X - MEN UNITED WE STAND...
X-MEN X-MEN X-MEN X-MEN X-MEN X-MEN X-MEN X-MEN X-MEN
THE LAST STAND --- 3:35 AM SATURDAY MAY 27! 2006
This movie is fantastic! The movie that takes the most risks and is the most fun this far into 2006. As the Oracle said "Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way":
They've borrowed heavily from those comic book writers The Wachowski Brothers' Matrix films by re-constructing ideas from previous famous Science Fiction movies and sticking them in here...all over the place. In a sort of shape-of-things-to-come (you really don't think this is the LAST X-Man movie, do you?) there's the head of a Sentinel - one of my favorite X-Men villains, crunch - landing on a Holographic Floor stolen right off of Patrick Stewart's Star Trek The Next Generation. Good - let's have a real dark X-Men IV and face The Sentinels (very much like gargantuan versions of the machines in the beginning of Terminator II: Judgment Day). It is no accident they borrowed from the opening scene of "The Wrath Of Khan" - and more symbolism found with Jean Grey rising from the waters a la Mr. Spock in the sequel to The Wrath Of Khan. Got it so far? Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart look like an old gay couple going to Quentin Crisp's house...I mean...Jean Gray's house (God Bless Quentin! What a kind soul he was!) - and there's symbolism in the "Grey House" and the President in the "White House" - the whole movie - as colorful as it is - has a moral: shades of grey brings a bit of balance into the world as we know it. Meaning - if you've got it - you'd better not flaunt it. The symbolism of the plastic dart guns with the "cure" for Mutants is nothing more than a metaphor for the AIDS virus, Eric Lehnsherr / Magneto realizing that the Pink Triangle was death as a cure. The number on his arm from the Holocaust
helps generate the rage, only he finds a being that has more power - and more rage - than himself. This is a very violent movie. You won't see as many limbs falling off like in Saving Private Ryan, but it is just as grisly - both in the physical and on an emotional level - especially regarding Magneto/Lehnsherr's reward to his loyal Raven Darkholme. As touched as he is by her generosity, he remains cold and determined. McKellan is brilliant as a driven General with a real take-no-prisoners mission. If people have to die for his cause to win, they are expendable collateral. Sure, there's malice for the true enemy, but the innocent in the way can go to hell. Where Professor Xavier will cross a moral line because he believes he has to, Magneto has no moral code. Even when he would like to be noble he refuses the opportunity, the choice. This isn't really a battle between Professor X and Magneto - like that very confusing
"big battle" storyline that Marvel crossed-over into so many of their comic books with, something that ended up being one big mess like the first Star Trek movie. This is more focused, a battle between Humans and Mutants with Professor X getting caught in the middle. There's no Oracle here to be the ref - the Oracle being the most important character in the chess game of The Matrix. If in THAT 3 part film series it all came down to The Architect and The Oracle, well then Agent Smith, Neo, and everyone else - even the Last Exile - were all mere pawns that the two major machines - The Oracle and The Architect - used to occupy their time in Eternity. After all, if a machine reaches perfection it all gets pretty boring for them, doesn't it? Kind of like those Krypton exiles in Superman II who conquered the world and were bored with at after they "won". Arnold Terminator needs "purpose", as does Agent Smith. The same old same old holds no sense of time and no drama. Thus it is the drama - the thrill of the hunt - that puts the Oracle and the Architect at the table in the chess match. While in X-Men it is the humans versus anyone who is different, in The Matrix the battle is never really between the humans and the machines - they are all mere tools - it is a psychological drama regarding chess pieces that have "choice": with both powerful programs giving their sides in the battle the ammo to go bonkers with. Without that type of a similar "construct", a movie like X-Men: The Last Stand is more of a mutant free-for-all - still employing the us vs. them only with a shades of gray mentality. It is highly entertaining though the artistic license taken with who gets killed when and where is rather trite. Like, do you really think any major characters are going to really get killed off in some Hollywood flick? Just as a piece of Arnold's arm in
TERMINATOR 2 got caught in the machinery before he dissolved himself in the molten metal (a plot device they didn't utilize for Terminator 3 though it is always there for #4 if they so choose...) the ending screams SEQUEL. Matrix needs a #4, X-Men will get one, for sure. Especially by coming second box office-wise only to Star Wars III which is really Star Wars VI. Mission Impossible is a mere afterthought at this point.
In XMEN III the pluses far outweigh the minuses and director Brett Ratner goes out of his way to add a touch of class to some of the incidental scenes. That gives Stewart and McKellan the opportunity - a platform - to shine. Though Hugh Jackman is the alleged "star" of this episode, he still doesn't exude the confidence of those older, wiser, more established screen stars. It could be Ian McKellan's finest performance in a career full of great moments - because he is so absolutely vicious and so very clever.
