"X3" => Cool Cubed
Category: Movies...
Posted Friday, May 26, 2006 at 10:26 PM [GMT-6]

We caught the last matinee of X-Men: The Last Stand (aka X3). I'm hard-pressed to write a review that's not filled with spoilers, because the movie cries out to be treated as a continuation of the story and not simply as a standalone production. But I don't want to spoil anything so I'll just say that if you're an X-Man fan, this will truly be The Two Towers of the trilogy...easily the best and most interesting.

Some very random observations -- again, no spoilers:

  • Kelsey Grammer as Beast is a welcome addition to the cast of characters, and was one of my wife's favorites (although at one point in the movie she leaned over and whispered, "he reminds me of Abraham Lincoln," and I almost cracked up.

  • This one's got a high body count, and to paraphrase a movie quote I used a week ago, "they're gonna need some more X-Men."

  • Much to the delight of teen-aged boys everywhere, we get an eyeful of Mystique without her, um, mystique.

  • Famke Janssen didn't just have a bad hair day...she had a bad hair shoot. She also frequently appeared to be channeling Linda Blair.

  • Along those same lines, while everyone else seemed to have gotten old since the last movie, Halle Berry is stuck in a time warp, and that's not a bad thing. Nosiree, not at all.

  • Speaking of comic books brought to the big screen, the most interesting trailer of the evening was for Ghost Rider, starring Nicholas Cage and due out next February. MLB thinks Cage is too old for the role, but I say that you're never too old to have a flaming skull. But, you know, that's just me.

  • X3 has a few welcome comedic touches in an otherwise fairly dark and tense plot. Wolverine even gets to crack a joke.

  • Oh, and if you're a diehard X-Man fan, be sure to sit all the way through the credits, because...well, you'll see. If you're not a big fan, it probably won't matter.
Ant Rating: Rating: 4 Ants

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Comments

I've been waiting to see this and get to go next weekend!!! Can't wait to see it - I've mentioned your review to the friend I'm going with and he asked what was at the end - I told him to wait and see hehe.

Posted by: Rachel at May 26, 2006 10:47 PM

PS. The x-men three game isn't too shabby - I've been playing it. It's written by the guys who write the movie.

Posted by: Rachel at May 26, 2006 10:48 PM

Rachel, out of the 150 or so other people in the theater, only about 8 or 10 stayed until the very end. We started to leave, then my wife suggested that we stand at the back and watch through the credits. I'm glad we did.

I'm not a gamer, so I'll have to take your word as to the computer version.

Posted by: Eric at May 26, 2006 11:01 PM

I was thinking about you yesterday when I blogged the X-man test, and I almost mentioned the Ghost Rider trailer (but didn't).

I was imagining that you'd be going to see the X-men movie and hoped you'd post a review, so thanks. The one other review I've seen was from media source—I'm being vague because I can't remember which—which claimed the movie was quite good for the first half and not so good in the last (because of all the fighting and stuff).

I was hoping the bad review was the coming from someone who just didn't "get" the X-men.

One of my old Warhammer 40K buddies posted up a link the other day for the Ghost Rider trailer, and while I was never a huge fan of the book, nor of Nicholas Cage, it does look very promising. As one friend noted, "It will depend on which Ghost Rider shows up."

I'm hoping for Johnny Blaze (the second one).

Posted by: Foo at May 27, 2006 05:43 AM

Eric, Nicholas Cage has another film - "World Trade Center," by Oliver Stone - coming out in August.

I've seen the trailer ... potent stuff ...

I was thinking of your post from earlier this month, about "United 93" ... some of the points you made, then, may apply to this, as well ...

Posted by: Jeff at May 27, 2006 07:14 AM

Foo, I started to leave a comment on your test results post but decided it would be too spoilerish.

I thought the action was the best part of the movie, even as the story-telling filled in some gaps.

Re: Ghost Rider. Don't know anything about the original story, and any background that requires an understanding of a geneaology of Biblical proportions is more trouble than I'm willing to commit to. OTOH, Tex Cobb's demonic biker character in Raising Arizona was my favorite, so I figure any movie with a Harley-riding flaming-skulled hero can't be a total waste of time.

Jeff, the only scenario I can imagine that would cause me to want to see "WTC" would be if Osama bin Laden promised to surrender to the US if the movie brought in $150 million in its opening weekend.

Posted by: Eric at May 27, 2006 11:27 AM

Nice review. And, Lincoln did look a bit Beastly at times.

I'm looking forward to the movie. I've seen some bad reviews from fans of the comics, specifically concerning deviations from the Dark Phoenix "canon". Apparently, the movie is to the comics what "The Da Vinci Code" is to the Bible. As the penalties for blasphemy against Marvel are reduced, and as I'm unfamiliar with how Jean Grey's story originally went, I expect to be entertained.

We'll head that way once the crowds thin out a bit.

Posted by: Kelly at May 27, 2006 08:37 PM

Thanks, Kelly. I think you've got the right mindset for the movie. I'm obviously not dogmatic about my rules for the cinematic treatment of comics -- OK, the truth is, I have no such rules -- and so entertainment value is far more important to me than accuracy.

For what it's worth, Joe Morgenstern loved the movie. But, what does a Pulitzer Prize winner know? (And, of course, I do frequently disagree with his reviews. But this time he got it right.)

Posted by: Eric at May 27, 2006 08:53 PM
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