X-Men: The Last Stand (spoilers)

[kate_nepveu]

I know, I know, you're all waiting for more Lord of the Rings, but we saw X-Men: The Last Stand this afternoon and I might as well talk briefly about that while it's fresh.

Short version: starts out better than I expected, but the more I think about it, the less I like it.

There are a great many structural things wrong with this movie, almost all of which could have been fixed if it had been not one movie but two. The cure and Angel would fill one movie very nicely, and Phoenix another. The latter gets ridiculously short shrift here: she kills Scott and the Professor, and then . . . stands around a lot, until she flips out at the end and gets killed. (I have the vague impression that there is a great deal of controversy over the feminist implications of Phoenix in the comic; in the movie, it seems to me it's one of those fake-feminist things, create a very powerful woman—who is ruled by emotion only, is used by others, and then is stopped by a heroic man penetrating her [*]. Whee!)

[*] In a scene straight out of a bad romance novel cover. Seriously, didn't anyone else think that? The guy's naked chest, the swoon backwards, the flowing dress . . .

As that suggests, the thing that would not have been fixed by making it two movies is Jean's death. I admit that the pyrotechnics were effective enough at clouding my brain that it wasn't until I was walking the dog after the movie that I thought, "Wait, are you expecting me to believe that the four shots of the cure that they used on Magneto were the only whole ones left lying around?"

Once started on this train of thought, of course, one can construct entirely plausible ways of stopping Phoenix without killing Jean (that, say, involved teamwork, as they'd made a point of not five minutes earlier?). Or of making her death meaningful and interesting rather than passive. But alas, that's not the movie we got.

Also, the Professor's exposition about the Phoenix was muddled and incomprehesible even for this genre, which is saying something. Seriously, did anyone (who's not familiar with the comic) understand that?

Other random things:

• In the comics, when did the Professor lose the use of his legs? Did it have to do with his falling-out with Magneto?

  Dear Hollywood: I would love a prequel that's about the two of them and that backstory. If and only if Bryan Singer would come back. Very truly yours,

• The whole Angel thing was practically a cameo rather than a reasonable subplot—granted it would have been a little "what, another father-son issue?", but still. And did he stow away on the jet, or did he actually fly from Weschester County to San Francisco? (Chad: "he took a commercial flight.")
• Dear Magneto, you couldn't find, say, several big pieces of sheet metal to float your mutant army across? I gotta think that would have been a lot less work. Love and kisses,
• So, did Leech cure himself? That was him at the end hugging Storm, wasn't it? If not, if his power still exists, then what's to stop fanatics from kidnapping him and getting the cure going again? (The eventual knowledge that the cure isn't permanent, as the last scene before the credits suggests?)
• I did like, in the not-very-subtext area, that the new henchpeople that Magneto picks up in the church are all non-white, and that one (the one with the shock waves) appeared to be transgendered (I could be wrong, but that was my distinct impression).

  [Edit: apparently I am wrong. See comments.]

I'm not sorry I saw it, but I am sorry that it wasted two perfectly good storylines to the benefit of neither.

Also, the trailers were dire. We got the Superman Returns trailer, which was almost as incomprehensible as the exposition in the movie that followed; The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, a.k.a. another "white American goes to Asia, kicks all the Asian people's butts in competition, and screws their women too" movie; Ghost Rider, in which yet another actor takes a role that doesn't show his face (a flaming skeleton on a motorbike? Seriously?); My Super Ex-Girlfriend, which packed an amazing amount of offense to feminist sensibilities into a very short time; and The Omen remake, to which I can only say, "Why?"

And now, I will go read the Le Guin essay on Tolkien's pacing that rushthatspeaks recommended.

Comments

[montoya.livejournal.com]

In the comics, when did the Professor lose the use of his legs?

I think there are at least two versions, and I forget which is the retcon. It's definitely possible.

another "white American goes to Asia, kicks all the Asian people's butts in competition, and screws their women too" movie

Okay, so Karate Kid II, and what else?

Also, the Ghost Rider movie looks really terrible, both because 1) Ghost Rider is kind of one of those unfortuante '70s characters, and also because 2) NICOLAS FUCKING CAGE. This is, I must say, one of the few instances in which I thoroughly approve of people covering up their face.

[kate_nepveu]

Several marital arts movies I've been in the same room for--something terrible with Jean Claude van Damme comes to mind.

[kate_nepveu]

Dear fingers, please learn to distinguish between martial and marital. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Very truly yours,

[kate_nepveu]

Oh, another thing: I thought of tnh during the "you people" moment.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

I had many of the same reactions to this movie, also wondering why none of the X babes had breasts and hips. Still, Hugh Jackman in black leather....

