Too many questions!!!

Rating: 6/10 (28 May 2006)

I really did like X-Men: Last Stand. The film hooks you in the first frames. Seeing Xavier walk is aweing and the scene with young Warren mutilating his wings is heart-breaking. Unfortunately, the plot was scattered from there on. The reason that the first two went so smoothly was that a few characters were chosen and then the movie followed mostly them. Last Stand, however, followed almost everyone without following anyone really. Often story lines were begun but never finished.
Much of the story happens off-camera as well. Many times we are just told that something has happened rather than actually seeing it happen. We never see Cyclops die but it is implied that he does. We don't see Rogue take the mutant antibody but we see her holding Bobby's hand. Mystique's betrayal is,again, verbally explained by a television screen and the cliché line of "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."
Last Stand also leaves a lengthy list of questions at the end of the film. So many questions in fact the viewer leaves the theater confused if not annoyed. Did Bobby really accept Rogue's choice? Did Warren's father accept his son as he is- a mutant? The boy who is the source of the antibody, Jamie, is seen with hair at the end of the movie. Does this mean he took the cure himself? Is Cyclops really dead? Since Magneto's powers came back even with the antibody does that mean that other mutant's powers will come back? The list goes on. Also it seems a little off that Phoenix, susposedly the only class five mutant, could be killed by mere claws which leaves the question of "Are Jean and/or the Phoenix really dead?" Cliffhangers are one thing, not finishing the story is another! The story is written as though another movie is coming out soon or that the movie is written with only readers of the comic in mind as the only target audience. Without knowledge of the comic the scene after the credits as well as other scenes do not mean half as much.
Another flaw is, also, perhaps a good aspect of the film. Last Stand foreshadows future events and leaves clues very nicely. Although maybe not discreetly because in hindsight it seems a little obvious. In one scene, Xavier is lecturing his students about the ethical applications of certain powers, specifically psychic powers. He talks about the idea of taking the soul of say a terminally ill patient and putting it into the body of a comatose patient allowing the once terminally ill person to live out their life albeit in a different body. The scene after the credits involves a doctor looking over a body which suddenly wakes up and speaks in the professor's voice. He speaks her name and she speaks his in shock. Her expression denotes someone who does not expect that voice from that body. The scene is too fast to see if the face is actually Patrick Stewart's or an, until recently, dormant patient, perhaps the same catatonic person from the video from Xavier's lecture. However, without prior knowledge of the comic book you would never know about the past history between Xavier and the Doctor.
The problem of the this heart-wrenching scene and countless others is that there isn't going to be another film so we will never know the answers to the questions it poses or know the truth of Xavier's miraculous reemergence.