X-Men 3 - The Last Stand

[Ohiospeedo]

Since this just came on video yesterday, and I watch it for the first time last night...I thought I would make a new thread. Was anyone else somewhat disappointed with the movie? I understand that the movie has to be somewhat different than the comics, but I grew up watching X-Men and reading the comics and they completely changed the story of the mutants.

 

[januaryguy]

I was also disappointed after enjoying parts 1 & 2. Even the special effects were boring. Maybe Bryan was the missing link.

 

[starlight70]

When a few of my friends expressed how much they like the show - I just went blank. Seriously, were they just bad taste in good superhero film?

I was disappointed with Angel. Tot he should have a bigger role.

Tot that Cyclop should not be written that way.

The only one that I cheered for was Kitty, and it was not a male superhero. Sigh...

 

[rks0430]

sorry kids, I enjoyed it. Angel, the surprises, Logan shirtless...all of it.

 

[Just_Believe18]

It was like drinking out of a half empty 2-liter of soda where the lid wasn't tightened all the way.

 

[Ohiospeedo]

Yeah I wasn't happy either with what they did with Cycolops and Prof. X.

Also, Angel barely had a role in this film. Would have liked to see more of him.

And was really pissed off of what they did with Rogue this entire series...just made her out to be this insecure little whiny bitch.

 

[Vizjerei]

I agree i was disappointed in the film, the whole phoenix and cyclops issue was done very badly, as jean would never react that way to scott, even as the phoenix.

i was also disappointed in the rogue thing, that she couldnt embrace her powers and opted out makes for a bad general life lesson imho, but maybe im reading to much into it?!

many of the minor characters were also jumbled round and had powers they shouldnt or named incorrectly. i didnt read many of the comics but i was a fan of both the cartoon series.

on the plus side tho, i thought the effects were spectacular as ever, and i did enjoy the ending(s).


i hope they do another one so that we dont have this one as the last installment and the one ppl remember!

 

[Roland00]

I liked the movie, but it should have been twenty minutes longer, needed more dialogue, and to slow down the pace of the movie somewhat. Yes they vastily changed the format from the comics, but they been doing that since the first X-Men movie.

How good are the 10 deleted scenes and the 3 alternate endings?

 

[ElectricSuperstar]

i hope they do another one so that we dont have this one as the last installment and the one ppl remember!

The say that they have two more planned: one about Wolverine and one about Magneto.

What is is this X3 that you speak of. They would never make a movie that would take my favorite heroes (Phoenix, Prof. X and Rogue) and cause me agonizing pain as I watch the movie.

I've always been an Uncanny X-Men guy, and I liked both the X-Men (I get it all on youTube, since they won't release them on DVD) and Ultimate X-Men cartoons. I liked the first two movies, even as the changed the stories around, the characters still made a connection with me. X3 was all fluff, fighting and effects, but no real connection.

 

[Gemini_Valley]

Not a fan of the third installment. You know a movie is bad when the trailer is better than the actual film.

I've noticed that people are pointing fingers at the director for ruining the triology. But hey, Bryan was gonna direct a x-men movie from the same script.

Bryan Singer took two of the head writers (whose names escape me at the moment) from the first two X-Men installments along with him to pen Superman Returns. So the script would have been vastly different, and there was a report about Singer wanting to shoot X-Men's 3 & 4 back-to-back. One dealing with the Phoenix saga, the other dealing with Dark Phoenix. But FOX refused to wait for him and didn't have him contractually for the "final" film. Would could have been. . .

 

[rks0430]

General, thanks!!! I love finding secret stuff. Now my dilema is to surf or go watch that hidden deleted scene.

For me personally, I thought the three alternate endings were going to be pretty huge. They were 30 second tidbits that really offered nothing to speak of. The extras were a disappointment.

Still overall, my biggest disappointment was not seeing more of Angel...either more of a role or more of him exposed.

 

[xyboyms]

I guess they are going ahead and making X-Men 4 without Halle, Hugh, Ian, Famke, Patrick, or Bryan. I guess it's going to focus on the younger X-men kids.....
This third one was kinda blah. It's like they were thinking "It's the last one so let's kill everyone and quickly tie up all the loose ends in less than 90 minutes!"

