Customer Reviews

Peace at last without any future menace - By: Jacques COULARDEAU, 21 Oct 2008
The third act of this tragedy or drama is this time bringing the fight within the mutant community. The President of the USA, with his Secretary to Mutant Affairs who is not even informed, let alone associated, to the President's decisions on such a matter, has paid for the invention or devising of a special genetic vaccine to "cure" the mutants of their mutant-ness. This gives the opportunity to the bad mutants to gather some groups & even crowds & to start some terrorist action against this curein the name that mutant-ness is not a disease. The final battlein order to destroy the research center that devised the "cure" & the scientist who is behind the discovery is spectacular with a bridge rotatedin order to tie up San Francisco to Alcatraz by way of the Golden Gate Bridge. This time the battle will bring the bad mutants down once & for all. The leader of them, a certain Magneto, will be injected four doses of the "cure", the winged son of the President of the USA will save the scientist, & Wolverine, the man with metal bones & claws on his hands will get rid of the too famous Jean who had gone wild & evil after her resurrection from the water catastrophein the previous film. Then peace & safety are finally assured & men & mutants can live happily together thereafter & have many children. Such films are definitely naive as for the meaning but they are saved by the special effects & are entertaining after all. We could of course compare this trilogy with the Aliens first three films, or with the Terminator trilogy, or the two Star Wars trilogies. We would always find somewhere the belief that the future is not so grim as it may look & that good will always get over evil. Then the differences arein the surviving or winning models. From the Genesis or Ragnarok model of Terminator, to the bi-partisan peace of this X-Men trilogy, to the never ending resurrection of the Aliensin the Aliens series, to the democratic victory of the two Star Wars trilogies, we can write volumes on the persistence & return of such ideological, supposedly religious or philosophical models, but the best novel ever written on that subject remains Stephen King's The Stand.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

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Under-rated - By: Dogtooth, 21 Sep 2008
I knew that this film was controversial before I watched it, so I was pleased to find this film highly enjoyable & every bit as good as its predecessors.
The only reason I've given it four stars instead of five is that like the previous two, it throwsin so many minor characters that it can't do them justicein this period of time. Films will improve when studios have the courage to increase their length.

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Not Quite The Last Stand.. - By: M. P. Williamson, 16 Sep 2008
Let's face it, this film, was GOING to get trashed. Whenever a writer leaves, the next installment is irrevocably slated - casein point with Blade Trinity where the director left & the writer was forced to take over all duties. But if you're analysing this film as an X-Men fan as so many reviewers seem to be claiming to be, then I fail to see what people are complaining about. This is THE film that stuck close to the comic book; there being a number of sequences that are quite literally panel-for-frame reproduction of the end of the franchisein comic book format. Sure, there may be a bit of stilted dialogue & hammy acting here & there, but what do you expect from a film where the main characters include a woman who controls the weather, a man with titanium protuding from any selected orifice, & a telekineticin a wheelchair?

Judge this film if you must, I personally found it to be a valuable contribution to the saga, but don't use your own bias to mope about it being unfaithful to a franchise you claim to love.

Now, we must all waitin turn for the unofficial "X Men 4" aka Wolverine's Origins...

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Disappointing - By: T. R. Alexander, 05 Aug 2008
This third instalment of the X-Men films is unfortunately the weakest of the trilogy. Last Stand sees the development of a cure for the mutant gene & as it becomes available to the general population Magneto & the Brotherhood of Mutants are determined to protect the mutant community. Add to this the return of Jean Grey as the all powerful Phoenix means that the X-Men are fighting against the odds.

As a stand alone film The Last Stand wouldn't be too bad but seeing as what has gone before this third film is a great disappointment. The addition of things such as a mutant ranking system, that wasn't mentionedin either of the previous films, gives Last Stand a strangely detached feel from the rest of the trilogy & you cannot help but feel that you have missed something. As well as this the casual death & sidelining of various characters seems a waste & with a few exceptions, namely Kelsey Grammer's Beast, most of the new characters introduced are underdeveloped and/or poorly acted.

On the plus side, some of the CG effects are very good & the regular cast all seem comfortable with their characters now. Many of the action scenes are entertaining, even if the aren't a patch on thosein the previous films, & the film does have a few funny moments that I enjoyed. Overall X-Men III: The Last Stand is a disappointingly average film that doesn't live up to its predecessors.

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Excrement - By: Phil Hattie, 30 Jul 2008
X-Men 2 was everything an X-Men film should be. Bold, exciting, challenging, & occasionally slightly cerebral. Bryan Singer had keyed into the mutant's universe & gave us a movie that fans of the comic books could be proud of. God only knows how good this film could have been if he had remained attached- unfortunately he didn't & we got this unmitigated nonsense.

Foolishly combining elements of the classic Dark Phoenix Saga with elements of Joss Whedon's Gifted storyline from the more recent series- & chucking Magneto back into the mix for good measure- this is a movie pullingin too many directions at once. It is hampered further by the insultingly done elimination of several key characters for much of the movie (the removal of Cyclops, a character with 40+ years of history,in such an offhand manner as we have here is particularly crass) & the introduction of a whole new bunch of X-Men & villains who are given next-to-nothing to do except fightin the climactic scenes. The project went through several writers & directors before being rush produced to a deadline & it shows with a total lack of, well, direction. If an overdone story, faceless characters, & several slapsin the face to fans of the source material were not enough the movie has one other crippling flaw... Halle Berry.

I've never watched Monster's Ball so cannot comment on how much Berry deserves her Oscar. Howeverin any other film I've seen herin she has stank, & the previous X-films only got away with it because her role was limited. However post-Oscar & with an invigorated star status this is "her" movie & her poorly delivered dialogue, missed timing, wooden acting & blank expressions are painful. Hugh Jackman is a decent enough workmanlike actor but gets saddled with trying to feed lines to her & accept them from her & his performance suffers for it. Poor Ian McKellan is given a shorter straw too as the witty & complex Magneto of the previous two movies is not the one featured here. As for the other characters? One dimensional & pointless.

If the film has one slight saving grace its that its action sequences are as good as the average summer blockbuster requires. There's nothingin them that's particularly interesting but they distract well enough from the tripe that surrounds them. The X-Men franchise is not dead yet, the Wolverine film is duein 2009, but this film is a fairly serious blow. I'm hoping that Jackman- once free of Halle Berry & with a new creative team- will be able to recapture the heights of the first two films. I'm not holding my breath though.