X Men 3 – The Last Stand (Sunday Business Post)
X-Men 3 – The Last Stand
Dir: Brett Ratner
Cert: 12A
Review: Jonathan McCrea
Another summer, another comic book movie and another set of daft costumes hit our screens in X3: The Last Stand. This time Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), Storm (Halle Berry), Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and the rest of the mutants face a threat to their way of life in the guise of a ‘cure’. A pharmaceutical company has developed a drug for the government that can fix the genetic abnormalities in mutants and revert them to human beings. The nefarious Magneto (Sir Ian McKellen) declares this development an act of war and begins to gather an army of malformed miscreants to unleash wrath upon the homo sapiens. Peace-loving X-Men are the only ones who can stop Magneto from genocide.
Much wailing and gnashing of teeth was noted in the comic book community when director of both prequels Bryan Singer decided to opt out of this third project in favour of Warner’s Superman Returns (out 14th July). While newcomer Brett Ratner’s X-Men 3 certainly is bigger and noisier than its predecessor, hidden somewhere deep amongst the Burger King endorsements and limited edition figurines are the embers of a moral question or two. Scratch the surface and you’ll see Ratner (Rush Hour) continues the unusual theme that Singer used to first lure ‘Serena’ McKellen to the franchise: the X-Men are gay.
Singer probably wasn’t being literal but the isolation of being ‘different’ and the struggle for validation are subjects explored in the graphic novels and each of the films. In one scene of X3 we see a young boy in the bathroom frantically hacking at a deformity on his back. When his father bursts through the door, the son’s shame is evident. Elsewhere, mutant Rogue longs for normalcy while Magneto is the angry voice of a jilted minority. It’s possibly these jabs at the culture of conformity that separates the X-Men films from others efforts like the spectacularly hollow Fantastic Four. It’s not quite Sartre, but then he couldn’t shoot lasers from his eyes.
Lest the dubious forget, X3 boasts an impressive cast of an Oscar winner and two Shakespere thesps, contrasted by cameos of Vinnie Jones as Juggernaut and Kelsey ‘Frazier’ Grammar as the bubblegum-blue Beast.
True to the genre, there’s not much character development, but the action is impressive, the story genuinely intriguing and the surround speakers get a thorough workout. All in all, an entirely enjoyable result from such a recipe for disaster.
***