http://www.filmfocus.co.uk/review.asp?ReviewID=87
Brief: A mutant cure has been discovered in the mutation of a young boy (Cameron Bright) and a way to harness its power has been developed; much to the chagrin of Magneto who sets about to destroy the cure, and the one who carries it, once and for all. As the X-Men make their last stand, all will be at stake.
In Full: Plucking the most interesting of its ideas from Joss Whedon's special run on the X-Men comic books, X-Men: The Last Stand had the potential to be the greatest of all three films. Building on the massive success of X2, perhaps one of the finest superhero films to date, and combining it with one of the X-Men's most exciting and challenging storylines - that of a mutant cure - was a recipe for success that was ever so nearly impossible to get wrong.
So, that X-Men: The Last Stand is no better or worse than the entertaining first outing in the X-Men franchise is, in fact, a dire disappointment, for the film wastes no time in abandoning the brilliance of its concept - a concept which might have given us the best superhero film ever. The mutant cure is, here, an excuse for yet another stand-off with Magneto, the ethical implications of its conception only coming to play when Rogue decides her boyfriend is losing interest.
For, like most in Hollywood, The Last Stand finds the black and white without ever finding the grey; Magneto is a bad guy, the X-Men are the good guys and audiences want to see the good guys win. But the mutant cure concept is so much more complex than that, hinting at serious ethical and personal conflict that is never explored. As the humans develop guns with which to shoot mutants with the cure the audience is left wondering if we shouldn't be rooting for Magneto's alliance. No cure at all is, after all, far preferable to one forced on those who don't want it.
And, once again, the ensemble nature of the X-Men universe proves difficult to translate; only Kelsey Grammer's Beast gets adequate exposure and even he could quite easily be left at home in favour of the established cast. The other new additions are thrown a line or two here and there and used as nobody's-safe fodder in the climactic Last Stand. Of course, by that point we've been given neither motive nor means to care for them and so the ultimate battle between good and evil is only as fraught with peril as any other battle in the franchise.
Which is not to say that X-Men: The Last Stand isn't entertaining on those base levels a superhero film should be entertaining - it's beyond even Brett Ratner to make the X-Men boring - but it's not a patch on the film it could and should have been. Indeed, the only ramification it leaves for the franchise is in the characters that don't survive, and only one of those deaths feels anything less than unjustified.
In the hands of genuine storytellers, X-Men: The Last Stand might have achieved real greatness. In the hands of Brett Ratner, Simon Kinberg and Zak Penn - who seem merely puppets to the studio's desire to milk fans of the franchise for all they're worth - it's never anything more than average.
Final Verdict:
3 out of 5 stars
and yes i just felt like typing something.. lol
