X-Men: The Last Stand
The final big movie of May had me excited for the whole winter. The thrid installment of the X-Men franchise promised to be an extraveganza on the order of the last two, maybe even bigger. With Bryan Singer off doing Superman Returns, Brett Ratner took over helming the picture. Now, I'm not a huge Ratner fan, with only Red Dragon piquing my interest.
The entire cast is back, and the plot revolves around both a 'cure' for the mutant genes and the return of Jean Grey as the Pheonix. In the aftermath of the Alkali Lake confrontation, Scott (Cyclops) is still distraught over Jean's death and has become unstable. He takes off one day to Alkali Lake, and that's when Jean comes back. However, its not really Jean, but a repressed side of her known as Pheonix. When Cyclops reunites with her, she kills him, and Xavier feels something is wrong. Logan and Storm retreive her, and Xavier attempts to re-block the Pheonix. She doesn't like that, and nearly kills Logan when she escapes.
The X-Men chase after her, as well as Magneto and some of his mutants. They confront her in her childhood home, and in an awesome display of power, Jean kills Xavier. Magneto takes her in, promising to help her. He knows where the mutant cure is coming from, and with the government looking to forcibly implement the cure, he has gathered an army to destroy it.
Logan and Storm, along with Beast, lead the young X-Men IceMan, Colossus, and Shadowcat to stop the Brotherhood. Their confrontation is at Alcatraz, with mutant fighting mutant. In the end, Magneto is shot up with the cure and Wolverine is forced to kill Jean to stop her from killing them all. After a tearful funeral for Scott, Jean and Xavier, however, the final shot is of Magneto slowly regaining his power, showing that the cure may not be real after all.....
In the end, X-Men 3 exceeded my expectations. I was feeling pretty shitty about some of the early reports on this film. It looked like a shmozz of mutants, and had no plot. But, once I saw some of the advance trailers, it got me excited. And, once into the movie, it was actually very good. It advanced the story of the X-Men in such a way that the next is wide open. Whether its a Wolverine movie or another X-Men movie. Its getting a 9, only because it was too short, and some of the other characters didn't get developed as well as I would have liked. It had shocks, thrills and great action.
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