Cinemutants - X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

At a time when superhero movies are starting to lose their stranglehold on pop culture, there are really only two options: go back and watch old movies, or kill off an entire cinematic universe in spectacular fashion. This July, Marvel’s taking the latter approach with Deadpool & Wolverine, which seems primed to seal off the 20th Century Fox film universe. And while director Shawn Levy promises, “This movie is built [...] with no obligation to come prepared with prior research,” skipping the research has never really been my strong suit when it comes to franchises. It’s a perfect excuse, then, to go through the last 24 years (and 13 movies) with everyone’s favorite mutants, the X-Men.
 

This week, from 2006, it’s X-Men: The Last Stand. The mutant world faces its greatest threat when a cure for mutation is developed. Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart) have their hands – and claws – full when Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) returns from the dead and allies herself with Magneto (Ian McKellen), who is leading the mutant resistance against the cure.

1. An age of darkness. It’s generally been agreed that The Last Stand is where the X-Men franchise begins to drop the ball, and in some ways you might say it never fully recovers. At least three of the subsequent films reckon with the legacy of this one, with a snide joke in Apocalypse acknowledging that third films in trilogies don’t always work. After nearly twenty years, this one is strikingly grim, killing off [SPOILERS!] both Cyclops and Professor X before spinning its wheels until a third act that looks staggeringly like a television soundstage. Meanwhile, amid a host of dark plotlines, the film is littered with jokes of an astonishingly dated sensibility, giving one the distinct impression that The Last Stand is a cartoon brought to life by an edgy teenager.
2. Dark Phoenix rising. Last week I called the Dark Phoenix Saga “the franchise’s Everest summit,” and The Last Stand is a spectacular failure of an adaptation. Where the comics were a sober meditation on absolute power and the ethics of mutantkind’s response to genocide, this film recasts the Phoenix as Jean Grey’s uncontrollable power… only for her to stand around not doing very much with that power. It’s a classic “show, don’t tell” failure, compounded by the confusing decision to subordinate her abilities to Magneto’s will. We’ll see the franchise take one more swing at Dark Phoenix in the film of the same name, which finds entirely new ways to drop the ball, while Jean’s ultimate fate will haunt Hugh Jackman’s Logan for much of the rest of his tenure.
3. Pyro mania. I was pretty surprised that the Deadpool & Wolverine trailer announced that Aaron Stanford would be returning as Pyro, but that’s because I’d forgotten how the Pyro/Iceman rivalry became weirdly central to this trilogy. After Pyro threw his lot in with Magneto in X2, The Last Stand spends a not-insignificant amount of time teasing his inevitable showdown with Iceman, whose pure ice form is reserved for the pinnacle moment of their big fight sequence. The movie even clears Mystique (Rebecca Romijn) from the deck to make room for Pyro. While I’m sure that there will be no shortage of recognizable faces in the new Deadpool trailer, using Pyro feels like leaning into the idiosyncrasies of dead continuity – which, to be fair, is on brand for Deadpool.
4. Too much of a good thing. At an hour and forty-four minutes (the exact length of X-Men, mind you), The Last Stand has way too much going on for a coherent story. Its three antagonists – Magneto, Phoenix, and the cure – feel packed together, bulging with superglue to hide the storytelling seams, while new characters like Angel, Beast, Juggernaut, and Kid Omega (in name only) barely get anything to do because almost the entire cast has returned from the last two films. It’s a critical mass of screenplay elements, compounded by the fact that almost nothing interesting happens with any of these new toys (with one exception, below); Kitty Pryde does more running but gets hardly any plot action, while The Juggernaut quotes YouTube videos from the mid-2000s. It almost feels as though director Brett Ratner cut ten minutes from each of 10 different X-Men movies and tried to frankenstein them together here; your mileage may vary on which of the ten you’d have rather seen.
5. Oh, my stars and garters. The one thing The Last Stand did unequivocally right was casting Kelsey Grammer as a note-perfect Hank “Beast” McCoy. Grammar leans fully into the role, spot-on casting for a mutant of above average intelligence with a supercilious command over the English language. Kudos to Grammer, too, for submitting to the full-body makeup required for his beastly transformation. And in a film that tries to its detriment to cram everything into its abbreviated runtime, there’s a certain thrill in hearing Grammer deliver Beast’s ostensible catchphrase just before leaping into battle. It’s little wonder that, after Patrick Stewart in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Grammer was the second Fox-era mutant retained for the MCU, in a post-credits cameo from The Marvels. We all know what they say about broken clocks.

Sound off in the comments, true believers: has The Last Stand aged like cheese or wine? Was it ever either? Join us next week for a blast from the past with another exceptional casting choice, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Monday at the Movies - August 6, 2012

Welcome to Week Twenty-Nine of “Monday at the Movies.”  This week I’ll be covering the original X-Men trilogy.  (The prequels will be getting their own post further down the line.)

