Perfunctory sequel. X-Men 3: The Last Stand, under the frat boy level supervision of Brett Ratner, does everything that fans feared would happen back when Bryan Singer started the franchise. It would be an Electra of a failure if it weren’t built on the at least competent foundation that the previous two films laid down. For the most part it’s a styleless exercise in plot that skips from point to point with no concern for developing the substance needed to fill the picture’s empty epic scope.
It’s not that X3 crashes and burns, but it doesn’t soar like it should, either. The script sets some interesting ideas into motion, but it all feels hollow. Scenes seem to be missing. The action moves along, but not in any organic or satisfying way. Ratner seems like that guy who corners you in a film conversation and keeps coming back to how ‘cool’ The Rock was; seemingly to prove this, he sets X3’s final showdown on Alcatraz for little reason other than to use the Golden Gate Bridge and, I suspect, to kiss the demonic shoes of Bay.
As this is just a collection of notes and thoughts on the film here’s a few in question form:
- I understand that when we are dealing with shape shifters and telepaths and whatnot, there must be some amount of suspension of disbelief, but does that suspension apply to how suspension bridges work?
- Does Ratner not understand that wire-fu is for making super-human feats possible, not to make characters that are leaping appear to be swinging on wires?
- Why was so much made of how Kelsey Grammer was so right for the role because he’s really nothing like Frasier, but then they had Beast differ only from Frasier in his hue and hairiness?
- Is being able to provide fog cover on Alcatraz really a super power? Frankly, anyone with the patience of a hyperactive 4-year-old can wait long enough for that to happen.
- Why would one return the X-Men to their racially-inspired civil rights core, and then end an attack on the Golden Gate Bridge with a Long Duck Dong-era Asian guy with a camera stereotype gag? I seriously was straining to hear the gong.
- Speaking of Sound Effects in poor taste: Was it just me, or was there an unnecessary bowling strike gag when the Juggernaut plowed through those guards?
Maybe the most interesting thing in X3 to me was not the brief morality play that kept bobbing to the surface, despite Ratner’s best efforts. There were some interesting questions that nicely kept the comic’s moral ambiguity in play, which seem to condemn Magneto’s militantism, but at the same time condone Professor X’s big brotherly unilateralism, and still never truly question any character sporting an X.
This is all fine and good, but here’s the more interesting issue raised by the films: Why do fanboys, myself included in this, thrill to see something we’ve seen drawn a hundred times become a live action picture? Even when it isn’t quite right, everyone who loved the comics lit up when Wolverine asked Colossus to throw him. The Fastball Special became kind of a Hammer Toss Special, but the spirit was there and that made me smile.
Do we Comic Book Nerds really think we are the only ones who have seen these panels? It’s an X-Men movie, for Kirby’s sake! Obviously they’ve read an issue or two, but still, this little dork’s eyes lit up when Bobby glanced over to Kitty’s ice skates. Why is that? For moments like that, I can’t take the piss out of this movie completely, but this is a film that ends with tombstones and I just can’t help but feel like Ratner botched the wake.