THE CHEMISTRY SET
Remember when Linda Hamilton held a wounded Michael Biehn in 1984's THE TERMINATOR and the silver robot rose up from the flames? Now that was screen chemistry. You won't see it here when James Marsden and Famke Janssen. At least when Janssen was wrapping her legs around Pierce Brosnan's neck in 1995's "Goldeneye" James Bond flick you could see some steam. In X-Men 3 Marsden seems to have motorbiked north for a cold one. Literally. 9 years Marsden's senior, four years on Hugh Jackman, at 42 years young the woman looks nothing like the babe from Goldeneye.
Wolverine and Cyclops really needed to establish their friendship in this movie - the chemistry between the two actors was never the typical fight for the damsel. Jean Grey was more like an emotional ping pong ball between these two as they set about using the X-Woman to wind each other up. Indeed, their mutually shared sense of loss should have brought them very close together. The inner struggle (in the movies, not the comic books) is that you can feel the chemistry between Hugh Jackman and James Marsden yet it is allowed to evaporate. Poof. It goes unexplored and would've given both actors a huge boost not only in this film but in those that followed. I'm not suggesting as overt affections as in Brokeback Mountain - but what the heck, with all implied in the script the stage was perfectly set for some kind of passion. Heck, in this day and age, what's wrong with a little kiss between friends. And perhaps because of that the Wolverine and Jean Gray/Phoenix romances seems so forced. Actually, the entire Phoenix character seems forced - there is so much potential for pure mayhem here that they kept somewhat on the psychological level. I'm not talking about the deaths she causes - which also seem forced - the unreleased potential here was that of an atomic bomb as loose cannon. Where she should've been in competition with Magneto to see who could be the more callous, ruthless and effective, there is a total failure to exploit her schizophrenia. As the demoness she seems conflicted. A true schizo would just cut the trees down and be done with it. Remorse is not in the witch's makeup.
Janssen draining someone's life away as if she's Rogue times 10 is one of the weak spots in an otherwise fantastic flick which is vastly superior to the Fantastic Four. Yeah, imitating Poltergeist by moving furniture was pretty amusing, if not downright funny, and dropping the house a la The Wizard Of Oz, thud, was a reminder of what we learned in X-Men 2: You can't go back home, there is no Kansas when you grow up, and if you find Oz, stay there.
4:25 AM
THE LAST STAND --- 3:35 AM SATURDAY MAY 27! 2006
This movie is fantastic! The movie that takes the most risks and is the most fun this far into 2006. As the Oracle said "Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way":
They've borrowed heavily from those comic book writers The Wachowski Brothers' Matrix films by re-constructing ideas from previous famous Science Fiction movies and sticking them in here...all over the place. In a sort of shape-of-things-to-come (you really don't think this is the LAST X-Man movie, do you?) there's the head of a Sentinel - one of my favorite X-Men villains, crunch - landing on a Holographic Floor stolen right off of Patrick Stewart's Star Trek The Next Generation. Good - let's have a real dark X-Men IV and face The Sentinels (very much like gargantuan versions of the machines in the beginning of Terminator II: Judgment Day). It is no accident they borrowed from the opening scene of "The Wrath Of Khan" - and more symbolism found with Jean Grey rising from the waters a la Mr. Spock in the sequel to The Wrath Of Khan. Got it so far? Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart look like an old gay couple going to Quentin Crisp's house...I mean...Jean Gray's house (God Bless Quentin! What a kind soul he was!) - and there's symbolism in the "Grey House" and the President in the "White House" - the whole movie - as colorful as it is - has a moral: shades of grey brings a bit of balance into the world as we know it. Meaning - if you've got it - you'd better not flaunt it. The symbolism of the plastic dart guns with the "cure" for Mutants is nothing more than a metaphor for the AIDS virus, Eric Lehnsherr / Magneto realizing that the Pink Triangle was death as a cure. The number on his arm from the Holocaust
helps generate the rage, only he finds a being that has more power - and more rage - than himself. This is a very violent movie. You won't see as many limbs falling off like in Saving Private Ryan, but it is just as grisly - both in the physical and on an emotional level - especially regarding Magneto/Lehnsherr's reward to his loyal Raven Darkholme. As touched as he is by her generosity, he remains cold and determined. McKellan is brilliant as a driven General with a real take-no-prisoners mission. If people have to die for his cause to win, they are expendable collateral. Sure, there's malice for the true enemy, but the innocent in the way can go to hell. Where Professor Xavier will cross a moral line because he believes he has to, Magneto has no moral code. Even when he would like to be noble he refuses the opportunity, the choice. This isn't really a battle between Professor X and Magneto - like that very confusing
