X-Men: The Last Stand

Intriguing and frustrating in nearly equal doses, the last movie in the X-Men franchise proper has a lot of potential and very little delivery. First of all, the ideas and story lines that the writers were forced to include were all top notch arcs. The Dark Phoenix and The Cure alone would have made compelling films, and probably should have been kept separated. When put together neither one is given the correct amount of time to breathe. If the producers hadn't interfered, and if Fox wasn't dead set on a release date...it could have turned out to be a much tighter screenplay. Secondly, the cast is all first-rate. Kelsey Grammer, Ellen Page, Vinnie Jones, Shohreh Aghdashloo and Ben Foster are all excellently chosen for their roles and gifted actors (alright, so Jones has one type, but he was hired to play that type). It's a pity all of them were given the short shift in character development. And while I was happy to see more of favorite things come to life (Danger Room! Juggernaut! Beast! Callisto! Sentinels!), they were not always realized in a....good way. And that is the major problem. For every positive, there's at least one or two negatives to correspond with it. It's like Alien 3 all over again. More proof that studio tampering is the wrong thing to do, especially with tent pole franchises. What's left is a smart story, intriguing characters and satisfying finale to the franchise buried deep in there somewhere. But it's getting through the Franken-plot that stops most people from looking too deeply. This is why fanboys hate Fox.

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Added by JxSxPx 9 months ago on 15 March 2009 01:44