X Men; The Last Stand: Didn’t Eric ever learn to not play with fire in the camps?... oh… wait…

WARNING! This review does tackle a topic not suitable for children, and not suitable for work. The purpose of this is for an explanation of a particular matter of the film and isn’t meant to depict the action. The writer recommends having someone over 18 look over the review first in order to judge suitability. You have been warned.

I would like to take this chance to clarify that this joke is intended to take a stab at a fictional character with strong magnetic abilities, and the potentially distasteful joke isn’t aimed at any real person or culture. If someone can show me that Mutants are real and one with control over magnetism is Jewish and was in a concentration camp, I will take the joke back.

The problem with iconic stories is that a lot of people try to get them in adaptions of the source as soon as possible. Fox had a really bad problem… actually, it hasn’t gone away, has it? Fox has a really bad problem with doing this with the Marvel properties that they own, leading to a large number of problems. We saw it with their desire to have Galactus, a planet-eating villain from the comics, be the main villain in the second Fantastic 4 movie (and for some reason he was a space cloud?) and the signs of it happening again with the Dark Phoenix storyline is happening again with the next X-Men movie, Dark Phoenix. According to many though, this was not the first time they rushed the Phoenix force, for X-Men: The Last Stand, tried that too. How did it go? Well…

Starting with the story, while tensions have died down a little in-between X2 and now, scientists have discovered a Mutant by the name of Leach that has the power to suppress the mutant gene, and are using his DNA to make a “cure” for any Mutants who do not want their powers. Can you guess how Magneto took the news? If your guess was “absolutely disgusted and uses The Cure as a lightning rod to create an army of Mutants to destroy the lab where it’s made”, you’d be right! However, he has recruited one specific mutant, Jean Grey, who somehow survived being crushed under a dam’s worth of water, but doing so released her second personality, the Phoenix… I’ll get to that next… After the Phoenix kills Scott and Professor Xavier, it’s up to Wolverine, Storm, along with new recruits Colossus, Kitty (about time), Ice Man and Beast to stop Magneto, his brotherhood, and Jean.

Ok, let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way, the Phoenix, and if you’re wondering why that warning was at the start of the post, this is why (I am going to get so many awkward talks with my friends and family who read this…). I know people are going to hate comparisons to the comics (especially from someone who hasn’t read the arc), but it has to be done in this case. Taking out all the alien, space travel and the (no, I’m not kidding) S&M club (I have no idea how this got into the comics either), the Phoenix force saga was about making Jean Grey more of an interesting character. She was, at the time, flawless in terms of personality, had a power set that didn’t have drawbacks, she was a bit of a boring character. Things like her costume changes (including the “subtle” skin tight latex with a loose bit of cloth tied around her waist and the far less subtle costume change when she was a part of the aforementioned space S&M club), her sudden interest in Wolverine even though she was in a relationship with Cyclops, all ties into an overarching “good girl goes bad” story. The Phoenix force is to Jean what Venom is to Spider-Man (what a coincidence that both companies stuffed up that idea, huh?), she didn’t have it to begin with, but when she got it, it corrupts her. That is the biggest reason why a lot of comic fans hate how the movies have depicted the Phoenix Force so far, and I’m willing to bet a reason for this change is that the team behind its cinematic attempts have forgotten (twice apparently) to read the stories that led up to her coming out story.

How they handled the adaption to film is, as mentioned before, the Phoenix Force is something that Jean has always had, it’s a second personality that she has that is more animalistic. It’s angrier, driving by more basic desires, and the idea of her character for this is that, while most of the time it’s believed to be the Phoenix, there are times where Jean is her “usual self” and is a crying mess because of the Phoenix’s actions, and jumping between the two personas against her will. I can understand the intention behind the changes, do you think a movie with a focus on an S&M club would get anything but an 18+ rating? This was before Deadpool after all. But this seems like an overcorrection and does defeat the point of the arc. While I can congratulate the fact that they took their time with this (to an extent), it doesn’t work in terms of where the idea came from, who the character is supposed to be, and in the context of the greater X-Men canon. Imagine if they tried to do this again (ignore the fact that they are), but tried to blend this with a story where the force was split between several mutants like in Avengers vs X-Men (something that you know they’ll try to do if that buyout goes through. Do not be surprised if the close of one of the phases is going to be a Dark Phoenix story that leads into Avengers vs. X-Men. Who knows, that one might have the space S&M club in it cause with have the cosmic side of Marvel now).

The main plot though about Magneto wanting to destroy The Cure, that’s solid, that’s entertaining. I’ll admit that I’d be on his side when it comes to something like this because, while it might sound cruel, if it was a cure for something that isn’t seen as normal in this day and age (I’ll leave you to figure out valid examples), wouldn’t you do the same thing? The problem with it though is that it's bogged down in a pseudo-Dark Phoenix story. If this had nothing to do with Dark Phoenix, I’d honestly find it far more entertaining cause as it stands story-wise, it’s ok at best. On the plus side, the cast again does carry the movie. I do enjoy all the new mutants we get to see, even if some of their powers are bland (toxic spines that can shoot out of your face? Create your own throwing knives? Really?). Some of the new powers are interesting, like Juggernaut's "if I pick up any momentum nothing can stop me", another mutant's ability to clone himself infinitely, but it does feel like they were scraping the bottom of the barrel at times.

Like with the previous movies, the cast does put out strong performances (FINALLY WE SEE KITTY IN ACTION, can you tell that she's a favorite character of mine yet?), and the soundtrack is quite good for the type of movie it's in. The action scenes have had an improvement in the change of direction and improvements in CGI, though there are a few moments that still look extremely fake, mostly when someone is throwing another person. Honestly, it's really distracting when those happen. When powers are being used, its great, but something as simple as a throw?

Like I said earlier, if this wasn't trying to be a Dark Phoenix story, I'd have no issues with this movie's story as the base idea of it is still interesting. But because they tried to do Dark Phoenix and failed, all the pretty CGI in the world can't hide that fact, the movie fails. It's a shame, it really is, but I have to say it like it is. If you like it, great, and as a stand-alone movie I can still enjoy it, but as a cinematic version of the Dark Phoenix, one of the most well known X-Men stories ever told, it's awful.

Thanks for joining me on both this trip down memory lane, and this experiment (the release times weren't accidental). It has opened up the fire doors for what will come later (eventually), but for now, we have bigger things to tackle. Just because I don't feel right for forgetting it in the Spider-Man 3 review, I would like to thank my grandfather (fathers side), for the copies of Spider-Man 1-3 that I used to review the movie. It was those DVDs that were the final push for me to review those films, along with the three X-Men films to a lesser extent (though I genuinely don't know who those were from as I've had this box set for years...). Come next week, MAYvel content starts with Ant-Man, and following that, the Toybox reopens with Lego set 76101, the Outrider Dropship Attack.