MKK

[kate_nepveu]

. . . which conveniently shredded away in a PG-13-safe way . . .

Also, Kitty looked about _13_ to me, making the whole suggested-triangle thing even stupider.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

> In the comics, when did the Professor lose the use of his legs? Did it
> have to do with his falling-out with Magneto?

I always thought it was when he fought Ahmal Farouk in Cairo, after Storm (as a child) picked his pocket. X got his wallet back, sensed something odd about her, probed her mind, and immediately got into a mental battle Farouk and accidentally created the Shadow King (who I always thought was a vastly underrated villain). But apparently that was just when he realized the threat evil mutants could pose, and actually he lost the use of his legs in an accident caused by the alien Lucifer.

My bad. I must be slipping. But no, it wasn't Magneto.

> The whole Angel thing was practically a cameo rather than a reasonable
> subplot—granted it would have been a little "what, another father-son
> issue?", but still. And did he stow away on the jet, or did he actually
> fly from Weschester County to San Francisco? (Chad: "he took a commercial
> flight.")

He had Birdman of Alcatraz powers. :)

> I did like, in the not-very-subtext area, that the new henchpeople that
> Magneto picks up in the church are all non-white, and that one (the one
> with the shock waves) appeared to be transgendered (I could be wrong, but
> that was my distinct impression).

They claim it was Arclight, who was initially built like a body-builder, though she later developed into standard female comic-book proportions.

Myself, I swear they just gave Riktor a sex change. Given that they took the punked-out queen of the sewer mutants and turned her into an alterna-model, it's not that big a jump.

[kate_nepveu]

An _alien_ Lucifer? Oh my.

Thanks for the information.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

> * In the comics, when did the Professor lose the use of his legs? Did it
> have to do with his falling-out with Magneto?

Regular X-Men: No. He took a spinal injury from a character called the King Of Shadows, or something similar. He was credited with Xavier's injury as a way of making him a believable heel, since he'd never appeared before. He tanked, and so he hasn't appeared since, either.

Ultimate X-Men: Yes. He took the same spinal injury, but with Magneto throwing the spear of sharp metal instead of some random guy.

For a guy who hates X-Men comics, I know way, way too much about them.

> * The whole Angel thing was practically a cameo rather than a
> reasonable subplot—granted it would have been a little "what, another
> father-son issue?", but still. And did he stow away on the jet, or did he
> actually fly from Weschester County to San Francisco?

It's never shown how he gets from New England to San Fran. And yes, Angel was pointless and served no purpose.

> * Dear Magneto, you couldn't find, say, several big pieces of sheet
> metal to float your mutant army across? I gotta think that would have been
> a lot less work. Love and kisses,

The bridge is cool, though. What offended me was his apparent inability or unwillingness to just take part of the bridge and DESTROY EVERYTHING WITH IT FROM THE LIMITS OF HIS LINE OF SIGHT.

Why the hell does he need an army? The fuck?

> * So, did Leech cure himself? That was him at the end hugging Storm,
> wasn't it?

Leech can't cure himself - the cure is based on synthesizing his mutant power, and so it can't function near him.

Not that I have anything to support this theory, but since when has that ever stopped a good theory?

> If not, if his power still exists, then what's to stop fanatics
> from kidnapping him and getting the cure going again?

Any of said fanatics will not be mutants, and he's surrounded by lots and lots of mutants?

>(The eventual knowledge that the cure isn't permanent, as the last scene
> before the credits suggests?)

It's a one-line fix to have the cure be a temporary thing that only lasts until your body purges the invading "cure" cells. After all, they've never tried it on full-on mutated humans. They can't have.

> that one (the one with the shock waves) appeared to be transgendered (I
> could be wrong, but that was my distinct impression).

That's Arclight. Yes, she's a she. Yes, she has breasts. Yes, she has a very mannish haircut. Since both the character and actress are female, and barring any evidence of an Adam's apple or penis, I think we're safe to assume that the character is purely female.

[kate_nepveu]

I hadn't realized that it wasn't a life-long thing, so yes, it *should* be Magneto, and I hope the movies go that way if there are more.

Re: Leech: I doubt it, the cure appeared to be strictly medical, not powered by him. It could be flown to NYC (which was apparently where Rogue was lining up), after all.

And no, they can't have tested it fully, so I'm not surprised that it might not be permanent, actually; purge, DNA repair, whatever (I forget if it was supression or counter-mutation, or if they even bothered to say).

Re: Arclight: Huh, okay. I don't know what it was that made me immediately tag her as transgendered, but something about the face and voice did so (not just the haircut). In the absence of evidence that the movie-makers were intending to make a change there, I guess I was wrong.

[signy1.livejournal.com]

I thought the end result of the movie was a somewhat disheartening, 'Man, NOBODY'S a good guy anymore.'