X-Men (2000) – In many ways, we comic book movie fans owe a lot to Bryan Singer, who demonstrated in this film that the genre was a viable one beyond the self-parody of the Schumacher era.  Singer wisely opts to throw viewers into the midst of the mythology without a lengthy origin sequence; we join Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Rogue (Anna Paquin) as they meet the X-Men, a group of powerful mutants led by Professor X (Patrick Stewart) in opposition to the evil Magneto (Ian McKellen).  Using Wolverine and Rogue as entry points is genius; diehard fans already love Wolverine, and newcomers will find Jackman one of the more engaging comics-to-film translations.  But the film is populated by fantastic actors – including Halle Berry, who doesn’t do much but does it well – and none are more brilliant than Stewart and McKellen, who as dueling foes are more Shakespeare than Stan Lee (who cameos, by the way – his first in a Marvel movie).  Even James Marsden, who’s usual more milquetoast than Patrick Wilson, proves a good fit as the stick-in-the-mud Cyclops.  As director, Singer does a great job making the soap opera source material accessible and streamlined without sacrificing the emotional complexity of the characters; there are hundreds of X-Men, but Singer picks the big ones and never loses sight of the fact that their interactions are more interesting than the giant machine Magneto builds for the surreal climax of the film.  Above all, this is a film that feels real, that winks not ironically but lovingly at its source material, acknowledging its depth without overloading its audience.

X2:  X-Men United (2003) – Singer proves the rule here with a comic book sequel that is leaps and bounds better than its predecessor (which, if you’ll recall, was no slouch).  Unfettered by the necessity to introduce the characters and their world, Singer dives headlong into the central problem of acceptance by pitting the X-Men against military bureaucrat William Stryker (Brian Cox), whose policy of indiscriminate mutant genocide unites heroes and villains.  Everything successful about the original stands here, as well, turned up to 11; the acting excels, from McKellen as caged animal Magneto to newcomer Cox, whose performance drips sadistic menace with each drawled consonant.  The cast of characters is beefed up a little, but never disproportionately beyond what the film can handle and never without significant narrative and thematic purpose; each addition deepens rather than overfills.  X2, perhaps more than its antecedent, operates on the level of metaphor, something I really want my superhero films to do.  Here the metaphor is on the nature of intolerance, which Singer carries off without being overbearing; in one standout scene, among my favorites in the trilogy, a mutant’s mother asks, “Have you tried not being a mutant?”  It’s an oddly quiet moment in a summer blockbuster, but it’s one that reminds us what’s at stake behind the flash of optic blasts and the snikt of razor claws.  Bonus points for its clever link with Stryker’s abuse of his own mutant son, which reminds us that bigotry isn’t a spectrum.  Even the previous film’s villain recognizes this, and McKellen’s nuanced return is a more than welcome one.

X-Men 3:  The Last Stand (2006) – When Singer stepped aside from his pet franchise to direct Superman Returns, Brett Ratner stepped in.  It’s a series of bad decisions that led to a pair of lackluster films (more on Superman Returns later), which is a shame because there are obvious moments where X-Men 3 is on the right track and other moments when it obviously goes awry.  The introduction of the “mutant cure” is in many ways a perfect end to a trilogy about what to do about heterogeneity, but Ratner seems to overcompensate for getting a shot at the X-Men toy box by cramming the film with scores of new characters who don’t do much at all.  (Ask yourself how many of their names you can remember.)  Worse, the film kills off some of the more interesting characters very early on, presumably to make room for the new faces, but for my money the film never really recovers from (spoiler warning) the death of Professor X.  The film trades in clichés, as when a military drill sergeant is played by R. Lee Ermey or when a character repeats, dead serious, the bromide about a woman scorned.  The climax is among the better action sequences in the trilogy, if only on a purely visceral level; Magneto’s manipulation of the Golden Gate Bridge is a brilliant visual, and the execution of the “fastball special” is as fun on film as it is on panel.  But the film fumbles so much before that point – and butchers the “Dark Phoenix” plotline almost beyond recognition – that X-Men 3 tries to be too much and ultimately never succeeds at being much at all.  The trilogy deserved better.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

New York, I Love You (2009)

It seems that the older I get, the shorter my attention span becomes. Maybe I'm just a jaded filmgoer, maybe today's flicks have run out of pizzazz, or maybe I'm being overdramatic about the whole getting-bored-quickly thing.

At any rate, the beauty of an anthology film is that you only have to invest about ten minutes in any given story. New York, I Love You represents the second in what is apparently a franchise devoted to vignettes about love in important world cities. I was initially only aware of the first "Cities of Love" film, Paris je t'aime (which really ought to be reviewed herein), a film near and dear to the romantic in me.

