"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.
Success Rate: + 0.2
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