 

[GL]

I was so impressed with X2 that I had a very high expectation for the third installment. X3 was a bitter disappointment. It was a hodge podge of various story elements which felt unresolved by the end. Not to mention there were way too many mutants to give them adequate story/screen time. I'll probably still check out the discs from NetFlix as I am curious about all the deleted scenes and alternate endings.

 

[luminum]

I liked it for the fighting spectacular. The story was changed, but that's the screenplay writer's fault. Shoddy directing would be the director's fault and in that sense, I felt the new director got the shaft because their back up dropped out 3 months before and this new guy had to take the reins regardless of the the story.

And personally, I don't care how much it was changed because it should have been pretty obvious that something as complex as the Phoenix Force and all that it touches--Scott and Jean, Logan and Jean, Magneto, Xavier--could never have been satisfyingly as it stood in a standard movie. Not to mention the fact that they wanted to give a message, so they added the cure. All of that just ensured that things would have to be pared down and with no 4th movie on the horizon, there was no way to break it up, regardless of what Singer wanted to do before he signed on for the unspectacular Superman movie.

And what could we have expected from Rogue? If you wanted her to come out of her shell, you should have been disappointed from movie one, since it was obvious that she would never be able to obtain her more active powers in any way that wouldn't compromise her as a 'good guy'. Even X2 showed that she was still meek and unusable. She was a good plot device for X1 (because the inginuity of how they used her powers was brilliant) but after that, they're stuck with a dud. What was she going to do? Steal short detrimental kisses and fly the X-Jet for the rest of her life on the team?

True, the movie wasn't a great plot holder and I'll always wonder about what could have been, but for what it's worth, I got to see a relatively powerful and insane Jean Grey give people what was coming to them, and a lot of the hardcore super-powered fighting that was missing from the other 2 movies. So I can live with the fact that the stories were great from 1 and 2 but lagged in good old comic book brawls and that 3 had a C- plot and super concentrated fighting.

 

[The_Reaper]

The problem is replacing a director who has subtly and likes to build his points slowly to a powerful climax (don't read into that too much)....With someone who's focused on music videos and "buddy" action flicks.

A good example of this is to watch Silence of the Lambs...and then Ratner's "Red Dragon".

Sure, Red Dragon wasn't a terrible movie...But the psychological element was replaced for the blood and guts road...

Same thing with X-3...It was like "Okay, we have $40 million...How much shit can we blow up?"


The storyline was a particularly good one, the idea of a cure...But I don't think Ratner was the one to intrepret it for the big screen.

He hardly touched the ethical/moral issues of the idea of this cure, and just basically played the sterotypical views...Those who want it, and those who don't with no real justification or attempt to explain.

The movie was lacking compaired to the first two movies, but is definatly the "action heavy" movie of the series.

And this is where I get lynched: The third one revolved way too much around Wolverine.

I understand he's a popular character, but it seems like he was the only visible X-Man for the entire thing.

Also, the poor writing off of Cyclops...It would be more realistic to see him go after Jean when Magneto takes her under his wing...Rather than Logan.

There was a lot more that could have been done, but all it all it wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen. I'll still get it, but it could have been done better.

IF, X4 comes...Let's hope Fox puts Singer back at the helm.

 

[judas731]

I think going into it I was expecting it to be bad going from Singer to Ratner. But when i came out of the theatre I didnt think it was going to be that bad. My friend I went with was in love with it though, he thought it was better than the first two but I just disliked it altogether.

 

[judas731]

I agree this movie had too many characters to focus on people's favorites but even the ones they did focus on such as Rogue and Angel were just bad.

 

[jcojax78]

X3 deifinately made up for the other two movies in the action department. The diaglogue however was absolutely the shits. The guy that was playing the president was terrible. I know they want to bring a close to this trilogy, but was it necessary to make so many drastic choices as far as character loss goes?!?
There were some plusses in the movie though: we got to see Beast kicken some ass, we got to see the "Fastball special", Beast used the phrase "Oh my stars and gaters" (that was classic), the effects used on Famke for the Phoenix were incredible!!! Almost scarey. An we got to see a small tiff between Iceman and Pyro, although I wanted a bit more between them.

