Sunday, May 28, 2006

Why are they doing this to me???

X-MEN 3!!! YES!!!

Okay, this will most likely contain MAJOR spoilers to X-Men: The Last Stand. If you haven't seen this movie, then please please please don't read this post.

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What can I say...There is nothing better than being really inspired by a movie to bring me out of a blog-fast (actually, it was more blog-laziness). But I just have to say that X-Men: The Last Stand sucked so badly that it is a disgrace to the X-Men story.

However, I will say first that, if seen as purely an action flick with nothing attached at all, it's a pretty good movie. That said, I feel that the director, writers, and producers have no respect to the X-Men story. Twenty minutes into the movie, I was hunched over in my seat with my head in my hands sobbing quietly. I was willing to let Cyclops' death go when it happened, but when they started killing Professor X, making Mystique lose her power, and introducing Multiple Man as a bad guy, I just about lost it. I seriously considered walking out of the movie when Professor X died. You just don't kill Professor X!

I really don't understand why the story was written the way it was. I think they were trying way too hard to finish up the movie franchise, and they had to kill off everyone in order to make it conclude. Everything about the film was like an anti-X-Men movie. It bugged me that Wolverine took on the leadership role. Magneto losing his power at the end and being remorseful ("What have I done?") was way out of place. Storm was incredibly annoying. Rogue decided to be injected with "the cure"! Everyone was TOTALLY out of character. There is no way Wolverine could be a good leader for the X-Men. No one really seemed to stand strong in their beliefs on the issue at hand. The X-Men were totally against using the cure, but they ended up using it anyway to stop Magneto. It was too confusing introducing Angel as a boy at the beginning of the movie when you hardly ever see him for the rest of the movie. Phoenix looked more like she was demon-possessed instead of...well, a phoenix. It was like Brett Ratner had never seen the two previous movies or read any of the comics and did everything on his own. The movie didn't feel right and was too rushed all the way through.

Also, everything was so unresolved by the end. You never know who Iceman decided to be with. (Which is, by the way, the only subplot I enjoyed in the movie. It reminded me so much of Dawson's Creek. Yeah!) You don't find out if Angel's father apologized to his son and changed his ways, or still believed that mutants were infected with a disease. Pyro disappeared. I actually don't remember what becomes of the whole issue of the "cure," but I just might have missed it because I was so pissed about everyone dying in the dumbest ways possible.

Oh, and seeing the three tombstones of Xavier, Cyclops, and Jean Grey was like a big slap in the face. In just under two hours, I witnessed three of the original X-men die. The whole movie I was like, "Why are they doing this to me?" I felt like the writers were trying to figure out the best way to destroy the X-men story and piss off fans of the comics. Plus the story to this movie wasn't even that good! Mainly because they tried to do two main stories, but neither of them developed well. They should have just stuck with either the cure or with Phoenix. Too many mutants were introduced that it was like an overload and we didn't get to know any of them really. The only person I really cared about at the end of the movie was...hold on, I didn't care about anyone. Wolverine was cool, but I couldn't get past the idea of him being one of the leaders of the X-men now. That's Cyclops' job, gosh dang it!

I am angry at Ratner. I am angry at Halle Berry for demanding to having a larger role. I am angry at Bryan Singer for leaving to do Superman and never finishing what he started with X-men. I am angry at James Marsden for tagging along with Singer. I am angry that Marsden again for deciding to come back at the last minute, so Cyclops' character was sort of forced into the movie only to be killed in such a lame way. I'm am angry at Stan Lee for letting this movie get produced. I'm even angry at just being angry.

There are good things to the movie, though, but I won't go into those because they're just petty things compared to the bad. This movie is an abomination. It's another one of those things where you deny it ever existed, like The Matrix was never a trilogy or there were never Episodes 1-3 in the Star Wars saga. At least in the first two movies of X-Men they never comprimised the characters personalities to fit their story. I agree that you got to leave room for directors to make unique stories for the movies, but X-3 didn't give any respect to the comics whatsoever, and I'm insulted by everything that happened in that movie.

What a freakin' waste! By the way, I did stay to the very end of the credits to see that Professor X does indeed survive by tranferring his mind into another body. That is also unacceptable because now we have a Professor X that isn't bald and in a wheelchair. That is just dumb.

Significantly changing story is bad. How would LOTR fans respond if Peter Jackson decided to make Faramir give up his integrity to please his father or had the elves come to the rescue at Helm's Deep? Oh, wait a minute...

5 comments:

Tim said...

Thanks for spending time and writing down the thoughts that I had but were too lazy to write in my own blog. (I wrote two sentences)

Lem, be nice and link to me!

Tim said...

Oh, and I take partial credit for the rebirth of Lem's blog.

Anonymous said...

I'm not in any way a loyal comic book X-Men fan ... maybe that's why I really enjoyed "The Last Stand". But, you're right - the way Prof. X and Cyclops died was absolutely ridiculous. You can tell the writers and the director of the film have no clue as to who the REAL CORE of X-Men really are.
Anyway, I did enjoy the film for what it is - an intense action-scifi flick with a flawed story and mediocre acting. It reminded me of why I also enjoyed "Revenge of the Sith".

Luke said...

heh. yeah, well, I super enjoyed it the first time around, and the little things that irritated me the first time really came out more the second time. The whole bobby-rogue thing was irritating to me. And the Angel bit too. Both parts were so nominal that I felt like it was a waste of time in the film. If they made them part of the core thing it would have taken too long.. but maybe a bit more complexity (and rogue actually using her freakin' powers) would be good.

like has been said, for an action film, it's fun. but I understand all the 3/5 ratings that are being given.

Oli said...

Lem, please. My post is the best.