For Heaven's Sakes, read the comics!

Rating: 8/10 (18 October 2006)

Maybe some of you think this is a mistake, but I always read through the other reviews before posting mine. This is not because I'm need to see others' points of view before posting mine (I'm not that easily influenced), but because of my peculiar academic (I'm not quite an academic, but frigging close)and personal interests. I'm interested not only in what other people think of the film, but also how they "construct" (academic jargon alert) it, which is to say, I'm not only interested in how good or bad they thought it was, but the underlying values and assumptions they use in making that determination.
In this case, I'm surprised at how many of the reviewers have zero knowledge of the comic book on which this and the two earlier X-men movies are based. First of all, the political metaphors that the two directors (Singer and Rattner)are getting credit for creating (mutants as homosexuals or aids sufferers, mutants as persecuted Jews, magneto as politically sincere terrorist)are more attributable to Chris Claremont (briefly seen in a cameo as "lawnmower man" at the beginning of the movie). And long-time fans of the series know that the "old-school" characters that one of the other fan reviewers refers to, (Wolverine, the blue furry beast) are in fact "new-school" when compared to the original Stan Lee x-men (Cyclops, a non-phoenix Jean Gray, a humanoid beast, ice-man and Angel). Chris Claremont did for X-men something akin to what Alan Moore later did for Swamp Thing.
It's not that I'm being a "fanboy" here--the film's got to stand on its own merits. It's just that a lot of the good things and bad things that are part of this film are largely due to the difficulties in adapting the material from the comic books. The "rushed" quality that a lot of reviewers have commented on are due to the filmmakers' attempt to load this last (?) film with the plots of several epics spanning many years of comic books into one film. The film tries to tell most of the groundbreaking "dark phoenix" saga, while also including material from the New Mutants, and seeds of the Trask (though Trask seems to have changed race in the film!)/sentinel storyline with the attendant anti-mutant USA government storyline For hardcore fans, they also managed to slip in oblique references to the "Days of Future Past" saga in the opening scene. Furthermore, the "too many mutants to count" phenomenon is also a standard part of the original comic books.
Anyway, given these observations, I must say I thought that it was still a damn fine film. One element that I've always enjoyed in the comic books was wonderfully translated to the screen. For whatever reason, in the comic books whenever two groups attacked each other, rather than it being a free-for-all, or one group picking the other off one-by-one or double-teaming, they would break off into pairs, for some reason. This is objectively puzzling, but in practice it makes the action fun. My favorite action scene in the movie is the mêlée at Jean's house, where Wolverine takes on Juggernaut and Storm takes on Callisto. Since every one of these beings is super-powerful, the difficulty is in making the fights more than one over-powerful meat-head beating on the other. The film pulls this off wonderfully, with creative, fascinating fight moves that are unique to each individual. This is what I always enjoyed in reading the comics and it is successfully translated to the film. Grace notes, like the dual personality of Beast (quiet intellectual, snarling beast) are fun and invigorating. I didn't enjoy the final apocalyptic scene as much as the Grey house fight, but hey, that's how I used to feel about the books. (Though I must say, for an all-powerful being Dark Phoenix sure didn't do a hell of a lot--she was kinda like the devil in The exorcist--for all others spoke about her infinite powers her dark ambitions seemed rather limited).
As far as the acting--Patrick Stewart and Ian MacKellan are, as always, joys doing the simplest things. (If you have any interest in Shakespeare check out the MacKellan/Judi Dench Macbeth--MacKellan is magnificent, and see the British TV series I, Claudius for a brief appearance of Patrick Stewart with "hair") I thought all the performances were admirable, although I agree with the other reviewer who said that the emotional content of the film was rushed through to get to the action--but hey, comic books are essentially action melodramas--I'm not looking for nuance, so who gives a? If you notice X:men the Last Stand got its highest votes on IMDb from females under 18, so maybe the doomed romance of the main plot was as appealing as the action sequences. In any case, X=men: The Last Stand got my heart pumping and that's what we go to the movies for, right? (Besides, who can dislike a film whose main character is a short, angry Canadian--I want my own set of admantanium claws damn it!!)