The saga comes to an end

Rating: 7/10 (26 May 2006)

X-Men: The Last Stand The film starts off at around where the second one left off, right after the supposed death of Jean Grey. But we soon discover that she has returned in all her glory (and an uncontrollable one at that). Among other things, a pharmaceutical company has developed a way to suppress the mutant X-gene and Magneto won't allow it. He starts gathering an army to make a stand against the humans.
All of the X-Men that we've grown to love over the course of the past two films are back in this one, in addition to a whole bunch of new ones. Wolverine is still himself but I feel that they overdid it with his cockiness. Storm is beautiful but there isn't anything that special about her. And there are of course the grand old men, Magneto and Xavier who despite trying, aren't quite as good as they were in the previous installments. As for the newcomers, the one I liked the most was Beast played by Kelsey Grammar.
The storyline has got some good ideas in it but those aren't put to the best use. With the film's 104 minute running time, a whole half hour shorter than X2, everything feels rushed. They could have told a much better story if they had taken some time to go deeper into things but instead they got this huge film but then showed us only a little bit of everything but not enough of anything that would satisfy the audience.
Some may blame this (and other) shortcomings on director Brett Ratner who took over after Bryan Singer left to do Superman Returns. But I say blame screenwriter Simon Kinberg who has also given us such turkeys as XXX2 and Charlie's Angles 2. As is trademark for him, the dialog is awful and way too cheesy and the storyline has quite a few plot holes and leaps of logic. With the material given, Ratner did a fine job. Not the best possible but still pretty good. The action was there but at times felt somewhat rushed and it simply didn't have the impact that it did in the first two. The special effects were good but nothing special. At times they almost felt a little dull. The cinematography, which according to IMDb was done by both Phillipe Rousselot and Dante Spinotti is OK but doesn't quite reach the levels that Tom Siegel achieved on the first two films. John Powell's soundtrack goes from some nice combos of choir and orchestra to some very boring and generic orchestral.
Overall, a pretty good film if it didn't have the excellent X1 and X2 to live up to but since that is taken into consideration, a bit disappointing. Not the best way to end an otherwise great series like this.
7/10