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X-Men: The Last Stand provides plenty of mutant action for fans of the franchise, even if it does so at the expense of its predecessors' deeper character moments. Read critic reviews
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Movie Info
The discovery of a cure for mutations leads to a turning point for Mutants (Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, Anna Paquin, Rebecca Romijn, Kelsey Grammer). They may now choose to give up their powers and become fully human or retain their uniqueness and remain isolated. War looms between the followers of Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), who preaches tolerance, and those of Magneto (Ian McKellen), who advocates survival of the fittest.
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Rating: PG-13 (Language|Intense Action Violence|Some Sexual Content)
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Genre: Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Sci-fi
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Original Language: English
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Director: Brett Ratner
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Producer: Avi Arad, Lauren Shuler Donner, Ralph Winter
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Writer: Zak Penn, Simon Kinberg
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Release Date (Theaters): wide
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Release Date (Streaming):
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Box Office (Gross USA): $234.4M
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Runtime:
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Distributor: 20th Century Fox
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Production Co: Marvel Enterprises, Twentieth Century Fox
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Sound Mix: Dolby SRD, DTS, SDDS
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Aspect Ratio: Scope (2.35:1)
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View the collection: X-Men
Cast & Crew
News & Interviews for X-Men: The Last Stand
Critic Reviews for X-Men: The Last Stand
Audience Reviews for X-Men: The Last Stand
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For a long time I hated this movie for not matching the tone of the first two X-Men movies. And yeah, it doesn't. But looking back at it now, it's not that bad. Its biggest problem is that it's cluttered. The Cure story and the Dark Phoenix story should have been two separate movies, both had enough material for their own movies and were completely separate events, and with the focus more on the Cure, Jean Grey gets pushed to the sidelines. That problem aside, there are moments in the movie that are a lot of fun and quite stunning. But then there are also moments that are pretty stupid, like Juggernaut's dopey costume or the idiotic love triangle with Rogue, Bobby, and Kitty. It's a mixed bag if ever there was one, but I'm able to see the good now more than the bad. Magneto assembling an army and moving the Golden Gate bridge? Awesome. Jean and Xavier having a psychic battle in Jean's childhood home? Awesome. Visiting the danger room? Awesome. It lacks as much of the subtlety and character that the first two films had, but the spectacle is still something to see all these years later. It's worth a second chance. Is it the worst of the original trilogy? Probably, but it's not the worst X-Men movie and that's…something?
michael m Super Reviewer -
In my review of Return of the Jedi, I spoke about the baggage that comes with threequels and their tendency to be the runts of their respective litters. Often the drop in quality - whether perceived or actual - stems from a lack of new ideas, or an abandonment of the principles and/ or personnel which made the series so successful. That being said, the same person being in charge is not in itself a guarantee of quality, as Spider-Man 3 and Evil Dead 3 firmly demonstrate. X-Men: The Last Stand has accrued a similar reputation in comic book circles in the 11 years since its release. Whenever this offering is mentioned, fans of the first two films tend to either start foaming at the mouth, disgusted by some deep betrayal, or sigh dejectedly and make some resigned comment about Hollywood. One could be forgiven, as a casual fan of X-Men, for assuming that this is the 2000s' equivalent of Batman and Robin. Rest assured, it's isn't - but it is very much the Batman Forever of the series, representing a huge climbdown from the heft and skill of old. A lot has been made about Bryan Singer's sudden departure from the series, with debate raging over how much of the resulting disappointment is his fault. Singer left the project in July 2004 to helm Superman Returns, at a time when only a partial treatment of the story existed. Singer had intended to focus the third film around Jean Grey's arc leading on from X2, culminating in Jean committing suicide but her spirit surviving as something akin to the Star Child from 2001: A Space Odyssey. When Singer jumped ship, he took with him X2 screenwriters Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty, leaving 20th Century Fox with little to work with. Over the ensurng six months, the project was offered to numerous directors who turned it down, including Joss Whedon (who was busy on his Wonder Woman project) and Alex Proyas, who refused on account of the bad experience he had endured on I, Robot. Matthew Vaughn, who had then just finished Layer Cake, signed on to direct in February 2005, but even with the release date being pushed back Vaughn felt he did not have the time he needed to make the film he wanted. Having had some say in the casting - including Kelsey Grammer and Vinnie Jones - he backed out before filming was set to begin in July, paving the way for Brett Ratner to come in. Whether or not you think that Singer was right to jump ship (Superman Returns being the indecisive stodge that it is), much of his influence remains in at least the first hour of this film, just as Tim Burton held some sway over Batman Forever. His fingerprints are all over the Jean Grey storyline, fleshing out the character and turning her into something truly dangerous. Her arc is very reminsicent of Amy Irving's character in The Fury (itself heavily X-Men-inflected), being as she is a young woman struggling to channel and contain enormously destructive powers that to a large extent she doesn't want. There's even a sequence where Jean disintegrates people with her power - although it's not as bloody as The Fury's 18-rated version. If all the good parts of X-Men: The Last Stand lie in whatever Singer managed to contribute before departing, all of the blame for the bad aspects can be laid firmly at Ratner's feet. The main problem lies in his sensibility - or, to be more precise, the complete lack of it. While Singer worked hard to build a compelling visual world to explore complex themes about racism, identity and alienation, all Ratner really wants to do to make knob gags and blow stuff up. Despite