X-Men: The Last Stand is way better than you think

I’m re-watching all the X movies in chronological order, but all you need to know is that I am going to talk about this movie:

X-Men: The Last Stand

Sometimes when you revisit a bunch of stuff you haven’t seen in a while in a “re-examination” kind of way, your eyes are opened to things you hadn’t seen before and your opinion changes. Other times, your existing views end up being reinforced with even greater strength.

When it comes to X-Men: The Last Stand, it’s the latter — and that seems to put me in the minority

The movie is often trashed, but I feel like it’s trashed for the wrong reasons. Ardent fans hate it because it didn’t do Dark Phoenix right, because of how Scott was killed, and because of Prof. X dying, among other reasons.

But you know what? That’s just a lot of comic book baggage. I think those are only legitimate complaints if you’re judging this on how good an adaptation it was. Taken on its own terms, the above issues are just fine and are right in line with the other two movies.

Jean’s story is a solid culmination to a story that had been building for three movies (in the first, she talks about how the Prof is helping her control her power). The way it plays out isn’t classic Dark Phoenix, sure, but judged on its own merits it plays just fine with a suitably tragic end.

Scott’s death is flawed, but not for the reasons people say. Storywise, it was an effective and well-placed way to show that Jean’s return is something that will go very very wrong very very quickly; it showed that she has so little control she couldn’t even stop herself from killing the man she loves. The flaw isn’t that Scott was killed, it’s that the audience doesn’t much care for him. By making Logan the focal point of the previous movies, we don’t really get close to many other X-Men. Scott is just a guy who was kind of an ass to Logan (and vice versa), so his death didn’t resonate. But shortchanging his character is a flaw in PREVIOUS movies, too, not just this one. As a story beat, it works.

The biggest flaw with The Last Stand is in the writing, specifically the dialogue. It’s clunky and obvious and filled with questionable one-liners and We Don’t Trust The Audience To Get Nuance So We’re Going To Make This As Obvious As Possible conversations and cliches. That aspect of the movie is genuinely pretty bad. Worse than pretty bad: it’s often awful. Easily the worst dialogue of the trilogy. At times it was almost distracting. I felt the urge to roll my eyes more than once.

So, legit flaw there. The writing can be kind of dopey.

But the story is tight as hell. They successfully marry two core storylines — the mutant cure and Jean’s decay — without things feeling crowded. They pack in a TON of mutants, and Ratner & Co. actually manage to give a good deal of them some time in the spotlight. The first movie didn’t manage to give this many people solid character moments, and it had far less characters overall. The Last Stand gives almost EVERYONE time to shine.

Plus, Halle Berry’s hair looks really good in this one. 🙂

And like X2, it has a bunch of memorable sequences. Not as many as X2, sure, but it has its fair share. Magneto’s awesome rescue of Mystique. Xavier and Magneto visiting young Jean. Magneto lifting the Golden Gate Bridge (which was admittedly completely unnecessary). The battle at Jean’s house. And of course, the super mega mutant battle at the end, which is the massive mutie conflict we dreamed of seeing in the first two but never got. It’s huge, it’s full of action and cool powers, and it holds up very well.

Plus, the whole thing slides by at a brisk 104 minutes. That’s amazing considering how dense it is!

It had been a few years, but this viewing confirmed what I’ve long thought: The Last Stand haters are nuts. They’re bringing comic book baggage to the movie instead of judging it on its own terms. It ain’t perfect — the dialogue really is atrocious, and it’s not nearly as emotionally resonant as X2 — but it’s FAR from the series-killing disaster some make it out to be. It’s especially satisfying viewing if watched right after the previous two.

X-Men: The Last Stand. You’re wrong about it.