Before I go any further, I should preface this review by noting that by definition an anthology of any kind is naturally going to be hit or miss. Even Paris je t'aime has a few duds in the bunch. But unfortunately New York, I Love You is primarily a batch of misses with only a few hits. In honor of the anthology format, I'm going to shake things up and review each short separately and then think globally, with the caveat that New York is much more fluid, with its untitled segments intersecting and mingling much more than in Paris.

Director Jiang Wen has the first segment, which stars Hayden Christensen as a thief who picks Andy Garcia's pocket. After being smitten by passer-by Rachel Bilson, Christensen finds out that his quick con on Garcia isn't as easy as it looks. This vignette starts off as a cliche, and the fact that Christensen can't really act doesn't help. But when Garcia and Christensen share the screen, there's something better afoot, with each trying to one-up the other in a game of wills.

Mira Nair directs a more romantic tale about two salespeople (Natalie Portman and Irrfan Khan) married to other people but who fall in love with each other regardless. This segment is unfulfilling, carried by solid acting but lacking any dramatic resolution beyond a clever use of visual language which suggests that these two will always love each other.

Shunji Iwai gets one of the most romantic parts of the film when he brings musician Orlando Bloom together with receptionist Christina Ricci by using Dostoevsky. Props on that one and on creating an ending to their story which feels neither forced nor hackneyed.

Yvan Attal directs two segments, both of which are marked by narrative twists and compelling dialogue which conceals something important beneath the surface. Both are set outside restaurants with their characters on smoke breaks; in the first of these, Ethan Hawke propositions Maggie Q about the inevitability of their romance based on one chance encounter, while in the second Robin Wright Penn plays a jilted wife looking for a change when she meets Chris Cooper and propositions him. The parallel is less pronounced than it seems.

Brett Ratner's segment is my absolute favorite in the film and really the only portion I'd consider rewatching at least once. After breaking up with Blake Lively, Anton Yelchin (one of my new favorites after Charlie Bartlett) agrees to take pharmacist James Caan's daughter to the prom. There's one catch - the daughter (Olivia Thirlby) is in a wheelchair. Don't be fooled; whimsy ensues, and Yelchin's big wish comes true. This one has a fabulous twist; if you only watch one segment, watch this one.

After appearing in a few interstitials, Bradley Cooper co-stars with Drea de Matteo in Allen Hughes's narrator-heavy story about a regrettable one-night stand. This segment flops because it doesn't quite go anywhere, and the ending is abrupt and inconsistent with all but the title of the film.

In the most puzzling segment in the film, Shekhar Kapur directs Anthony Minghella's screenplay about an opera singer (Julie Christie) who returns to a hotel in New York and has separate encounters with two bellhops (John Hurt and Shia LeBeouf). If anyone can make heads or tails of this segment, please let me know what you've decided, as I can't wrap my head around it.

Natalie Portman steps behind the camera to direct a segment about a father's (Carlos Acosta) day in the park with his daughter (Taylor Geare). This segment is cute and fluffy but ultimately forgettable. Portman does a fine job writing and directing it, to the extent that I'd be curious what she can do with longer material.

Fatih Akin directs an empty segment about a painter (Ugur Yucel) who falls for Chinese herbalist Shu Qi and then dies. Burt Young peeks his head in as Yucel's landlord. Huh? That's about all this segment amounts to.

Joshua Marston writes/directs the final full segment, in which Eli Wallach and Cloris Leachman celebrate their 63rd anniversary. The dialogue in this segment is well-played and flows at a leisurely pace, but if you're looking for a conventional narrative you won't find it here. This segment feels very personal and personable, and it's a comfortable way to close the film.

Throughout, Randy Balsmeyer gives transition scenes which feature various characters entering taxicabs together; Emilie Ohana plays a videographer whose role in the film seems only to be to unite the characters. One interstitial in particular, though, is memorable, with Eva Amurri and Justin Bartha quarreling about how they never vacation together.

The DVD includes two deleted vignettes, one of them directed by Scarlett Johannson and starring Kevin Bacon as a New Yorker with a bad case of wanderlust. These deleted scenes, though, have rightfully been omitted, as they are entirely lifeless and protracted. Perhaps Ms. Johannson should stay in front of the camera looking pretty, which she's very good at doing if Iron Man 2 is any indication.

Taken separately, there is a fair amount to like about New York, I Love You, but taken together as a 103 minute film there is a lot of disappointment. The choice to more deliberately blend vignettes - Drea de Matteo visits James Caan's pharmacy, and Chris Cooper meets Maggie Q at a dry cleaner's - makes the film difficult to follow in points; it is often unclear where one story ends and another begins. This trademark of the first film is evident only in the film's most successful segments - Iwai's and especially Ratner's. On the whole, though, Ratner's segment is the only standout feature in an otherwise disappointing follow-up to Paris je t'aime.
New York, I Love You is rated "R for language and sexual content." This being a movie about New York, F-bombs pepper the dialogue; this being a movie about love, sex comes up in conversation and is depicted twice without any nudity to speak of.