that SHOULD have been made. Except then everyone would know where Terminator stole the plotline from.

*steps off soapbox*

that'll teach me.

[ladylyonesse.livejournal.com]

I read spoilers because special effects movies are never about plot anyway, and I've been looking forward to seeing this, and so I blithely made with the clickies on your well-warned spoiler cut, and said,

WHO'S DEAD?!? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

That will teach me. ~headdesk~

PS -- Patrick Stewart is totally teh hot.

Re: that'll teach me.

[ladylyonesse.livejournal.com]

PS -- TOTALLY fine with Cyclops biting it. Hate his stupid whiny ass anyway.

But Xavier? DAMNNIT, man!

Stupid movie/comic story people...

Re: that'll teach me.

[chaosvizier.livejournal.com]

See, in the comics, Cyclops always was my favorite- the somewhat reluctant and not always confident team leader, slowly developing into a hero and realising his ill-fated relationship with Jean... his tales were always a bit sad and touching. Here in the films, he's given short shrift and becomes a wanker so much that even I wanted him to buy it. Which is tough for me to admit.

Re: that'll teach me.

[chaosvizier.livejournal.com]

I should, then, in all fairness advise you that, if you go see the movie, stay through all the credits for the end scene. That will make up for you heedlessly ignoring my spoiler warning. ;-)

I don't know if it was heedless...

[ladylyonesse.livejournal.com]

You warned me quite properly, and I took heed, but went on anyway BECAUSE I AM A GIANT DORK.

Yes, I've heard to stay through all credits.

Also, in my one brush with comic book fame, I worked in the same office as John Snyder for almost two years. Had no clue who he was until I saw him working one day. :)

Re: that'll teach me.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Also, I will cryptically advise our spoilered friend to Pay Attention In Class. Then you will see the thing at the end of the credits, and you will go "Aha! I knew it!" and all will be well.

[lovellama.livejournal.com]

The Movie Summarized By Me:

Jean's hair - Want it! So close, sooooo close to achieving it...

Wolverine - Want him too! Liiiiiittle bit further away.

All else - There was an else?

[chaosvizier.livejournal.com]

Heheh, forbidden love Logan... "Hey Logan, is that an adamantium bone in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?"

[dv8dragonfly.livejournal.com]

Wolverine?? Good GOD, yes!! When he was walking away before the final battle in that leather suit... wish I had a pause button for that.

[chaosvizier.livejournal.com]

Myself I was sad when Mystique got shot. I gotta agree with Magneto- "She was so beautiful." Blue chicks are HOT.

Except Smurfette. Let's just not go there.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

Says to my wife, I says, "I know what YOU'RE lookin' at."

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

My review was pretty similar to yours.

My thing with the bridge was the Bad Physics. A suspension bridge works by the roadway being suspended (see how that works?) from the cables. Basically, it's hanging in the air. The force that hangs is is the tension in the main cable, the big long one that forms the neato scoop between the towers. This cable gets its tension by draping over/through the towers and then anchoring it in the ground. The anchorages of a suspension bridge, as any New Yorker can tell you, are HUGE MASSIVE THINGS.

So when you (a) snap a bunch of the cables, and (b) remove the tension from the main cable by uprooting the ends, the entire freaking bridge will collapse.

There is no scenario in which the bridge will not collapse, except magic.

Now, mutant powers are close enough to magic. When Magneto ripped up the bridge, I pulled on my spangled no-prize shorts and said, "He is using his powers to hold the bridge intact." This also handily explained why he didn't just whomp the bejeezus out of Wolverine and Colossus during the fight: we can assume his powers were pushed to their limit with holding up 419,800* tons of bridge. Plus cars.

However, my no-prize ability was flummoxed when Magneto lost his powers. The bridge did not instantly collapse, or even slowly collapse. It remained there, a handy roadway from the mainland to Alcatraz. Waaaah.


