X-Men: The Last Stand

Rarely does a title tell you everything you really need to know about a movie, but, truly, could you put up with any more custom-tailored bodysuits and bad one-liners after this? I, for one, doubt it. In this particular installment (I dare not suggest it’s the last… is that ever the case?), the progressively-minded students of Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) the anarchistic devotees of Magneto (Ian McKellen) are yet again pitted against one another, and humans, in their continuing, heavy-handed struggle for equality. Why have a film so deliberate in its hardline delineations between mutants and humans or bad mutants and good mutants if the moral being attempted is one of respect for diversity? Wouldn’t that require a plot with a more pragmatic approach—at least in the context of shape-shifting or flame-throwing people—and thus finer granularity of characters?

But before we resume the saga of fitted-leather uniforms and bad haircuts (except for Patrick Stewart) wherein Worthington Laboratories, run by the regretful father of a mutant, devises a “cure” for the so-called “Mutant X-gene,” we return to a subplot left open by the previous sequel: Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) appears to have sacrificed herself to save other X-Men. Scott Summers (James Marsden), aka Cyclops, mourns her loss but is oddly compelled to journey back to the lake where we last saw her. Nothing is made of the fact that Cyclops disappears until a considerable time later when it occurs to Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) as sort of an afterthought.

Here’s a subject that has considerable potential but the flaw isn’t in the fact that this movie is about absurdly supernatural powers that have little basis whatsoever in phylogeny, but that the series has never dealt with the issues of diversity, ignorance and prejudice in a straightforward manner. In 2006, do we still need to hide behind the guise of science-fiction and comics to discuss the historical and systemic disenfranchisement of minorities? As pretentiously delivered as Kitty Pryde’s (Ellen Page) classroom observation in passing about Einstein, the film beats us in the head with the allegory to social ostracism of homosexuals so many times, right down to the citizens who argue it can be “cured” and the mutants who ponderously ask why anyone would want to be cured. So much of this sophomoric browbeating occurs that you wonder if it’s an egregious parody of Gay Pride when all of outed mutantdom descends upon San Francisco for the ultimate standoff with humanity.

In another subplot, Magneto recruits a new bunch of expendable mutants to do his bidding—particularly the extraction of the devious Mystique (Rebecca Romijn) from a government convoy. An excellent opportunity for irony is established when something unusual happens to her; yet, she’s abruptly abandoned by her cohorts. If this is merely a setup for material to be tackled in a later movie, it’s a waste. By the time that film comes out, the connection to the issue will be lost somewhere between a battle of monosyllabic platitudes, a new hairstyle and more bad lines from Storm (Halle Berry), and action sequences employing rather circuitous strategies—e.g. severing the Golden Gate Bridge to bring the entire mutant army to Worthington Labs’ doorstep, in an effort to recover a gifted, young boy, Jimmy (Cameron Bright), whose pensive, creepy, misunderstood type is exceedingly trite and bereft of usefulness as a character. But the real question is, if he doesn’t win the Oscar for Best Sociopathic Child in an Abysmal Geek-Con Special Feature, will he start crying like Haley Joel Osment? But let’s not go too far off the beaten path…

Despite seemingly good relations between the Department of Mutant Affairs and the Executive Branch of government, Dr. Hank McCoy (Kelsey Grammer) fails to persuade the President (Josef Sommer) to resist militaristic application of the anti-Mutant serum. But any message that was intended gets lost because, as you’ll see, the solution presented to end the standoff—including the mandatory wide two-shot of mutants facing off with streams of fire and ice pushing against each other, deadlocked—contradicts everything Xavier’s students were taught to stand for. Instead of questioning this ethical quandary, the film barrels toward the requisite open-ender to leave you guessing about the predictable elements of the next sequel while the effects shop spends the next 18 months working up the CG for the action sequences around which the next story will be haphazardly cobbled. This isn’t so much a movie as it is a solicitation to lower one’s expectations enough to define sufficient entertainment as 104 minutes of explosions and car flips (with the exception of a seemingly-indestructible Mercedes SUV in blatant product placement), action sequences so frequent and intense they lack dynamics and therefore dramatic impact as well, and, of course, obligatory sight gags (e.g. the brawny Colossus walking down the hallway with a big TV) and a tone as if studio execs had a meeting and decided it would be good for the numbers if the language were “kicked up a notch,” or some such drivel.

I wholly admit, however, I didn’t foresee the line, “I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!”

X-Men: The Last Stand • Dolby® Digital surround sound in select theatres • Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 • Running Time: 104 minutes • MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of action violence, some sexual content and language. • Distributed by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.