Stuck in a Moment: X-Men - The Last Stand

“X-Men: The Last Stand” (2006)
Starring Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen, Kelsey Grammar, Famke Janssen
Directed by Brett Ratner
Written by Simon Kinberg and Zak Penn
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of action violence, some sexual content and language

I haven't written a #StuckInAMoment post in quite a while. It may have been even longer since I watched an X-Men movie. But when my oldest says she wants to revisit the franchise that launched 1,000 laments about superhero fatigue,* well, I'm not going to turn that down.

Sporadic spoilers for the first three X-movies follow.

As we watched through “X-Men” and “X2: X-Men United,” I found my memories and perceptions of them more or less the same. The first looks somewhat dated, with my daughter asking more than once why Storm's powers were so mundane.

“They may not have been sure they could do it justice,” I said. “Outside of Superman and Batman, there hadn't really been a successful, all-out superhero movie, certainly nothing with as varied a cast and power sets as the X-Men.”**

Despite that, the first film still represents a watershed moment in comic book movie adaptations. The only thing that could eclipse the casting of then-unknown HughJackman as Wolverine, even if he was nearly a foot too tall, is Patrick Stewart as Professor X. It's the foundation for the many successful superhero movies that followed. There's no “Avengers: Endgame” if Bryan Singer, problematic though he turned out to be, didn't demonstrate it was OK to venture closer and closer to the source material.

“X2” I've always enjoyed but kind of felt was overrated. That may be heresy to some, but it started to lose me a little with the scene a lot of people love: Wolverine slicing and dicing when soldiers invade the mansion. I know who Wolverine is, but I still can't cheer when he's just ending folks left and right – even if they are threatening innocent children. I'm not saying his violence wasn't justified or understandable, just that I like my heroes to aim higher than extreme prejudice. Also, the utter lack of blood was probably necessary to get that important PG-13 rating, but there has to be a middle ground between Gleeful Bloodbath and Sanitized Extra Killing. Beyond that, just casually leaving Stryker to die and brutally killing a pretty clearly mind-controlled Lady Deathstrike also rubbed me the wrong way.

Still, X2 expands the universe and goes even closer to the source material.

Then there's “X-Men: The Last Stand,” which you may remember as the alleged subject of this post.

Singer was replaced by Ratner, whose name, for better or worse, I can't see or hear without it being immediately followed by Chris Tucker saying, in my head, “DO YOU... UNDERSTAND... THE WORDS... THAT ARE COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH?” And the darkness quotient was ratcheted up with Angel mutilating his wings, major character deaths and Jean Grey/Phoenix just straight-up disintegrating people.

My oldest had watched the first two movies several years ago after getting hooked on the X-Men animated series. I remember being a little hesitant about showing her the third and offering her an out right before Jean telekinetically flayed and exploded Professor X. She took it...

… but not for the reason I thought. As we were getting closer to watching the movie this time around, she confessed that she wasn't scared the first time she watched it. She was just kind of bored.

I get where she was coming from to a certain extent. “Last Stand” is pretty widely regarded as the weakest of the original three, with many considering it outright bad. I will argue for a movie – often unnecessarily because it's OK to have different opinions about movies – if it moves me, but this one was hard to defend. I really wanted to because the base level was so much better than a lot of what came before and so much better than I expected, even if Kid Omega had the powers of a porcupine.

My daughter asked me why they killed off Professor X and Cyclops, and I said probably because they had too big a cast. I remember Olivia Williams playing Moira MacTaggert being a pretty big deal when it was announced, and she's barely in the film long enough to be considered a cameo. The Juggernaut's a mutant; Angel flies cross country and arrives, what, 15 minutes behind the Blackbird; Dark Phoenix is the B plot to what feels like a hasty adaptation of Joss Whedon's Cure story from “Astonishing X-Men.” I could go on, and you probably could too.

But there's one moment in the movie that fixed it permanently at a minimum 6 rating for me on the IMDb 1-10 scale. Even after rewatching it every once in a while and appreciating some things differently, noticing other problems or, with a host of X-movies now and more seemingly on the way, just being able to say, “Eh, that one was a miss,” the film still remains a net positive for me.

When the X-Men – with a hastily shifted lineup due to deaths and defections – arrive to see Magneto's army-sized Brotherhood storming Alcatraz Island via the commandeered Golden Gate Bridge to kill the people responsible for the Cure, Beast delivers the line I didn't know I was waiting for:

“Oh my stars and garters.”

Grammar was terrifically cast as Hank McCoy, and even though he was still a recognizable star after the end of “Frasier,” the filmmakers wisely avoided presenting him without blue fur, even though the presence of Cameron Bright as Leech gave them a valid in-story reason to do so. That line was classic Beast, a reminder that even though he's less able to pass as human than a lot of his fellow mutants and looks like what his name suggests, he's a jovial soul who tries to look on the bright side. At least before Krakoa.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has taught me that comic accuracy isn't the be-all, end-all. I'm fine with Hank Pym not creating Ultron, Bucky not being a teenager and Korg not being as uninteresting (to me) as the rocks he's made of. But this moment steadied a very uneven movie way back then and showed that someone did care about getting this stuff right. Even though I've moved on from the need to have the low point, at that point, in the franchise be OK, it still hit just right for me when I heard it again.

My daughter's assessment after seeing the whole movie: “It was good. I don't know. I don't like that they killed everybody.”

And, unrelated to the movie itself, the title also inspired this wonderful parody.

* - A condition to which I appear to be immune.

** - I definitely did not say it that clearly. But that's what I was getting at.