When you come right down to it, what all three sides wanted was control over mutantdom. The Worthington/government faction wanted to eradicate them altogether, (the split second between designing this voluntary cure and its conversion into a weapon was a tad ominous,) the Magneto faction wanted to destroy anyone-- mutant, human, or otherwise-- who didn't follow his party line, up to and including murdering a mutant child whose only crimes had been imprisonment and exploitation and a talent Magneto found inconvenient, and even the Professor wasn't above playing God and blocking off powers he found inconvenient.

There's a case to be made that he directly caused the entire Phoenix fiasco; if he hadn't blocked off the majority of her abilities, she might have learned to control them. By creating the split personality, he made it impossible for her to do so. And he should have known better then that.

...Of course, if the intended message is that trusting those in positions of power or authority is always a mistake, this is a good time, politically, to emphasize that...

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

In the first two movies, Magneto was such an interesting villain in part because he had an internally consistent morality of a sort. It was incompatible with the well-being of non-mutants or of mutants who liked non-mutants, so he was the bad guy, but his motivations made a kind of sense, and I also got the sense that he cared for the mutants who worked with him and had an interesting sort of professional chemistry with Mystique in particular.

This movie suddenly turned him into a typical Bond villain type, heedless of the lives of his henchmen because he's just that bad. Even his rejection of the depowered Mystique seemed too robotic a decision for the Magneto we'd seen before, but at least there was a sort of explanation for that; his behavior in the final battle wasn't even that comprenehsible. I don't know anything about other media, but this stuff just didn't make sense for the movie Magneto.

[kate_nepveu]

This is a very fair reading, but the Phoenix explanation was so muddled and given such short shrift that I personally feel that I lack evidence on the last point, and regardless if there'd been more *time* all this could've been fleshed out in a much more IC way.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I thought the exact same thing about Tokyo Drift, which is annoying because I love Tokyo and went, "Oooo, Tokyo, one of my three favorite cities in the world, must see this immediately oh darn."

I enjoyed the movie a fair amount, and loved the spooky effects of the out-of-control telekinesis, but wow did it have a lot of stuff that was either politically icky or made no sense or both.

1. Why four shots of cure for Magneto when one was sufficient and could have left three for Jean?

2. Magneto instantly turning on Mystique was unconvincing to me in terms of his character and their relationship. Also, Mystique kicks every kind of ass, and she was sadly underused.

3. Why was Leech's hair growing back in the final scene?

4. You do not kill a major canon character offstage. I am still not sure if he is even dead or not.

5. The thing with Professor X and Phoenix made no sense.

6. Magneto's strategy made no sense. If Arclight could take out everyone's plastic weapons, why not do that before most of his army got mowed down? To make the point that he was eeeevil, apparently.

7. The X-Men had no strategy.

8. How did the X-Men even know about Leech?

9. WTF was up with Professor X blaming Wolverine for Jean going Phoenix?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

A lot of female characters sure got killed or depowered in this (except for Storm, who as played by Halle Berry is intensely annoying; she's been grievously miscast since the first film). On the other hand, a lot of characters in general got killed or depowered. It seemed as if there was some sort of concerted effort to stamp out everything that was cool about the movie series (with some cheap "or did we???" teasers at the end).

[kate_nepveu]

1, 6, 7. Plot stupidity.

2, 3, 5, 9. Lack of character development or information because of two movies in one.

4. Structural problem because of two movies in one (see also, Rogue).

8. Hank told them.

(also, 9: I saw it as Phoenix removing the cap thing herself, but Logan was *there* and so the Professor may've thought he removed it.)

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

Practically none of the movie made sense. I think most of the problems can be ascribed to one of these closely related causes:

A. The writers (or writer, I forget how many there were but it smelled like a script that had had many rewrites) seemed to want to cut all the quiet scenes short so as to get to the fight scenes faster. This accounts for why none of the conversations made much sense and why most weren't true to the characters established in the first two films. An extra 30-60 seconds of dialogue in each conversation scene would have helped immensely (if properly written).

B. The writers seemed to feel that fight scenes were their own reward, and didn't need to make sense in terms of the larger plot, or internally, really.

These don't explain all the problems, because they had so many, and some are just stupid continuity problems like the thing with Angel. While I like Chad's explanation, it does require assuming that commercial flights in the movie's world take only 10 minutes more to travel coast-to-coast than a Blackbird.

[kate_nepveu]

Your A. is my "two movies in one," but yes, there were serious structural and pacing problems here.

I'm sticking with "stowaway" for Angel, myself.

[missysedai.livejournal.com]

I'm not sorry I saw it, but I am sorry that it wasted two perfectly good storylines to the benefit of neither.

