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There's been a trend in movie franchises to film sequels back-to-back
or even simultaneously -- Back to the Future 2 and 3, The Matrix
Reloaded and Revolutions, Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and
3, all three Lord of the Rings films -- to save on various costs and
to keep actors from aging out of their roles prematurely. But X-Men 3: The
Last Stand is a rare instance of two sequels appearing on the screen at
the same time.
 There are two distinct "last stands" going
on. Either could have made a rich, exciting film.
You have the battle over the "mutant cure" and
how the mutant community is divided over it (not to
mention how the government and the non-mutants feel
about it), and you have the Dark Phoenix storyline
(somewhat bowdlerized and garbled from the comic arc,
I'm told, but as a non-reader, I don't particularly
mind).
Jean's struggle with her Phoenix personality
is the action blockbuster. Scott Summers, aka Cyclops,
somehow resurrects Jean from the bottom of the lake
where she apparently died at the end of X2. (Which
makes me wonder: even provided that her abilities
kept her from drowning, how long has she been Davy
Jones's roommate? Was she in stasis? Did Cyclops's
blast give her a boost to get out? Wake her up? How
much time has elapsed between the movies? That part
made no sense.) They proceed to suck face, and she
then seems to go all Taresian on
him. Professor X explains (the part of the cabbagehead
in tonight's performance will be played by Wolverine)
that when he first brought Jean into the fold, her
powers so far outstripped her ability to control them
that he had to put up modified Azrael blocks to bottleneck
her until she could get a handle on things. The Jeannie
in the bottleneck became its own personality of 99.44%
id, and called herself Phoenix. This is the dominant
personality for most of her dealings in the movie,
heralded by the appearance of Evil No-Iris Eyes™ (popularized
by Scary Veiny Dark Willow). For fun, Phoenix unzips
Wolvie twice, and when she's pissed, she unzips people
like
Tony
Shaloub's shadow.
Phoenix is understandably grouchy about Professor
X keeping her hemmed in, which leaves her open to
Magneto's blandishments.
Having two and three incredibly powerful
mutants all going at each other is already pretty
exciting, plus middle managers like Wolverine and
Storm struggling with their mixed loyalties to Jean
and to Xavier's orders. Jean (or rather, Phoenix)
kills her lover Cyclops and her mentor Professor X,
and
tries to seduce Wolverine like a freight train. Magneto
wants to use her for what he always wants to do, Pinky:
take over the world. But this sci-fi popcorn flick
gets tangled up in the social commentary of the other
movie.
The head researcher of a biolab has
come up with a "cure" for mutants. Seems
one mutant boy, "Leech," has the ability
to neutralize the mutant-ness of any mutant who comes
within 15 feet or so of him. (Beast, who looks like
a Muppet child actor grown up and gone into politics,
put out his hand to shake and gets a temporary blast
of depilatory and melatonin bleach. I sort of wish
he'd stuck his head into the Leech Field so we could
see Kelsey Grammer make a brief startled cameo.) The
researcher, whose son is Angel (blond kid with forty-foot
white
wings, not the sulky boring vampire), finds a way
to bottle this so that the X gene in any mutant is
suppressed.
Some of the mutants find this very appealing.
Rogue just wants to be able to touch people without
killing them, hardly an extraordinary wish. Magneto,
on the other hand, has already been down this poison
path of genocide -- when one face-tattooed mutant
demands "where's your mark?" he coolly shows
her the blue numbers on his arm and informs her that "no
ink shall ever touch my body again" -- and proclaims
that the humans want to wipe out the mutants. Considering
that this was a significant part of the plot for X2,
that's hardly an extraordinary conclusion.
This is a powerful statement, more in
line with X2's undercurrents of whether being
different is bad or something unique to be treasured,
and the ongoing allegory between mutants and gays.
If there were a gene-based "cure" for homosexuality,
who would take it? Who would be dragged to the clinic
against their will? Who would be blackmailed into
it? Who would proudly, defiantly refuse it? Would
politicians mandate it? Would it be made available
to new parents as a choice in the hospital? In utero?
Unfortunately, we don't get much of this exploration.
The sides are broadly sketched --
I should
say, Magneto's
side is sketched, because other than Rogue just wanting
to be "normal" and Storm insisting in clichés
that she doesn't need to be fixed because she's not
broken, we don't find out too much of how the good
guys feel. There's no class discussion, no thoughtful
soliloquy by our resident Shakespearean, no teen argument.
