Pass the Popcorn! review

Rating: 6/10 (23 May 2014)

After the first X-Men movie and X2, the things were looking really good for the X-Men franchise, and then along came X-Men: The Last Stand. This drastic change in quality between movies is mostly attributed to Bryan Singer, the director of the first two movies, deciding to direct Superman Returns instead of this one, and being replaced by Brett Ratner. Since then, Bryan Singer has officially stated he regrets his decision. Considering how Superman Returns isn't a much better movie than X-Men: The Last Stand, it's a shame things went this way. Instead of a satisfying third X-Men movie, the world got a X-Men movie that felt like it was directed by Michael Bay.
There are two main plot lines in X-Men: The Last Stand. The first one is about a cure for mutations that changes mutants to humans. The mutant community is divided by this cure – some of them want to change to humans, while the others strictly oppose this cure and want to destroy it by all means. At the same time, the X-men discover that Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) isn't dead, but Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) warns them she maybe isn't the same old Jean Grey they used to know. This turns out to be true when Jean Grey's alter ego, Phoenix, takes control of her body.
While the first two X-Men movies are classics of the superhero genre, X-Men: The Last Stand is simply a very bad movie. It had almost twice the amount of its predecessor's budget ($210 million) and it still seemed like a cheaper movie. The special effects are bad, but so is everything else. The dialogue is worse than ever, the plot is uninteresting, and the freshly introduced mutants are awful. The X-Men franchise is mainly about its characters – misunderstood individuals feared by the general public – and their moral dilemmas; the strong characters and character developments are the main things that made the first two movies so good. Both of those aspects are lacking in X-Men: The Last Stand. New characters like Juggernaut (Vinnie Jones) and Angel (Ben Foster) are one-dimensional and forgettable caricatures, and the character of Dr. Henry 'Hank' McCoy aka Beast (Kelsey Grammar), while somewhat interesting, was a only of shadow of what he could have been.
If you can get past the ludicrous writing, the silly acting and the simple characters, and just want to see mindless action scenes and mutants beating each other up, than X-Men: The Last Stand could just be the movie for you. However, if you strive to watch something above the generic Michael Bay tropes, you should definitely stay away from this movie. While there is some charm to dumb popcorn action movies, X-Men: The Last Stand is still an insult to the whole franchise, and doesn't deserve to have the words 'X-Men' in its title. Unfortunately, things for the X-Men franchise didn't get much better with X-Men Origins: The Wolverine.
Rating: 6/10 Read more reviews at http://passpopcorn.com/