{"id":287,"date":"2006-06-04T12:02:14","date_gmt":"2006-06-04T12:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/06\/04\/the-last-stand-except-for-the\/"},"modified":"2006-06-04T12:02:14","modified_gmt":"2006-06-04T12:02:14","slug":"the-last-stand-except-for-the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/06\/04\/the-last-stand-except-for-the\/","title":{"rendered":"The Last Stand, Except for the Sequel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite generating a surprising number of comments<\/a> with last week’s burning question (thanks to Kate for the suggestion), we didn’t actually go see X-Men III<\/cite> until yesterday afternoon. Short verdict: Not quite as bad as I was led to believe.<\/p>\n

The longer version is either on Kate’s LiveJournal<\/a>, or below the fold.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As lots of people have said, the fundamental problem with this movie is that it really wanted to be two different movies. The Phoenix plot deserved a movie all its own (at least based on the number of comic books and Saturday morning cartoons it took up previously), and the mutant cure\/ Angel plotline would’ve worked to carry a second film. As it is, both stories are highly compressed, in a way that doesn’t do either any good.<\/p>\n

Of course, expanding either of them might require the viewer to actually pay attention to the alleged explanations of the two scenarios, which might not be a good idea. Both of them went by very fast, but sounded idiotic even by the standards of movies based on comic books.<\/p>\n

There’s probably been too much attention lavished on the silly tactics at the end of the movie, which really are very silly. The sad thing is, it wouldn’t’ve taken much to make it make a little bit more sense– for example, the bridge stunt would’ve been OK if Magneto’s entire mutant army hadn’t been standing on the bridge with him. If they had needed the bridge to the mainland to bring huge numbers of mutants over, then it would’ve been less dumb. I’m not particularly distressed about the “the pawns go first” line, which has generated a surprising amount of comment in Kate’s post, because it’s clear from the first movie that he’s Not a Nice Person, and willing to sacrifice other people (mutants included) to get what he wants.<\/p>\n

Of course, the other fundamental problem with the movie is not so much the movie’s fault as it is a problem with stories involving multiple superheroes– the power imbalance between characters is extreme, and it’s kind of hard to make it make sense. On the one hand, you’ve got Jean Grey\/ Phoenix, who can trash whole cities with her brain, and Magneto, who can do improbable things to objects containing metal, and Storm, who can control the weather. On the other hand, you’ve got Wolverine, who’s really good at hand-to-hand combat. Given the ability to shred matter by thinking about it, or shoot lightning bolts and create tornadoes, why is it that the guy with a funny haircut and a metal skeleton is the chief ass-kicker?<\/p>\n

This is what leads to awkward plot elements like Jean\/ Phoenix just haging around in an old-fashioned dress looking ominous for the last third of the movie. She doesn’t do anything because if she did anything that made sense, the movie would be over too quickly. Ditto Magneto and the bridge thing– since he doesn’t actually need it as<\/strong> a bridge, why not just drop it on the middle of the island, and trash the whole complex that way? Because if he used his abilities to their full potential, there’s no way the lame superpowers of the heroes could save the day.<\/p>\n

Of course, I’ve never been big on superhero comics, anyway, so take the above with a grain of salt.<\/p>\n

In the end, the movie did fulfill the primary obligation of a Summer Movie, and provide a large number of nifty explosions. But it wasn’t nearly as good as the first two.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite generating a surprising number of comments with last week’s burning question (thanks to Kate for the suggestion), we didn’t actually go see X-Men III until yesterday afternoon. Short verdict: Not quite as bad as I was led to believe. The longer version is either on Kate’s LiveJournal, or below the fold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}