Trailer:
“We stand together as one…as X-Men!”
Ah, here we are at last to the end of the road. The grand finale of the X-Men original trilogy. A spectacular climax guaranteed to send the franchise out with a bang. At least that is what the marketing would have you think. In reality the film is little more than an effects presentation with so little in the way of teamwork that it might as well have been titled, The Further Adventures of Wolverine and Storm.
The film starts where the previous one left off. Jean is dead and Magneto plots to free mutant kind from the oppression of humanity. Tensions run even higher when a “cure” for mutant powers is created. Magneto is not too happy about this and decides to go kill the source of the cure, a kid by the name of Leech.
To make matters even worse Cyclopes girlfriend is back from her watery grave and pissed off…..about something. Her duel personality known as The Phoenix jumps on Magneto’s cause…..for some reason, becoming their own personal nuclear bomb. The only real problem is that Jean Grey makes for one hell of a campy villain.
Her actress (Famke Jannsen) is simply not cut out when it comes to playing her darker side. To top it off her super awesome telekinesis powers are incredibly underwhelming. There's a ridiculous scene where she picks up a house to showcase her “great power” and it is quickly outdone and made infantile by Magneto's equally ridiculous scene where he picks up an entire bridge. Jean Grey does nothing more with her powers than rip stuff apart. Wolverine can do that….though admittedly not as fast.
Speaking of our Clawed Canadian, Hugh Jackman returns to reprise the roll and is as fun and charismatic as ever. Yet although the film focuses a lot of time on his character, he doesn't really have a large stake in what is going on in the plot, unlike the previous two films. The problem with Wolverine is that being invincible means he needs to be grounded by a team, past, or someone in dire need of his help. None of these things were present in this film as the makers attempted to twist him into an uncharacteristic leader.
Yes, without Singer’s hands on the wheel of this film, it crashes straight into the iceberg of cliché and mindless action. Singer left the project to work on Superman Returns, dragging with him his Cyclops. This means Scott Summer gets a wopping five minute screen time before being killed off in the opening act, leaving Halley Barry as the new second in command.
That’s right, I said Halley Barry NOT Storm. Needing to keep some star power the studio was forced to give Barry more screen time to keep her in the film. Her roll is expanded to a ridiculous size and seething in self importance that at times it even has Wolverine tearing up and saying “Can I be in the movie too?” To make matters worse Halley Barry decides to stop playing the character. In the first two films at least she had a shadow of a resemblance to the character. Here she just plays herself. I hope she enjoyed it because her carrier went down the gutter as soon as Zoe Saldana made the scene and stole all the roles Barry used to get.
The movie just decides to throw in as any characters from the X-Men series as it can, as if they needed to quickly stock up the Toys R Us shelves. They take every opportunity too toss in big name characters and villains from the comic no matter how brief or unimportant they are. Oh look there’s Angel, oh look there’s a Sentinel, oh look there’s the multiple man, oh look there is Juggernaut…never mind it’s the Rhino in Juggernaut’s costume…..oh look Angel again, I forgot he was in this movie. It is just no fun seeing the X-Men only fight brief appearances and nameless grunts. I'm really how much tension can the scene have. Is Wolverine really going to get beat by a nameless face who shoots pinecones out of his wrists?
The only real welcomed addition was Beast played reasonably well by Kelsey Grammar. He actually played a significant part and was an interesting character, even if we didn’t get to see his more animalistic side in the film. Part of the Beasts charm is his struggle between sophisticated man and wild animal. Yet he was still fun.
Then there are the action scenes. Though some are legitimately impressive, it starts to feel like a mind numbing special effects presentations that serves no purpose than to showcase the CGI and ultimately build up to an equally mind numbing conclusion. It is pretty lights with a thin predictable plot.
As is obvious, I have little positive to say about this mindless conclusion to the original series. Though it is nice too see many of the X-Men as students this time around, there are simply too many character arcs to follow, too many money grab side villains, and not enough plot. The old actors who return are fun (excluding Berry) and Magneto is still a fantastic, menacing villain.
The first act isn’t that bad but it falls apart in the second and third. The problem is it focuses on fights and effects rather than the cool concept of social unrest due to a cure. At least that part was interesting. Bottom line the film loses the heart of it’s characters for sloppy effects and thus the audience loses their reason to care.
FINAL RATING: 3/10- (30%)
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