What’s Next?

Possible spoilers follow.

X-Men 3: The Last Stand was a good film if you enjoyed such classics as the Rush Hour films(Director Brett Ratner’s work), and certainly has an interesting premise, the idea of a cure for mutants to make them ‘normal’ (Llfted, I hear, from Joss Whedon’s ‘Amazing X-Men’ series) which the film then sadly forgets to address, more interested in that next big explosion.

Of course, X-Men has always had significant real world parallels to eugenics and homosexuality and the issue of how humanity treats minorities but all Ratner seems to interesting in is “Yeah…but this minority can kick ass! We need more kick-ass! Also some literal ass, let’s get that action in”, somewhat missing the point. There wasn’t a single issue in the film I felt was well addressed, or even competently addressed in a way that wasn’t setting up for a kick-ass fight scene (which was ruined for me by the sudden polarization of the characters, I’m sure Magneto used to be far more complex than in this film).

Mutants can be cured, thus defining them as deviant and their behaviour as wrong. Obvious implications for the homosexuality debate, if the ‘cure’ for homosexuality was discovered, would it be right to use it? Obviously, it’d be a matter of choice, people could chose which way of life they preferred… or alternatively be pressured into conforming to societies norms, which is far more likely. Once a choice is possible, social norms are self enforcing to an extent, even if as an adult they’d chose that life, why would a child who had no concept of his future chose the minority life-style if a choice was presented? This form of transformative eugenics is a very interesting question, but the movie uses it as a starting line then goes in completely the opposite direction.

The inter-relation between who people are and what they are could be seen as a definitive point in this series, mutants differ only in their mutation from other mutants, yet this characterizes their roles. While Xavier creates a place for mutants to become people in their own right again, Magneto radicalizes mutants for the purpose of enhancing his own power, not caring for them as people, only for them as a source of power. Another theme curiously underdeveloped is the mutants being used for their power. Whereas in the second film ‘Jason’ was obviously being manipulated and controlled by his father to extract his mind control ability, little motivation or explanation is given to the Cameron Bright character, does he mind being used to remove people’s powers? Why get Cameron Bright in if you’re not going to use him?

And what was the Angel sub-plot all about? You could remove it from the movie and have NOTHING effected.

Overall an undramatic and disappointing conclusion to the trilogy. I just didn’t care, major characters died for little good reason (other than they could, I suspect) only to wimp out with that little post-credits scene. If you kill someone, they should stay dead! It’s admitting the only purpose of the death was to effect the audience, but to what end other than ‘Yeah, we kill people! We might do something crazy like an explosion in a minute!’

But if all you want is explosions it’ll work for you.

Edit: I have to agree with the author of this review that Ellen Page as Kitty Pryde did a brilliant job and it’s a shame that she’s let down by the rest of the movie. I’m sure she’ll be around again though.

Premise: It’s a car show. A wacky car show! With lots of interesting and ‘different’ features.

Reality: Most of the features are utterly pointless without being funny. It looks like it thinks itself to be the self-appointed successor to Brainiac, but without Brainiac’s charm. It also suffers from the problem that EVERYTHING must be related to cars, limiting the good material to an extent. It’s not entirely unwatchable, just mostly unwatchable.