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Tim Colwill is a 22 year old human male who resides in Perth, Western Australia. Inventor of the cardboard toaster and the car-powered car, Tim is also an accomplished author, having penned such notable works as Romeo and Juliet, Clifford The Big Red Dog, and The Bible. In his spare time, Tim directs movies under the nom de plume Steven Spielberg and maintains his own standing army of genetically engineered watermelons. Truly it is said that Tim has had an illustrious career, matched only by its ludicrously unbelievable exaggeration.

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X-Men 3: The Last Stand

// Filed under: Entertainment on Saturday May 27th 2006, 12:26 pm

It’s going to be difficult for me to fully make an objective review of X-Men 3, because I have a long standing love affair with the X-Men, so anything I say should probably be taken with a grain of salt. But I promise I’ll do my best.

X-Men 3 was fucking awesome.

Sure, it’s a little slow to start with, and at some points the sheer hammy cheesiness will make you cringe but The Last Stand is by far and away, the best X-Men movie to date and makes the other two look vague and irrelevant by comparison.

I admit, I was worried. I saw the previews, and I was a bit worried. Vinnie Jones, as the Juggernaut? Kelsey Grammer as Beast? Halle Berry, not impaled on spikes and bleeding to death for being the worst Storm ever? Surely they were making it difficult for themselves. But no.

Juggernaut works, and he works well, because they treat him entirely differently to how Juggernaut should be treated. He’s beautifully and tastefully underplayed - he had such potential to go horribly wrong but they steer gracefully clear. The real Juggernaut is a front-and-centre character, a ten-foot, only-possible-in-CGI-giant who is nobody’s bitch - which is exactly why he wouldn’t work in this film. So full kudos to the creators for recognising that.

Beast? Beast is great. Kelsey does him flawlessly, both in scientific repose and in athletic combat action. He doesn’t go on any Beast-style long incomprehensible rants about random scientific data, but that’s a fanboyism I’ll have to deal with in my own manner - Beast is excellent, and Kelsey does him perfectly.

If you’re worried about Angel, too, don’t be. He’s a pithy little bit-player, which is odd considering the attention the trailer and the opening scenes of the movie give to him. But don’t stress - it seems Angel’s only real mutant ability in this film is to swoop around, look like an underwear model and swoop his way out again.

Don’t go into this movie expecting it to be “another X-Men movie”. This movie changes everything. People die. Major players die and the movie hurtles relentless on - civilians, normal people are killed in their hundreds and it’s only half an hour later when the movie crashes to its conclusion that you realise just how brutal this movie is.

Nobody is black and white. Nobody is good or evil - this movie takes what has always been a delightfully grey-shaded world and blurs the lines even more. Compared to the previous two movies, where everybody danced their way around the issues, The Last Stand is all-out and total war and the way the X-Men fight you could truly believe this is their last stand.

The Last Stand opens with some flashbacks to the happier days in the Charles/Erik relationship and it’s a beautiful thing to see these two actors together, doing precisely what they should do and making nerds cream their pants across the world. With a geniune warmth and a credible chemistry that few others could hope to achieve, Stewart and McKellen alone make this movie a pleasure to watch, even before the sheer scope of the movie and its events sweeps in and takes off.

Okay, so this movie isn’t perfect. There are some lines, some phrases that will make you just wince in your seat. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if there was somebody in the 20th Century Fox offices whose job it was to insert lame puns and pithy parting shots into films, because goddamn, The Last Stand is jam-packed full of them. And there are more than a few continuity problems, and okay, for a movie where everything, everything our heroes hold dear is in the balance, sometimes the tactical decisions are less than sound. Okay, sure, they made Colossus American (He’s a fucking Russian, you idiots) and Kitty Pryde looks all of 12 years old, making her combat credibility somewhat questionable, but… you don’t care. You just don’t care.

I’m not going to post any spoilers, or ruin it for anyone, but I will say this: Stay until after the credits roll. Because if you don’t, and somebody else tells you what happens, well - you’ll hate yourself for the rest of your life.

See this movie. It’s relentless, it’s beautiful, it picks you up and it doesn’t fucking stop. If this is the end to the story arc, I don’t think we could have asked for anything better.

// 6 Comments

6 Comments »

Doomy says:

May 29, 2006 at 9:14 am

Great review. I especially appreciated (in the movie) the way they did, indeed, blur the lines of morality. I couldn’t decide which side to cheer for. And I was glad of the first person to die, ’cause that person is a douchebag.

They didn’t even try one of those, “Gee, it’s too bad Nightcrawler went out of town,” lines, though. Maybe he ran off or something and I forgot. Or maybe they didn’t pay him enough.

Either way, Patrick Stewart is hot.
t3h (h4r says:

May 29, 2006 at 3:21 pm

I agree with that Doomy girl who apparently hates me, but! Aside from that! Hehehehe. Check out my latest post. HehehehheheheHEHEHEHEHEH.

Yes, I know I said I was going to bed. >.>;;

I’m going NOW, really!

… *giggle, poking at IMDB* Hehehehehee!
GloomCookie says:

May 30, 2006 at 11:25 pm

I’m still yet to see the movie. I thought it sucked big time when I heard that Nightcrawler wasn’t going to be in it. No more *BAMPF*
But my other half seems pretty stoked at the fact that Beast etc are in this one (I haven’t read the comics, don’t shoot me). We’ll get around to seeing it eventually, even if Halle Berry is still there (does she get killed? Please tell me she gets killed).
Tinkling Koala says:

May 31, 2006 at 12:33 am

I just saw X-Men 3 and I’d like to thank you.

Tim, your review was quite helpful. It gave me stuff to look forward to and watch for in the movie without spoiling it.

The movie itself entertained me, it’s by no means going on my Best Films list, but it was a good investment of two-ish hours and six dollars. My big problem with it was that they started so many interesting story threads, but never went anywhere with them and it ended up feeling like a collection of half-finished sub-stories.

Other than that, it was great. I enjoyed the characters and cheered with my friends when a certain laser beam-shooting hero met his doom in the first thirty minutes. Good ridance to bad rubish.
Gold digger says:

June 28, 2006 at 7:03 am

Gold digger

I am Karin, very interesting article that contained the information I was searching for in Google, thanks.
Scott says:

November 11, 2006 at 12:43 am

I completely disagree with your review. I was so distracted by the way they mangled the storyline an continuity, I could not enjoy this movie. Too many variables have been changed from the comic for this to even be a movie about the X-Men.