X-Men: The Last Stand

At long last, the eagerly anticipated X-Men 3 movie has been released. I must confessed that I enjoyed the movie but was equally disappointed at the same time. How so?

Usually, when a movie is made from a comic, graphic novel or novel, it will be either slightly or completely different than it's original written. This is probably to cater to the audiences, the flavour of the movie or just to create another interesting part to the movie. From Harry Potter to the Lord Of The Rings Trilogy. However, I did find that the only faithful movie I've ever watched was Sin City, it was a film noir, almost like watching a graphic novel come to life.

Now, for X-men, apart from the dark leather costumes, many of the characters have powers that are strange and the characters are younger than they should be relative to the other characters. Take for example Shadowcat, Rogue, even Iceman. But I shan't digress on this. Read below for my nit-picks at The Last Stand.

------Some Spoilers Below-----

1. Jean Grey's character with her split personality of Phoenix and hence Dark Phoenix was a little bogus. They didn't even try hard to explain it too much, which was a deviation from the comic.
   
2. Her Phoenix (fire-bird) effect was missing from the movie. Even her red trenchcoat made of curtain drapes failed to impress. The original Dark Phoenix had more fashion sense, a red and yellow costume with a sash for a belt.
3. The Brotherhood of Mutants, their powers were very haphazard, I really couldn't tell who was who. Was Arclight a man in drag or a woman?
   
4. Magneto was more powerful in the comics as he could manipulate not just metal, but even plastic and stone. When he was unable to affect the plastic weapons in the movie, I was stunned. Or perhaps they couldn't create too powerful a character for fear they could not find a way to kill him off.
5. Wolverine's healing factor seems to have mood swings, sometimes it's gradual, sometimes it's fast, perhaps he's not eating enough vitamins! Walking against Jean Grey's barrage of gale force winds that flay the flesh off his body, he even has time to re-heal himself. Jean obviously wasn't smart enough to ash him quickly and completely like she did the Professor.
6. Angel, all he was there for was to save his dad and look smug. Otherwise, his debut centred around showing his upper torso and his abs.
7. Leech's powers seems to be only temporary, so was the mutant "cure" only temporary? The chess piece moved an iota! If you blinked, you probably missed it.
   
8. Jamie Madrox aka Multiple Man was a useless multiple decoy.
9. Iceman and Pyro fights and he just head-butts him? Did he die? Did he escape? What happened?
   
10. Poor Mystique, Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned indeed!
    
11. Scott Summers aka Cyclops died? It wasn't really clear till the end. Did Phoenix absorb him into herself? It wasn't clearly shown. Maybe they didn't have enough money to pay him and he fled to do Bryan Singer's Superman Returns.
12. Professor Xavier died, that was a huge shock to me really. However, did he really die? Hmm...
    

Overall, I thought it was enjoyable to watch all the action sequences and Magneto frivolously using his powers to destroy cars and move bridges.

Brett Ratner did a good job with the action. However, I thought that Bryan Singer could have completed the X-Men Trilogy before moving on to do Superman Returns and pulling James Marsden over. I'm sure that he could have developed upon all the characters more to make it a most satisfying trilogy ending.

I mean, JRR Tolkien would not have let CS Lewis complete his Lord Of The Rings Trilogy would he?? Think Aragorn as a lion and Sauron as the female white witch! Yeesh... what a scary thought indeed!

Let's wait and see if there's going to be any X-Men 4 movie in the pipeline.

7.5 out of 10