Stubs - X-Men: The Last Stand

 

X-Men: The Last Stand aka X-Men III (2006) starring: Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen. Directed by Brett Ratner. Screenplay by Simon Kinberg, Zak Penn Based on the comic book series X-Men created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Produced by Lauren Shuler Donner, Ralph Winter, Avi Arad Run time: 104 minutes. Color. United Kingdom, United States. Adventure, Science Fiction

Following the success of X2 (2003), it seemed only natural that there would be a third film in the series. However, the director of the previous two films wasn’t all that interested in pursuing it. Singer stated that he "didn't fully have X-Men 3 in my mind" and was more interested in making the next Superman film, Superman Returns (2006) at Warner Bros.

Finding a replacement was not easy. Hugh Jackman's contract included the approval of director, and the job was offered to Darren Aronofsky, with whom he had just finished filming on The Fountain (2006). But Aronofsky was not the last person to be offered the position. Joss Whedon, Rob Bowman, Alex Proyas, Zack Snyder, Peter Berg, and Guillermo del Toro were all approached, but had other projects that kept them from taking the job.

In February 2005, even without a director, Fox announced the film’s release date (May 5, 2006) and that production would start in July 2005. A month later, it was announced that Matthew Vaughn had been secured to direct, but family issues would force him to resign from the project. Apparently, Vaughn also wasn’t happy about the tight deadlines imposed by Fox, stating that he "didn't have the time to make the movie that I wanted to make".

Brett Ratner, who had once been considered to direct the first X-Men film, got the call and took the reins officially on June 2, 2005. The film went into production in August and released on May 26, 2006.

Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Erik Lehnsherr aka Magneto
(Ian McKellen)  come to meet Jean Gray for the first time.

The film opens 20 years earlier, in 1986. Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Erik Lehnsherr aka Magneto (Ian McKellen) meet a young Jean Grey (Haley Ramm) at her parents' house to invite her to join their school, the X-Mansion.

Ten years later in 1996, industrialist Warren Worthington II (Michael Murphy) discovers his son Warren Worthington III aka Angel (Cayden Boyd) is a mutant when he catches him trying to cut off his wings.

Warren Worthington III aka Angel (Cayden Boyd) tries to clip his own wings.

This led to Worthington turning Worthington Labs, located on what had formerly been Alcatraz Island, into a research facility for a “vaccine” made from the genomes of a young mutant named Jimmy aka Leach (Cameron Bright) who has the ability to neutralize the powers of nearby mutants. The vaccine would suppress the X-gene that gives mutants their abilities and offers the "cure" to any mutant who wants it. Some, like Rogue (Anna Paquin), who cannot touch anyone, including her boyfriend, Bobby Drake aka Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), without harming them, is one who was interested.

However, when father tries to give it to his now grown son, Warren Worthington III (Ben Foster), he gets cold feet. Rather than take the cure, he spreads his wing and flies away through the plate glass window.

Even captured, Mystique (Rebecca Romijn) is still a handful.

But others, like Magneto, are not only wary of it, but re-establishes his Brotherhood of Mutants with those who oppose the cure, warning it will be weaponized to exterminate the mutant race. When Mystique (Rebecca Romijn) is captured, Magneto, with the help of Pyro (Aaron Stanford), Callisto (Dania Ramirez) and several other mutants, attacks a mobile prison she’s being kept in. They kill the guards and free her, as well as Multiple Man (Eric Dane) and Juggernaut (Vinnie Jones).

 With Callisto (Dania Ramirez), Pyro (Aaron Stanford), and Juggernaut
(Vinnie Jones) around him, Magneto is emboldened.

However, when Mystique shields Magneto from a cure dart from a fatally wounded guard, she loses her mutant abilities and is no longer of interest to him and he abandons her.

Scott Summers aka Cyclops (James Marsden) finally finds
Jean Gray (Famke Janssen), but it doesn't work out as he hoped.

Meanwhile, Scott Summers aka Cyclops (James Marsden), is distraught over the loss of Jean Grey and cannot be comforted. He drives his motorcycle to Alkali Lake, where she died. There, Jean (Famke Janssen) appears to Scott, but, as the two kiss, Jean kills him.

Back at the X-Mansion, Xavier senses there is trouble and sends Logan aka Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Storm (Halle Berry) to investigate. When they arrive, they find telekinetically floating rocks. Logan finds Scott's glasses and then they find an unconscious Jean, whom they take back to the Mansion.

Xavier explains to Logan and Storm what he's had to do to keep Jean's mind in check.

There, Xavier explains to them that when Jean sacrificed herself to save them, in the previous film, she also freed the "Phoenix", a dark alternate personality with godlike destructive potential, which Xavier had telepathically been repressing.

Not the same Jean Gray. Things almost get physical between her and Logan (Hugh Jackman).

Logan, though, is disgusted to learn that Xavier had been tampering with Jean's mind. He is alone by her side when Jean awakens, but she is not the Jean he loves. He discovers that she killed Scott. The Phoenix emerges, knocks out Logan, and escapes.

Storm (Halle Berry) and Logan go with Xavier to Jean's childhood home. Magneto is already there.

Xavier, along with Logan and Storm, go to Jean’s childhood home, where she has gone, but they are not alone. Magneto and the Brotherhood are already there. Both Magneto and Xavier go in, and both vie for Jean's loyalty until the Phoenix resurfaces. Worrying about Xavier’s safety, Wolverine and Storm go in, but have to fight with the Brotherhood.

The Phoenix not only destroys the house, but also disintegrates Xavier before leaving with Magneto.

Magneto's army ends up being only Multiple Man (Eric Dane).

