Save the Worst for Last

Yes, it set records in its opening weekend. But there's just no way around it. X-Men: The Last Stand is a bad movie. Or at most, it's not a good one.

Hardcore fans have been screaming bloody murder since fauxteur Brett Ratner was given the director's chair on the final film in a planned trilogy after previous X-Men director Bryan Singer moved on and Layer Cake helmer Matthew Vaughn dropped out. I didn't think one person could do that much damage to an already well established franchise. After all, the Singer films weren't high art, they were just fun and kinda smart. It couldn't possibly be that difficult for someone to just follow their blueprints and reap the artistic rewards, right?

Oh boy was I wrong.

As much as I'd love to, I can't lay all the blame with Ratner. Screenwriters Zak Penn and Simon Kinberg deserve just as much scorn for creating this flavorless dud. It's like no one involved actually saw the first two X-Men films and simply watched the trailers instead. The Last Stand is a collection of empty action scenes interrupted by long stretches of mindless dialogue delivered by characters who have been stripped of the inner lives and extra dimensions carefully cultivated in the previous films. Ratner and his team seem to think there's no reason to further the themes or relationships established in previous films, that all the audience wants are heavy effects and fight scenes (not that they go all out on that front either).

It's not like there wasn't any provocative material to deal with. The movie centers around two big ideas: the discovery of a "cure" for mutants that will turn them into "regular" people and the rebirth of X2 casualty Jean Grey as an out-of-control bad girl dubbed Phoenix. But both plotlines are handled with an absolute minimum of thought or care, they simply exist to move the action along. (The Phoenix storyline is especially botched. Anyone who's seen Goldeneye or the second season of Nip/Tuck knows Famke Janssen can play a great villain, but here she just looks confused most of the time. And you can't blame her.)

The film also kills off several key characters, both literally and metaphorically (by stripping them of their mutant powers), and introduces a slew of new ones. But none of that matters when the approach is so uninspired. Unlike the first two films this X-Men is so inept at juggling its ensemble that everyone begins to feel irrelevant. It helps the movie a little to have good actors like Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry and Hugh Jackman (joined by solid newcomers like Kelsey Grammer and Ellen Page) but it hurts when they have nothing to work with. And the baffling presence of the new character Angel, played by Ben Foster, in a handful of scenes can only be explained as some sort of symbolic metaphor for the rest of the film. And that's a very generous reading.

The Last Stand actually works as a reminder of how good Hollywood has become at the sequel game. A lame toss-off like this simply isn't acceptable when we've seen so many big budget sequels that are as good as, if not better than, their predecessors.

This one is so far removed from what came before it that you can't help but believe the studio didn't just want the X-Men trilogy to end, they wanted it to die.