"big battle" storyline that Marvel crossed-over into so many of their comic books with, something that ended up being one big mess like the first Star Trek movie. This is more focused, a battle between Humans and Mutants with Professor X getting caught in the middle. There's no Oracle here to be the ref - the Oracle being the most important character in the chess game of The Matrix. If in THAT 3 part film series it all came down to The Architect and The Oracle, well then Agent Smith, Neo, and everyone else - even the Last Exile - were all mere pawns that the two major machines - The Oracle and The Architect - used to occupy their time in Eternity. After all, if a machine reaches perfection it all gets pretty boring for them, doesn't it? Kind of like those Krypton exiles in Superman II who conquered the world and were bored with at after they "won". Arnold Terminator needs "purpose", as does Agent Smith. The same old same old holds no sense of time and no drama. Thus it is the drama - the thrill of the hunt - that puts the Oracle and the Architect at the table in the chess match. While in X-Men it is the humans versus anyone who is different, in The Matrix the battle is never really between the humans and the machines - they are all mere tools - it is a psychological drama regarding chess pieces that have "choice": with both powerful programs giving their sides in the battle the ammo to go bonkers with. Without that type of a similar "construct", a movie like X-Men: The Last Stand is more of a mutant free-for-all - still employing the us vs. them only with a shades of gray mentality. It is highly entertaining though the artistic license taken with who gets killed when and where is rather trite. Like, do you really think any major characters are going to really get killed off in some Hollywood flick? Just as a piece of Arnold's arm in
TERMINATOR 2 got caught in the machinery before he dissolved himself in the molten metal (a plot device they didn't utilize for Terminator 3 though it is always there for #4 if they so choose...) the ending screams SEQUEL. Matrix needs a #4, X-Men will get one, for sure. Especially by coming second box office-wise only to Star Wars III which is really Star Wars VI. Mission Impossible is a mere afterthought at this point.
In XMEN III the pluses far outweigh the minuses and director Brett Ratner goes out of his way to add a touch of class to some of the incidental scenes. That gives Stewart and McKellan the opportunity - a platform - to shine. Though Hugh Jackman is the alleged "star" of this episode, he still doesn't exude the confidence of those older, wiser, more established screen stars. It could be Ian McKellan's finest performance in a career full of great moments - because he is so absolutely vicious and so very clever.
THE CHEMISTRY SET
Remember when Linda Hamilton held a wounded Michael Biehn in 1984's THE TERMINATOR and the silver robot rose up from the flames? Now that was screen chemistry. You won't see it here when James Marsden and Famke Janssen. At least when Janssen was wrapping her legs around Pierce Brosnan's neck in 1995's "Goldeneye" James Bond flick you could see some steam. In X-Men 3 Marsden seems to have motorbiked north for a cold one. Literally. 9 years Marsden's senior, four years on Hugh Jackman, at 42 years young the woman looks nothing like the babe from Goldeneye.
Wolverine and Cyclops really needed to establish their friendship in this movie - the chemistry between the two actors was never the typical fight for the damsel. Jean Grey was more like an emotional ping pong ball between these two as they set about using the X-Woman to wind each other up. Indeed, their mutually shared sense of loss should have brought them very close together. The inner struggle (in the movies, not the comic books) is that you can feel the chemistry between Hugh Jackman and James Marsden yet it is allowed to evaporate. Poof. It goes unexplored and would've given both actors a huge boost not only in this film but in those that followed. I'm not suggesting as overt affections as in Brokeback Mountain - but what the heck, with all implied in the script the stage was perfectly set for some kind of passion. Heck, in this day and age, what's wrong with a little kiss between friends. And perhaps because of that the Wolverine and Jean Gray/Phoenix romances seems so forced. Actually, the entire Phoenix character seems forced - there is so much potential for pure mayhem here that they kept somewhat on the psychological level. I'm not talking about the deaths she causes - which also seem forced - the unreleased potential here was that of an atomic bomb as loose cannon. Where she should've been in competition with Magneto to see who could be the more callous, ruthless and effective, there is a total failure to exploit her schizophrenia. As the demoness she seems conflicted. A true schizo would just cut the trees down and be done with it. Remorse is not in the witch's makeup.
Janssen draining someone's life away as if she's Rogue times 10 is one of the weak spots in an otherwise fantastic flick which is vastly superior to the Fantastic Four. Yeah, imitating Poltergeist by moving furniture was pretty amusing, if not downright funny, and dropping the house a la The Wizard Of Oz, thud, was a reminder of what we learned in X-Men 2: You can't go back home, there is no Kansas when you grow up, and if you find Oz, stay there.
4:25 AM
posted by vrtv at 9:23 PM
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