Batman jr.
Proud Nolanite
- Joined
- May 2, 2004
- Messages
- 3,161
- Reaction score
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- 58
It's not as good as the first two, obviously, but I've seen much worse movies.
personally i loved X3 and it ties with X2 as my fave
The actual story idea with the cure had potential. But the Phoenix aspect, major characters being killed off... (even off-screen). All that, was just bad. Also, Wolverine being the new X-Men leader. That seemed very forced.
I also had problems with Magneto. His depiction. He really wasn't much of a threat here. Ironic, since he lifts the ****ing Golden Gate bridge. But he does very little else, except talk, and his followers are mostly thuggish gang members. Not very dignified or sophisticated.
Last stand Isn't on par with X-Men,and X2.It Is far beneath them.
It does have some redeeming qualitys but It Is a very mixed bag.Most X-Men fans would call Last Stand a mixed bag.
Major characters dying is fine, if done properly. But here it felt rushed, and at times they didn't seem to care. Cyclops apparently dies off screen. No characters really seemed to care, beyond "oh, Scott's dead". It didn't affect anyone.
Xavier's death was abrupt, but at least there was a little mourning.
Hell, it's hard to get invested in any of these characters. Remember Colossus? Did he even have dialogue in this movie?
Most of the X-Men never even spoke to each other.
They killed off Cyclops just so Wolverine could be leader. That I found forced.
In the first movie, Magneto was a sophisticated, mysterious figure, they built him up to be a menacing threat. A guy with big plans. In the third movie, he just wanders around with a poorly organized gang of mutant delinquents. In the first movie he had a very ambitious scheme that threatened the entire world. Here he and some hoods flash mob Alcatraz That's the entirety of his plan. Surprised they didn't say genius Pyro was the one who came up with that master plan.
I don't think we'll agree on most of these complaints (or any really). But let me put it this way, in the first two movies, Magneto's plans, were somewhat intricate. Note for example, his escape in X2 (that took some creativity). In X3, they best thing he could come up with was mob rushing Alcatraz. You can clearly see the decline in quality of writing. If you can't, then there's no sense in debating the matter.
Magneto doesm't have to have intrincate plans. In X3 there was a threat over them, the extermination of mutants so quicker plans and a more direct attack was required. But I saw a dcline of writing in X2 where nobody had any character development and characters like Nighcrawler were there just decoratively.
I don't think the writing was much to write home about to begin with. But X3 dropped even further. Nightcrawler was little more than a cameo. Though at least the villain was mildly interesting.
If there's one thing I could take out of X2, it would be its villain and his nonsensible plan. Stryker is another government agent with a vendetta and that's all there is to him. it is kinda humorous that this man would even present a threat to the X-men. I mean what would happen if other X-men were present at the mansion attack except Wolverine?
And the worst part about him is actually his son. He's supposed to be an illusionist, but he actually controls people's minds? Even someone as powerful as Xavier? Whatever he does to Xavier does kind of start out as an illusion, although I don't see why Xavier would think he's back at the mansion when he knows perfectly well where he is. But then the "little girl" tells him to kill all mutants without providing any reason to do so and he just goes with it? That's not even remotely an illusion, it's pure mind-control. And I have no idea what it would take to mind-control Xavier.
So yeah, the whole film kinda collapses near the end because of this simplistic villain that's somehow aiming way higher than he's believably capable of.
El Payaso said:I agree. But talking about collapsing, there's only so much tension you can grow out of a dam that is about to collapse... but never does.
THE LAST STAND gets a bad rap because fans hated the fact that the comics weren't put onscreen (which had never happened in the X-Men films, and was never going to happen in that franchise), and because they don't understand film demands/issues like, oh, say, LOSING your Cyclops to SUPERMAN RETURNS. Wolverine starred because he'd been the star since X-MEN. Fans seem to think that if Bryan Singer had stuck around, Cyclops would have been one of the main characters, and we'd have gotten a more faithful Dark Phoenix story, and that somehow X3 would have undone the flaws of the previous two films. There were some legitimate suggestions that Brett Ratner isn't as talented a director in terms of actually shooting the film, but he handled the action, emotion, themes and performances quite well.
Xavier died because that was part of the plot. It required Wolverine and Storm to step up, come back to the X-Men and lead a Xavierless team made up of younger X-Men. And Xavier's death was a powerful sequence, and well handled.
Cyclops died because James Marsden wasn't available for the entire shoot, and because Fox exec Tom Rothman doesn't like the character, and because the plot then called for it as a motivating factor for Dark Phoenix, but given the limitations, his death was handled wonderfully. His sequence with Jean prior to his death has some of the best and most emotional moments of the franchise.
Rogue taking the cure? Come on, now. It's perfectly logical...and the cure is shown to be TEMPORARY at the end anyway.
There is so much to like about X3.
The inclusion of The Danger Room, complete with Sentinel moment.
Kelsey Grammer's Beast, and pretty much any sequence he's in, is fantastic.
Ellen Page's Kitty Pryde is fantastic.
Mystique has more importance than she has at any point in the franchise. Her "cure" scene is fantastic.
Warren Worthington has a role every bit as large and connected to the main story, as say, Pyro in X2.
Colossus didn't have a large role, but he had a much bigger role than in X2, and got some nice moments to shine.
Pyro VS Iceman threaded throughout the film.
Storm finally gets more to do, and displays more variety in power.
The Dark Phoenix concept is handled well, at least psychologically, and her power displays were immense.
Magneto was a heck of a threat, but also a grayer one than he had been in two previous films. He manipulated Jean, broke Juggernaut and Mystique out of containment and organized a terrorist group. He was very effective for the most part.
And beyond that, the themes are handled well, the character interactions are handled well.
The plot is a little straightforward, but the acting is good, the music is good, the action and effects are good. And perhaps most importantly...X3 may actually be a better written movie overall than X-MEN and X3in many respects. The story, despite being a straightforward one, is laid out in a more complex way, and there is more and better handled character development than in either of the previous two films.
Was it rushed? A little, but the movie that was scripted was still made. Could it have been longer, bigger, better, more faithful, etc? Probably, in several respects. But it had one of the largest budgets of any superhero film at that point, despite the franchise not being as big a draw as say, the Spider-Man films. But it was still a pretty big film, with huge action sequences and great effects. Not being everything it could have been doesn't make it a bad movie in the least. Fans are indeed way too hyperbolic about it.
He, it's probably the dramatic tension of the upcoming "sacrifice" that's holding it together.
Speaking of which, to this day I still don't get why Jean had to die there. Was there an unspoken rule for her powers saying she couldn't lift herself up? She does in X3. I've also heard suggestions that her powers were getting too much out of hand, but we never saw anything that would suggest that.
She never put her teammates in any danger