*statistic is accurate. http://goldengatebridge.org/research/factsGGBDesign.php

[chaosvizier.livejournal.com]

Yes, now it's a supermagichappy bridge over the river. That's being held up by sheer AWESOME. Guess the Alcatraz Ferry's going out of business soon.

Now, while you treasure your "no prize shorts", I treasure my "stupid beyond capacity" shorts. I contend that, owing to the end scene's possibilities of Xavier transferring his mind into another body at the last microsecond of death, I'll say that Magneto transferred his powers into... THE BRIDGE! MWAAAHAHAHAHA! Take that, logic! IN YOUR FACE!

In other news, I want to say that at the end of X-Men 2, I immediately said, "This is a perfect setup for X-Men 3, when Pyro and Iceman can go at it, face-to-face, fire vs. ice, friends-turned enemies." I called it. Yes I did!

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's calling it like saying "Bush will invade Iraq, use that fear to explode the military budget, and blow all that money on sweetheart no-bid contracts to his buddies" is calling it.

Here, I present you with your very own CAPTAIN OBVIOUS statue.

[angledge.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad someone else was upset about the suspension bridge issue. Funny side point: Magneto dropped the San Francisco end of the bridge on la chica's theater. We were giggling like mad over that.

But what really had us in stitches was when Storm used her amazing mutant weather-control powers to ..... MAKE IT FOGGY IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY!! OMG THAT'S SO UNUSUAL!! We were (probably) the only San Franciscans in the NYC theater where we saw the movie, but the two of us laughed hard enough for everyone.

Re: #2

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

In white for those who don't want to be spoiled. :O

...which really makes me question the whole 'OMG Jean is the most powerful mutant evah!1!' stance the movie takes... because could Jean do THAT? No, I don't think so. It also makes me quite sad that the earlier discussion of ethics was interrupted.

I also quite like Cyclops, and was very upset that he got so little screentime. Especially since most of it was spent being all angsty. :/

[chaosvizier.livejournal.com]

I think the X-Men using the cure against Magneto is the strength of the movie: it is their ultimate moral dilemma- do they "force" a cure on someone, as the government wants to do, if they think it will save lives and be for the greater good? Magneto is more than a match for all of them together, and now they are leaderless. Their decision to take that final step and neutralize Magneto without killing him is hard. But again, this ethical issue did not get quite enough mileage in the film.

Likewise, the temporary nature of the cure- In my opinion, it makes sense, as Leech's natural ability itself is temporary- it works as long as you're nearby, and then the effect fades as you move off. Perhaps the Cure is a highly refined essence of Leech, and lasts a lot longer, but ultimately fades away. We don't know how long it took exactly for Magneto to start regaining effects; maybe that scene was weeks or months down the road. Again, personally, I think they could have left that out, if they had wanted this movie to be "The Last Stand" instead of "Psych! We Didn't Really Mean Last!"... but that's just me.

Thanks for the cheers; I'll be having a fantastic day once work ends. Cheeky work, always getting in the way of my fun.

[chaosvizier.livejournal.com]

Do not deny the power of the pants suit.

I suspect that Magneto worked the whole "Charles Xavier was trying to use and limit you, but I want to give you freedom to do stuff" angle a lot, so that she would agree to sign up with him, stand there next to him while he's speechifying to his minions, making them feel all great and stuff thinking "Wow, Magneto's so cool, he like totally stole the bestest X-Man ever" so they'd be more inspired to follow him.

As for the last battle... well, yeah. She didn't do jack. Personally I think Magneto was just as afraid of her excessive power and didn't want to use her unless absolutely necessary. She was more of a last resort.

Now we should have had more emphasis on her split personality between Jean Grey and Phoenix. Phoenix could have been fighting Xavier, but then Jean would be shouting "No! We hates you! We hates you!" and Phoenix would be all "You needs us!" and Jean would be "Leave now and never come back!" and they'd get all fighty and together Jean and Charles would drive Phoenix away.

I'm down with that.