With the help of a now depowered Mystique, the FBI learns about Magneto’s base in the woods and, armed with cure darts, agents raid it. However, the human heat signatures they had been relying on to find the camp turn out to be Multiple Man and his many copies.

Magneto takes the Golden Gate Bridge to Alcatraz. Not a direct route.

Magneto and the Brotherhood attack Alcatraz with the intention of killing Jimmy. They overwhelm the military troops until the remaining X-Men arrive to confront them. During the fight, Kitty Pryde (Elliot Page; formerly Ellen Page), a mutant with the ability to phase through matter and walk through solid objects, saves Jimmy from Juggernaut. Worthington, meanwhile, is saved when Angel swoops in and rescues him.

Logan distracts Magneto long enough for Dr. Hank McCoy aka Beast (Kelsey Grammer) to inject him with the cure, nullifying his powers.

The Phoenix awakened.

Finally, the Phoenix awakens and begins destroying anyone within range of her powers. Logan realizes that only he can stop her due to his healing factor and adamantium skeleton. When Logan approaches her, Jean momentarily gains control and begs him to kill her. Logan fatally stabs Jean, killing the Phoenix, but mourns her death.

Sometime later, mutant rights are finally obtained and Xavier's school is still operating with Storm as headmistress. The President of the United States appoints McCoy as ambassador to the United Nations. Rogue, having taken the cure, rekindles her relationship with Bobby. Meanwhile, Magneto sits at a chessboard in San Francisco, seemingly human and weak. As Magneto gestures toward a metal chess piece, it wobbles slightly.

Elsewhere, Moira MacTaggert (Olivia Williams), checking on a comatose patient, is startled when she is greeted by Xavier's voice.

While the film sets itself up as a final film in a trilogy, it opens itself up for more films by saving Professor Xavier, the X in X-Men.

When it was released, X-Men: The Last Stand was maligned by fans and critics for flubbing one of the X-Men’s best storylines: Jean Grey turning into the Dark Phoenix. She is presented as a supporting character in a film that is about a conflict over a cure for mutants.

Marvel had introduced the Dark Phoenix saga in the comic books in 1967. At that point, female heroes like Wonder Woman, the Wasp and Sue Storm tended to be more passive and pacifist than their male counterparts. But the Dark Phoenix storyline became a fan favorite thanks to its simple premise: What if this hero became corrupted by her power and turned into a villain? The writer of this film, Simon Kinberg, would try to make up for it later by writing and directing Dark Phoenix (2019) with Sophie Turner in the title role.

However, when I watched X-Men: The Last Stand, I wasn’t aware of this controversy, not having been an avid X-Men comic book fan. I will let that controversy go until we review Dark Phoenix at some point in the near future.

For the most part, I found The Last Stand highly watchable with the acting pretty good on all fronts. After three films, actors like Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen, and Famke Janssen were familiar with their characters and give strong performances as them.

Kelsey Grammer as Dr. Hank McCoy aka Beast. 

The biggest surprise for me was Kelsey Grammer as Beast. Having watched him on TV shows like Cheers and Fraiser, he never came across as an actor who would appear in a superhero film. While he has fallen somewhat out of favor with me recently, I will say he is better than I would have suspected.

The story, other than the sidelining of The Phoenix, was interesting. How would mutants react not only to the possibility of losing their powers, which are not always a godsend, but also to the possibility that they might be exterminated as such by the vaccine?

One case in point being Rogue, a teenage girl who wants what other teens want, to belong and to be able to have physical relationships with people. She can’t touch her boyfriend without harming him, so the idea that she could be “normal” had a great appeal. Whether or not you consider her decision rash, or later regrettable, you can see why she would want to take the cure.

Magneto, on the other hand, is looking for a reason to fight humans, whom he considers a sub-species to mutants. He doesn’t believe in Xavier’s attempts at appeasement and, in fact, wants to take over. With Xavier out of the way, he is free to pursue his war using the cure as a catalyst. He manages to find other mutants, whom he doesn’t respect, to follow him, though he has no regard for them. They do as he demands and are willing to die for his cause.

The idea that mutants can be cured is similar to the idea that homosexuality is a decision you make, not who you are, and you can understand resistance to the vaccine, though perhaps not a war with humans.

The special effects, which are necessary for a film like this, are very good. However, they go a little over the top when Magneto leads his followers to Alcatraz Island by using part of the Golden Gate Bridge. While that goes to show how powerful Magneto is, it doesn’t really make all that much sense except to destroy a national landmark. One has to imagine that there might have been better, quicker and less destructive ways to have gotten to the island, but they won’t have been as spectacular.

In years past, the trilogy was a standard way of not only capitalizing on success, given the first film is a hit, and then wrapping up an extended story with a third and final installment. Usually, there is increased costs and diminishing returns at the box-office, but that is not always the case. In this case, The Last Stand made $460 million worldwide on a budget of $210 million, so it sort of did north of breaking even.

Marvel, however, sort of blew the trilogy concept out of the water, not only with its Avengers Saga, but also with series like X-Men. There are a lot of stories buried in the comic books, so plenty of fodder for future films. When this trilogy painted itself into a corner, the only way out was to invent a new timeline, something comic books with their parallel universes have already explored.

For X-Men: The Last Stand, if you have watched the previous two films, X-Men and X2, then you owe it to yourself to see how that story ends. If you’re a big X-Men fan, you might be disappointed. However, if you’re like me, and have only a passing acquaintance with characters like Wolverine and Magneto, you’ll probably enjoy the film. If you’re new to X-Men films, this probably isn’t the one to start with. The film assumes you know the relationships between characters that are laid out in its predecessors. This is a film that was meant to end a trilogy, not be a jumping on point.