Yes. This was pretty much the core of our discussion after seeing it last night. They tried to do way too much, and wound up doing nothing. That bugged me.

[kate_nepveu]

I'm not sure what the status of the series was, if they thought this was the last one they could probably make. If so . . . the cure storyline is great, but I think I would've rather they stuck with Phoenix as promised by the end of the last movie, if I had to pick one.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Superman Returns trailer, which was almost as incomprehensible as the exposition in the movie that followed;

There's a long one of those I have only seen in snippets on the incidental TVs around the local cineplexes, the trailer I've seen is the "I so loved these people, that I sent them you, my only begotten son" one... never has the expression "I think this is getting needlessly messianic" felt so appropriate.

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, a.k.a. another "white American goes to Asia, kicks all the Asian people's butts in competition, and screws their women too" movie;

Yeah, that's one on the "Why on earth isn't this going straight to video where I don't have to be aware of it" pile.

Ghost Rider, in which yet another actor takes a role that doesn't show his face (a flaming skeleton on a motorbike? Seriously?);

Seriously, and depending on which version of the character it is, I think the property has potential. [ This said, I haven't seen the trailer. ]

On the other hand, it has Nicolas Cage in it, so I'm almost certainly going to see it anyway.

My Super Ex-Girlfriend, which packed an amazing amount of offense to feminist sensibilities into a very short time

Yes indeed. yuck uck yuck.

and The Omen remake, to which I can only say, "Why?"

That actually looks rather good, though, or at least creepy and with people who can act. [ Though I'm not sure there is a "why ?" beyond 06/06/06 striking people as a cool release date. ]

[kate_nepveu]

The trailer we saw had Superman saying "well, I'm back" (in effect), Kevin Spacey with a crystal, and "cities" growing out of nothing, and Kryptonite, and Superman getting stabbed. I don't remember the "only begotten son" line, but I may have missed it in the WTF?

The _Ghost Rider_ trailer was all angst and having to confront evil at night and flaming skeleton-ness. Honestly I thought it looked ridiculous.

I like the interpretations...

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, the sexual politics was Neanderthal, comparable to what they did to Starship Troopers. I like your characterizations of Tokyo Drift and Super Ex-Girlfriend!

Some of the consistency and motivation problems represent stubs of long-standing comic plots, where they tried to cram in the references, but didn't take the time to support them. For example, Logan had a prior relationship with Jean, and while he got along well with Scott, there were regular hints of tension there. Likewise, Magneto evolved over time from terrorist to teacher to ruler of his own mutant nation. The comic-book Phoenix had several major story arcs, making Jean one of the most-resurrected characters in Marveldom. There was no way they could have gotten all that into the movie, especially given the violence they'd already done to the team's backstory....

-- Dave Harmon

Re: I like the interpretations...

[kate_nepveu]

Yeah, and they didn't even try to create new, shorter backstory that would fulfill the same functions. Based on movie-canon, I can see the outlines of perfectly good arcs for Magneto and Phoenix (possibly not for Logan/Jean, if they were going to keep Jean/Scott as a continuous relationship, but that fails anyway on the complete lack of chemistry between either Logan & Jean or the actors, take your pick), but they just didn't bother.

And I can't imagine the shout-outs to comics continuity made the comics-knowledgable happy, so they pretty much failed the viewers all around.

Alas.

[leighdb.livejournal.com]

the more I think about it, the less I like it.

This has been pretty much everyone I've talked to's reaction to the movie, including mine.

I agree with your points, except possibly on the whole Leech thing, because I'm not going to bother putting in braintime on that handwavery when it's obvious the director didn't.

And I say "director" and not "writer(s)" advisedly, because (a) the whole film screamed "Massacre on the cutting room floor! Film at 11!", and (b) you just KNOW Brett I-Went-To-Film-School-To-Pick-Up-Hot-Chicks Ratner is the kind of director who would send the script back twenty times with the directive "Less talky, more explody!" until all vestige of sense had been wrung out of the story before it even got to post anyway.

There was a whole lot of embryonic cool ideas in there that just never got developed in favor of, as usual, Shit Blowing Up. Not that I mind a good explosion, but it is so, so much sweeter when the shit being blown up actually has a good reason for doing so.

The fundamental problem, I think, is that Ratner obviously didn't understand that actually, there is a difference between a superhero movie and an action movie, and that X3 was the latter. To its detriment.

Ah well. POTC II, one month and counting!

[kate_nepveu]

I don't have the know-how to distinguish between directorial and script failures, but I was tentatively pinning blame on the script for even _trying_ to do both plots at once. Though the running time was pretty short, and I suppose another half-hour or so might've done justice to at least one of the two plots. Maybe.

What would you articulate as the difference between a superhero movie and an action movie?