Great X-pectations

It's getting hot out herre: Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) surveys a wasteland in Brett Ratner's film X-Men: The Last Stand. Photo Kerry Hays/Twentieth Century Fox.

X-Men: The Last Stand begins with a question that is key to all that follows. The scene is a suburban living room, 20 years in the past. Prof. Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Eric Lensherr (Ian McKellen) interview the young Jean Grey. All three are mutants — homo superior, genetic misfits with superhuman abilities. These skills typically manifest themselves at puberty, but Jean is an early bloomer. When she looks out the window, every car in view levitates a metre above the ground. Once she matures, Xavier warns, her mutation will make her the most powerful being on Earth. “Will you control that power,” he asks, “or let it control you?”

X-Men (2000) and X2: X-Men United (2003), the first two big-screen adaptations of Marvel Comics’ celebrated X-Men series, gave few hints of the adult Jean’s mega potential. In those films, both set in the not-too-distant future, she was one of several uberheroes battling injustice at Xavier’s behest. Most of the X-Men’s heavy lifting, though, fell to the hands — er, claws — of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman). Plus, Jean (Famke Janssen) appeared to die near the end of X2, sacrificing herself to allow her teammates’ escape.

Wolverine returns to the limelight as The Last Stand shifts forward to pick up X2’s timeline. Early on, laser-fire from an unseen attacker blisters a dark and smoky cityscape, targeting Storm (Halle Berry) and a handful of Xavier’s teenaged prodigies. Jackman, channelling Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now, puffs a cigar as the combat rages. An explosion knocks his stogie away, and Wolverine spins into action. There’s the quick shnick of metal cutting metal; seconds later, a disembodied robot head crashes to the street. Game over. (And, simple as that, Jackman restores his tough-guy image, surrendered to Broadway for his star turn in The Boy From Oz.)

X-Men and X2, both directed by Bryan Singer, earned a combined $372 million US at the domestic box office. Singer passed on The Last Stand — choosing to helm Superman Returns instead — and ceded control to Brett Ratner (Rush Hour, Rush Hour 2, Red Dragon). Ratner would need to go out of his way to drive Hollywood’s hottest franchise off its rails. It’s a pity that he almost does.

Identity crisis: Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) reborn as the Dark Phoenix. Photo Kerry Hayes/Twentieth Century Fox.

The Last Stand’s main plot gets rolling when Jean’s grieving husband, Cyclops (James Marsden), returns to Alkali Lake, the site of her submarine grave. There, he does what any widower with optic-blast vision would do: he shoots a huge beam of energy at the lake’s centre. The water roils. Gasp! Jean lives! (The film offers a science-y explanation of how this happens, but, well, it’s absurd. In the Marvel Universe, it’s best not to think too hard.) What’s more, Jean has evolved again. Now she shares her body with the Phoenix, the volatile, almighty force that Xavier foretold in the beginning of the film. Jean’s mind has fractured into two personas.

In the meantime, Worthington Labs, on San Francisco’s Alcatraz Island, prepares to deliver a “cure” for mutation. Ideological clashes between humanity and mutantkind have coloured the X-Men’s 43-year run in our collective consciousness. The conflict has always been obvious subtext for racism, with mutants representing the oppressed. (Or, for many fans, social outcasts who are infinitely more interesting than the masses who shun them.) Now, they stand to surrender their powers and live as normal humans. Even among the X-Men, there is debate about what this means: should mutants accept their genocide by syringe, or reject the cure and revel in their uniqueness? Worthington markets the injections as a choice, but behind closed doors, we learn, the U.S. government is plotting to make the cure mandatory by force.

The very concept of mutation-as-flaw is anathema to Lensherr, a.k.a. Magneto, a master of manipulating metal, and the Machiavellian leader of the Brotherhood of Mutants. He schemes to attack Alcatraz and kill the boy wonder whose mutation is the source of Worthington’s cure.

The Phoenix is vital to Magneto’s campaign. He must recruit her to his cause, but duels Xavier for her loyalty. She has already committed murder by the time they reach her. “Kill me before I kill someone else,” begs Jean, breaking through the Phoenix’s dominant personality. Neither man wishes to do so, and Magneto wins the struggle to control her. The stage is now set for The Last Stand’s end game. It will be up to Jean to decide whether the Phoenix heeds Magneto’s wishes — or allows her defeat by the X-Men, who arrive to defend Alcatraz.

Ratner’s action scenes, enhanced by stunning CGI effects, are almost faultless. (The lone quibble: would it kill him to show Wolverine’s claws actually strike somebody?) Throughout the film, though, the director is bedeviled by details. He is right to recognize Wolverine as his peak performer — the character has been comicdom’s arch antihero for decades — but fails to grasp the reasons why. Wolverine stands 5’3” in the comics; a large part of his appeal comes from the magnitude of his Angry Short Man Syndrome. For Ratner’s camera, though, Jackman’s Wolvie stands a head taller than Berry’s Storm, who is supposed to be 5’11”. (Speaking of Storm, The Last Stand marks Berry’s third straight lacklustre showing in the X-Men films. On Marvel’s pages, the character is a bold, daring leader. As played by Berry, her best skill is looking scared.)

Next, Ratner slows an otherwise frantic pace to develop a love triangle featuring the X-Men’s youngest members — Rogue (Anna Paquin), Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) and Iceman (Shawn Ashmore) — but then seems to forget it until the film’s conclusion. When their resolution finally comes, it feels cheap and hurried. Third, the director is hampered by a storyline that gives too much screen time to Kelsey Grammer’s hammy Beast, and underplays the more nuanced performance of McKellen’s Magneto.

The Last Stand’s central problem, though, is 20th Century Fox’s indecision about whether the third X-Men film will also be the last. At the Cannes Film Festival, where the movie made its world premiere, Ratner declared that he directed it as if there would be no new chapter to follow. Sure enough, The Last Stand includes dire consequences that, if left standing, would place tall hurdles in the path of the franchise’s continuation. There are events that will be difficult for longtime X-Men fans to watch. But they’ll likely feel worse at the film’s bitter end, when Ratner tacks on two short, sappy scenes to take back the catastrophes that transpired earlier.

Ratner’s second brainfart comes all the way at the end of the credits. No offence to the film’s caterers, but most moviegoers will have exited the cinema long before their names roll past. I can’t say whether Ratner and his studio overlords will leave it there or bump it forward for the theatrical release, but the following test should help you decide whether to stay or go. If, when the action seems over, you only have to shake your fist and grumble “Ratner!” once, remain seated. But if he gets you twice before the fade to black, you’re best to leave.

X-Men: The Last Stand opens May 26 across Canada.

Matthew McKinnon writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites - links will open in new window.