Given the title "The Last Stand", plus the movie's premise of a final showdown between the two opposing forces of Mankind and MUtantkind, I was expecting to see confrontations on a grander, more massive scale.
Yes, there were numerous battles, both small-and-large scale, but the way they were executed made them really nothing more than gratuitous action sequences meant to highlight certain favored characters' powers.
"Whose side will you be on?" the posters always asked. It was a time to make a radical choice, not unlike what's happening now in our real world. The hysteria, the paranoia, and the radicalism that reduces people to the simplistic notion that "If you are not with us, then you are against us" just wasn't there, imho.
The action sequences could've built up progressively, escalating in scope and yes, even violence, to finally reach its zenith - or nadir, depending on where you stand - in one Final Battle Royale. On the Human side, the anti-mutant riots and demonstrations could've been more massive, showing tens of thousands of angry, frightened humans, captured in frenzied hand-held shots on CNN, railing against what they perceive to be "the mutant threat". Since a picture paints a thousand words, we could've been SHOWN the blind hatred that fear and distrust could breed. A mutant kid being beaten up by a roving band of human hooligans, maybe? Homes of known mutants being vandalized and spray-painted with the word "MUTIE!"? Suggestions of lynchings, even? Thing is, the violence that often accompanies a hysteric mob mentality just wasn't there. The so-called "oppression" of mutants by homo sapiens was never shown, only suggested in exposition. We may have had more sympathy for Magneto's radicalism had we been made to understand what he and his kind are made to undergo in a harsh, intolerant homo sapien environment.
On the Mutant Side, the increasingly radicalized mutants could've been goaded into violent retaliations. A mutant goes berserk in a crowded shopping mall, for instance. Or torments Homo sapien sympathizers with threatening displays of mutant might. Or how about breaking up an anti-mutant demonstration even more dramatically than Pyro did in that Mutant Cure Center scene? We don't have to look very far to see examples of these in our real world. Just tune in to CNN any day and you'll get what I mean.
My point is not about wanting to see gratuitous violence on-screen, especially not in a GP-rated summer popcorn movie. But I felt that we NEEDED to see an escalation of hysteria, violence, and desperation from both sides in order to dramatize the culmination of these in one final showdown between Mankind and Mutantkind. True, there were soldiers in Alcatraz, but they seemed more like a disposable regiment of the G.I. Joes rather than the armed might of the US military. I would've wanted to see them lined up in menacing row after row after row, like Hitler's Nazi Army or even Darth Vader's Stormtroopers, death squads armed not only with weapons but anti-mutant propaganda. On the opposing side, I would've wanted to see Magneto rallying his troops, making fiery, impassioned diatribes against Homo sapiens, and seeing a wide variety of assorted mutants thrown together in unity by desperation and self-preservation. Instead, The Brotherhood looked little more than a ragtag band of expendable thugs rather than a force to be reckoned with. There was no true show of force; hence, no battle scene that was a tour de force.
As a matter of fact, the entire confrontation between Mankind and Mutantkind could've been GLOBAL in scope. We could've seen the world's armies gearing up to wipe out mutantkind. And we could've seen mutants of all races banding together to defend their kind. And as the clock strikes down to Zero Hour, only the X-Men could've stood in the way of both these opposing forces of Homo Sapiens and Homo Superior, the sole voice of reason, as it were, in a world united only by madness.
That's the battle I was looking for.
End of rant.
, Wolverine vs Jean...very dramatic, especially the part where he tells her I love you and I guess Jean vs Xavier, his death was surprising.