having been in the running to helm the first X-Men film, he displays no deep knowledge or love for the mythology, being too obsessed with spectacle and cheap humour to put in the hard yards which this kind of story needs. As a result of both Singer's influence and Ratner's laziness, the film ends up being deeply conflicted. The first hour has some of the substance of old, especially in the opening flashback and some of scenes involving discussions of the cure. But Ratner doesn't delve as deep as Singer did, introducing the concept and then leaving it as a mere McGuffin. The dialogue is more aggressively macho than before, and talky scenes are more readily broken up with needless editing. And then there is the needlessly yandere-ish love scene between Jean and Logan, which feels like someone copy-pasted the sauna scene from Goldeneye into their fan fiction. Building up their relationship is necessary for the pay-off, but this isn't an erotic thriller - you don't have to approach every conversation like it's a prelude to 12A rumpy-pumpy. As things roll on towards the inevitably explosive conclusion, many of the interesting character arcs which are either introduced or carried over from X2 are left unfinished. Grammar is a half-decent fit for Beast but is wasted in the role, and Rogue gets an especially tough break; while in X-Men she was arguably the central character, here all she does is go off, get the cure and then come back. While in the previous two films the action felt like an interlude to or progression from the character development, here everything serves the need for everything to blow up at the end. If X2 was said to have been modeled after Road to Perdition, then X-Men: The Last Stand's main point of comparison would be with Die Another Day. Aside from possessing a general contempt for the audience's intelligence, and a number of similar scenes (the training simulations, the X-Jet's 'stealth mode' standing in for the invisible car), they also feature really dodgy CGI in the places that it's least needed. It's not so bad when Logan is having his flesh ripped apart when Jean is in Dark Phoenix mode, but the sequence with the bridge is every bit as ropey as Pierce Brosnan windsurfing over the CGI wave. Building up to the big battle at the end would be fine if it actually had scale, context and above all meaning. But while Peter Jackson pulled it off spectacularly in both The Two Towers and The Return of the King, Ratner's battle is as aimless as a video game raid. Where Jackson's battles went through given motions, ebbing and flowing to build character and generate tension, the final act of this film is uninvolving, bland and often ridiculous. Vinnie Jones make the whole thing feel like a cut scene from Gone in 60 Seconds, and the actual ending involving Magneto at the chess board is both unashamed sequel bait and a huge anticlimax. In spite of all its poor qualities, the cast of X-Men: The Last Stand do just enough to make the experience tolerable. Famke Janssen is the stand-out, having a commanding screen presence which manages to pierce through the effects and hold our attention; in the scene in the woods, she even upstages Sir Ian McKellen. McKellen and Patrick Stewart are both fine, though both have settled into 'established actor cameo' mode by the end, and Hugh Jackman continues to make his case for being the definitive Wolverine. Had Days of Future Past never happened, this would have been a bittersweet farewell for the cast, but you can't blame any of them for not trying in spite of the poor script. X-Men: The Last Stand is a disappointment denouement to the original X-Men trilogy. While it makes for watchable viewing during the Jean Grey sequences, there's ultimately too little meat on the bones and too few thoughts between its ears to either satisfy committed fans or compete with its two predecessors. It id the worst of the original X-Men films, but had Brett Ratner been involved from the very beginning, it could have been even worse.
Daniel M Super Reviewer -
While the main players are all great and the action is arguably the best in the saga, X-Men: The Last Stand is too fast and too rushed to make any sort of emotional resonance despite some truly interesting ideas.
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Every franchise has a low point. For some it's a scene or maybe a full act of a film. For the X-Men series, it's The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. After two acclaimed outings to kick off the new age of the superhero genre, The Last Stand is just about as goofy and messy as you can get. It nearly killed the franchise. The reason comic fans are still yearning for a Dark Phoenix adaptation is because this film did a poor job of giving fans anything that closely resembles the classic storyline. In fact, what makes it even worse is it's hardly an adaptation at all. The first chunk of the movie certainly seems to indicate a Dark Phoenix direction, but once she has a big showdown with Charles Xavier in her childhood home, it becomes a movie way more about the cure than Jean Grey. It also doesn't help that Jean Grey's phoenix alter ego resembles another absolutely insane Famke Janssen villain, Xenia Onatopp. Yes, she also turns to an intimate make out position in an attempt to kill a few of her victims. Really, Brett Ratner? Ratner gets a bad rap for The Last Stand, and most of it is warranted. But there are some redeemable qualities to this film. Plus, he did inherit the directing duties pretty late in the game (after Bryan Singer left a few weeks before production began because of Superman Returns). Although it still doesn't feel necessary at all, I definitely felt an emotional impact when Charles died and Wolverine killed Jean. The way those particular scenes were directed and shot made for an emotionally resonant few scenes. The action is also amped up a bit. Rightfully so, the first two films keep the action to a minimum and instead focus on story as the backbone. The Last Stand tends to do the opposite, hence another reason for the film's failure. As with pretty much every other X-Men related film, there's no sense of continuity whatsoever. Whether it's the appearance of Moira MacTaggart or Bolivar Trask, the bad CGI used for young Charles and Erik, or the horrendous attempt at Angel as a character, The Last Stand gets a lot wrong. The grounded tone from the first two films is gone entirely. Why the heck is Juggernaut running around acting like he's from the 60's Batman TV series? Why does Pyro act like he's a worthy right hand man to Magneto? I think the questions raised here still frustrate me to this day. This could have been one of the best superhero trilogies but instead The Last Stand tries its hardest to tarnish any reputation the first few built. There are a few moments of classic X-Men joy, but it's really a bunch of nonsense for the most part. +Some emotional moments hit -Tone is all over the place -Continuity issues galore -Was this an attempt at a Dark Phoenix saga? -Everything feels rushed 4.4/10
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