Lauren Shuler Donner has confirmed that they are working on Wolverine as well as Young Mahneto for movies and like someone posted earlier, they are going for another X-Men using some of the younger characters (Kitty Pryde, Colosses, Iceman, Jubilee, etc.) All the big players from the previous movies are out. Not to say they won't use the characters, maybe just bring in new actors.

 

[luminum]

Um...the reason why there was no interplay between Juggernaut and Xavier, why Rogue 'pussied' out, and all those other continuity issues thats ome fans have been having is because....

...they're not meant to be canonical. At all. They exist in a separate X-Men movieverse.

Juggernaut isn't even a mutant, but in the movies, he is and he's anonymous. He has no relation to Xavier and it was never meant to be that way in this film. The moment that they even showed that Juggernaut was in a transport truck and called him a 'mutant' most people realized that Juggernaut wasn't going to be the same. No one complains that Rogue and Mystique and Nightcrawler don't have anything together, but that's because in the movieverse, they aren't connected either. In fact, Mystique has never been on a team with Magneto in the comics.

Rogue hasn't been a fierce and determined individual in any of the three movies. She was just a mutant girl with a terrible power and there was no break in sight for her. She didn't have the personality to persevere like her comic or cartoon counterparts and she was never going to be more active without having to kill someone (like some Ms. Marvel counterpart). Her eventual decision to lose her powers made sense to me, and if you're presenting the issue, it's something that is going to be done by some people in the conflict. Making it just some random unimportant nobody character makes the decision meaningless and isn't realistic to the message.

That being said, the same goes for Mystique. The fact that Mystique gets cured makes it that much stronger of an action in the plot. She was an important character and she suffered the consequences that all of the mutants feared would happen to one of them.

That's the exact problem with something like House of M in the current run. No important mutants actually suffer the consequences of M-Day. Only Jubilee, who wasn't an active character anyway and maybe Moonstar, but she's been inactive, too. Every person who was an X-Man is still a mutant, so the horrific consequences of the M-Day event are never fully realized.

I also don't agree that if Bryan Singer directed the movie, it'd be "much better". If we assume that Singer stayed and didn't take two of the writers with him and was stuck with the script that Ratner was stuck with, he may have directed the film better, but the story still would have remained the same.

By far one of the worst main aspects of the movie was the addition of Colossus and Kitty ont he team without fleshing them out. Kitty only serves as an object of jealousy for Rogue and Colossus is just extra muscle. If they had fleshed them a bit in the film, given them their own scenes that showed what they were isntead of how they interacted with the other characters, they would have been better.

In the end, the biggest fault here is the new script writers.

But for what it's worth, I still love the film.

 

[Gemini_Valley]

Rogue hasn't been a fierce and determined individual in any of the three movies. She was just a mutant girl with a terrible power and there was no break in sight for her. She didn't have the personality to persevere like her comic or cartoon counterparts and she was never going to be more active without having to kill someone (like some Ms. Marvel counterpart). Her eventual decision to lose her powers made sense to me, and if you're presenting the issue, it's something that is going to be done by some people in the conflict. Making it just some random unimportant nobody character makes the decision meaningless and isn't realistic to the message.

I've never cared for the film incarnation of Rogue (which has more to do with the actress than anything else), and even though she's my favorite X-Men I wasn't upset with the conclusion of her story. As you mentioned, it makes sense for her to take the cure in this continuity. One of the first questions Rogue, er, excuse me, Marie asks is can the Professor cure her. So her story comes full circle. But I would liked to have seen more examples as to why she opted for the cure, aside from the one that was presented in her 4/5 scenes: her jealousy over the closeness between Iceman & Kitty.

I also don't agree that if Bryan Singer directed the movie, it'd be "much better". If we assume that Singer stayed and didn't take two of the writers with him and was stuck with the script that Ratner was stuck with, he may have directed the film better, but the story still would have remained the same.

In the end, the biggest fault here is the new script writers

The problem with X-Men: The Last Stand was not so much the direction as it was the writing, I agree. However, if I'm not mistaken, Bryan Singer played an integral role in the writing aspects of the first two installments along with the two head writers. I think the end results of the third installment would have been a lot more satisfying then the soulless action-packed movie that was served. I think Singer had very distinct plans, so I don't think the script would have been the same.