X-Men: The Last Stand (4½ Stars)

"X-Men: The Last Stand" is the third film in the original X-Men trilogy. It's a very good film, but it suffers from what I call "telescoping". Comic book stories develop over years, while films have to squeeze the important events into a couple of hours. As a result, things that happened years apart in the comics can take place within days on screen.

That's particularly damaging here because the film combines two of the X-Men's most important stories, the Phoenix Saga and the Dark Phoenix Saga. In the comics Jean Grey returned from apparent death as Phoenix, but it wasn't until years later that Mastermind manipulated her and unleashed Dark Phoenix. In the film Jean returns and almost immediately becomes a destructive force. Phoenix is also presented as a power that has always existed within Jean, rather than a cosmic force. It's an effective story in its own right, but it loses much of the tragedy and gradual development that made the Dark Phoenix Saga so memorable.

At the same time, a second story concerns a "cure" for mutation, created from the powers of a young mutant who can temporarily suppress the abilities of other mutants. Magneto sees the cure as an attack on mutantkind and gathers an army to destroy it. It's a strong plot, but putting it alongside Dark Phoenix means that neither storyline gets as much room as it deserves.

The film also takes the surprising step of killing three of its central characters. Scott Summers dies early in the film, Jean Grey dies at the end and Professor Xavier is apparently killed by Jean. Xavier gets a reprieve after the credits. Earlier in the film he discusses the possibility of transferring the mind of a dying person into the body of someone with no higher brain functions. The final scene reveals that he has done exactly that, transferring his consciousness into another body.

So I have the same basic problem with "X-Men: The Last Stand" that I had when I last watched it. As an adaptation of the Dark Phoenix Saga it's disappointing. As a film, however, it's very good. Maybe the biggest mistake wasn't the way the story was told, but trying to tell so much of it at once.

Stan Lee makes one of his usual cameos at the beginning of the film. He appears as one of Jean Grey's neighbours, watering his garden as the water rises into the air.

There's a second cameo by Chris Claremont, playing another neighbour whose lawnmower starts floating. Lee co-created the X-Men with Jack Kirby, while Claremont wrote the original Dark Phoenix Saga. If anyone had earned the right to look puzzled by what the film was doing with Jean Grey, it was Chris Claremont.

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