But given that, I found myself agreeing
more with Magneto's declaration that this "cure" is
pretty obviously going to be a tool of the government
to eliminate mutants whenever and wherever possible,
and fighting it will help more people than letting
it wend its way into the population as a mushily-defined
choice (and a weapon). If we'd gotten the social commentary
movie, this disconnect between heroes and audience
and deflected identification with the "bad guys" could
have been expanded and really played out in more detail.
There isn't time, though -- we have
to rush on to Phoenix's latest telekinetic tantrum.
This arc got a bit short-shrifted as well in the character
department. We're told that Phoenix is unhappy about
being caged, and that Jean couldn't learn enough to
overcome the blocks Professor X put up so she could
control her own powers. But Phoenix, herself, gets
remarkably few lines. She purrs to Cyclops that she
can control his eyebeams, she purrs to Wolverine that
it's okay to make the beast with two backs, she shrieks
that she doesn't want to go back to being locked up
in Jean's head. And that's about it. What has she
felt all these years? What does she think of Jean?
Did Jean have blackouts when Phoenix took over? Is
Phoenix really an alter, as MPD facets are called?
Under what circumstances did Phoenix come out, or
does Xavier only know her telepathically? (In the
comics, Dark Phoenix is actually an alien, so a lot
of these
questions were better answered in the other medium.)
But the parts of the two movies which
do make it to screen are still plenty enjoyable. Magneto
starts as a reasonable resistor to another genocide,
heartlessly
abandons Mystique when
she's hit with a cure-bullet (that was pretty shocking
-- I couldn't believe he turned on her like that,
and that she returns the favor) to display his iron-willed
bigotry, and slides back into murderous megalomania
once he
thinks he has the upper hand. There are a few teen
arcs: a triangle between Iceman, Rogue, and Kitty
Pryde; the rivalry between Iceman and Pyro (who defected
to Magneto at the end of X2); and the older
students stepping up to full warrior status in the
final confrontation with Magneto's forces. The various
new characters are fun and interesting, although of
necessity none of them get a lot of screen time. Beast
in particular was somewhat boring -- a big blue Wolverine
with Frasier's accent is no great shakes. Relocating
the Golden Gate Bridge was amusing, and a nice change
of pace from beating up on New York all the time.
Clone Man creating hundreds of copies of himself to
fool the infrared sensors was a clever use of his
ability. I liked that Rogue did in fact go through
with the cure,
and
didn't
wimp
out at the end. It's a shame we won't see the consequences
of that decision, or whether her cure will in fact
wear off as Magneto's did. (And Magneto getting the
four cure bullets -- the self-loathing and horror
on his face! well done.) Will Mystique slowly fade
bluer, able to change one feature at a time as her
powers return? (that's a whole movie in itself, frankly.)
Storm finally gets something of substance to do, even
if her eulogy speech was
dumb. She finally behaves like a teacher and partner
in this one; I could believe that she was a top-level
member of the staff. I really like that Magneto
and Professor X, Eric and Charles, still have the
deep mutual respect of
old friends who are now enemies, and that they don't
hate one another, just see each other as greatly
misguided. You don't get that much any more.
A few nits to pick: the initial military
briefing claims the cure "permanently" suppresses
the mutant gene. But it's derived from Leech, and
when Beast gets his fur stripped off, it grows back
almost immediately. Same with Kitty and Juggernaut
at the end -- they're only deprived of their powers
when they're in the Leech Field. So why would they
claim the cure is permanent? (I know, it makes it
easier to accept that poor Magneto, huddled over a
chess board in the park like one of the old guys in
a Pixar short, can start moving metal pieces around
again.) In the flashback to Jean's adolescence, Patrick
Stewart and Ian McKellan are digitally cleaned up
to appear younger. It was the creepiest CGI I've seen
since Phlox's smile. Stewart looked like his face
had been render-mapped and then rewrapped around his
skull -- he looked less disturbing when Phoenix was
ripping him apart in a high wind. When Magneto moves
the bridge
so it touches Alcatraz, it's daylight; when he orders
the "pawns" to attack, it's abruptly full
night. One thing which bothered me more about Storm's
abilities this round: mucking with weather systems
is really dangerous business. The air masses
which are being moved, the humidity change, the devastating
energies being shoved around -- calling up a breeze
to move aside clouds is fine in San Francisco, but
it might cause hail in Kansas. When Phoenix is blasting
Wolverine at the end, not only does his muscle and
skin grow back, so do his pants!
The final scene -- by which I mean the
one after the credits; you did stay for that,
right? -- was positive, but a bit of a deus ex mutanta.
I know, they're leaving the door open for future sequels,
but still. Even the more-than-human should have some
limits. |
