X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

reviewed by Charity Bishop

They come in all shapes, sizes, and forms. Mutants capable of manipulating their appearance, taking flight into the skies, sustaining bullet wounds, controlling water and fire, and threatening the future of mankind as we know it. Most of the world calls them freaks. But for X-Men fans, they're heroes, and it becomes one final climactic battle that will forever alter the course of mankind.

Twenty years ago, Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and his trusted friend and colleague Eric Lensherr (Ian McKellen), later known as Magneto, came into contact with a child that possessed stronger powers than either of them had ever before seen. The gifted little girl was Jean Gray, and her heroic sacrifice to save the others from a catastrophic event still haunts the lonely school corridors. Her lover Cyclops (James Marsden) has taken a turn for the worse, prone to melancholy and fits of uncontrolled emotion. Xavier fears he is not the man he once was, and entrusts the future keeping of his School for the Gifted in the skilled hands of Storm (Halle Berry). With a new president in office that fully respects the mutant population and their advances, it seems the mutants have nothing more to fear from the humans. Acting as a liaison between mutant and human is the seemingly mild-mannered Dr. Hank McCoy (Kelsey Grammer), but not even he can sustain the devastating insult of a local scientific discovery that can return the mutant gene to normal, permanently "curing" all mutants.

Some welcome this opportunity to be like the rest of humanity, while others, including Magneto and the Brotherhood, believe it is nothing more than the first step in a futuristic holocaust intended to wipe out their population. When they unleash war upon mankind, it is left up to the X-Men, made up of Wolverene (Hugh Jackman), Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), Shadowcat (Ellen Page) to save humanity. In the midst of this chaos, a newly restored Jean Gray (Famke Janssen) is returned to them, but Xavier fears her darker side has been unleashed, and Magneto intends to use her as his mightiest weapon in the battle over the fate of mankind. It's not to say there's not plenty to like about this third and final installment in the X-Men series, but it doesn't seem to pack as global a punch as the others. So much screen time is devoted to impressive action sequences that much of the emotion of new characters is lost. There are still some great character moments (Iceman and Shadowcat skating together on a frozen water fountain, while Rogue looks down on them from the mansion; Storm telling Wolverene to pick a side and stand by his choice; and particularly as one former friend watches another suffer and die) but we know almost nothing about the new players. Angel (Ben Foster) is a potentially fantastic character that barely has a half hour of screen time, and never with much depth.

There were also numerous deaths, losses, and other unexpected wrenches thrown into the works. I cannot reveal them without giving away major plot points, but I was shocked and horrified with where some of the characters wound up. It also lacked the structure and "one-ness" with its predecessors, choosing to skip over the common creed we know and love and approach it as a stand-alone project. That being said, it was an adrenaline-packed and often harrowing glimpse into the final chapter of a saga fans have grown to love. If you have seen the other films, you know the level of violence involved, and this one has plenty of gruesome and/or traumatic moments. The latest means of killing people is some kind of psychic intervention where they "shatter," as they slowly disintegrate. Humans are shot at and blown up; they are tossed into the air and explode into dust. Cars spin and tumble, crunch and smash into oblivion as Magneto uses them for ulterior purposes. Individuals are shot, stabbed, hit with darts that transform them into humans, and thrown through windows. Mild profanities pop up, along with two uses of a derogatory term for women, and one crude name for the male anatomy.

The film doesn't have as much Mystique sequences, but like the others, has several shots of her naked body covered in blue prosthetics. She transforms into human form, and the audience gets a lingering glimpse of her lying naked on the floor (her arms and legs obscure intimate details). Jean and Wolverene make out heavily on an exam-room table; she wraps her legs around him and starts to undress him before he realizes she's not herself. I have mixed feelings about this final installment. Part of me is disappointed that it wasn't up to the standard of the previous two (arguably, the second film is the finest), and I also feel an immense sorrow because some of the characters I know and love are now gone. They have either chosen to become normal, been forced into it, or killed off in dramatic ways. Either way, it is an emotionally explosive conclusion. Also, stay to the end of the credits, for a jarring thirty-second scene that leaves you believing that it may not be over yet.