Movies are an American Pasttime. One of the greatest ways to tell a story is to actually watch it happen. Going to the movies has always been fun, but now more than ever you can watch movies in your own home, on a flat screen HD tv. There's a lot out there. This section is devoted to movies in theaters and on DVD.
That aside X3: The Last Stand did a fantastic job at the box office amidst doubts over Brett Rattner�s ability to follow Bryan Singer and rumblings that the film could not live up to the previous two. Looking back at the comic book franchise, there haven�t been any #3�s that have been as good as or better than the first 2. Spider-Man 3 may be the first to break this �curse,� but Batman and Superman fell victim to this. X2: X-Men United was definitely our generations Empire Strikes Back, a film that took an idea and a tone from the first film and expanded on it creating one of the best action-adventure movies ever. X3 is no different than the original Batman/Superman franchises, but not in the campy, nipples on a bat suit type of way. X3 is a much better movie than Batman Forever and Superman III but it definitely does not live up to the first two and rightfully so, when you change directors the movie will ultimately shift. X3 is entertaining but fails to deliver the goods that the first two did. There is as much mythos in the X-Men alone as there is with the DCU and there is so much territory to cover that Zak Penn and Simon Kinburg seemed to cop out and take two fantastic films and transform it completely into the summer blockbuster. However, following Batman Begins and Superman Returns and the slew of Marvel movies over the past six years, the difference between the DC and Marvel movies is clear, DC seems to be going for the emotionally tormented, more character driven film while Marvel is happily banking on the classic blockbuster.
I was not a huge fan of X3 even after having worked on the film, I knew that if it went certain directions it would either be poorly received or mixed. The first two movies spent so much time establishing the universe and explaining what a mutant was that keeping the story grounded in the real world was the only way a third film could work and continue the story told by Bryan Singer. By staying in the real world I am referring to avoiding the Shi�ar Empire and the true roots of who and what the Phoenix really is. After it was all said and done and I saw X3 for the second time in theaters, I again left disappointed. Granted X3 delivers some great action scenes and a slew of great characters from the X-books, the writing was off and Rattner�s attempt to emulate Singer�s style remained as an attempt, but a valiant one at that. Certain aspects of the film just did not make sense, they were convenient but really did not capture the epic proportions of the Dark Phoenix Saga nor the epic standards set by Singer and company. In fact, the Phoenix that is portrayed in X3 seems very far from actually being the Phoenix, there is no fiery bird as seen in X2 nor is there the global threat that the Phoenix is going to consume the world. Instead we have an even more righteous Magneto hell bent on stopping the cure.
This is another aspect where Kinburg and Penn cop out per say, with all of the stories to pull from over the years they take elements from the epic Phoenix saga and mesh them together with a newer idea presented by Joss Whedon in the first story arc of Astonishing X-Men. The cure was a great plot device and gave Magneto the motivation he needed for the X-Men to go after him but Jean Grey�s role is weak and almost pointless. There is no power struggle between Magneto and Jean, Jean Grey poses almost no threat until the very end where she is merely gutted by Wolverine. It seems to me that when she kills Xavier he let himself go, and if you stay until after the credits you see the true fate of Xavier. And as an "earth-based" franchise, the space travel seems unrealistic even though the X-Men fly a super-advanced SR-71 and have superpowers.
As a whole the movie is an entertaining popcorn flick but in no way does it compare to the first two in the series. The acting is decent at best because of pretty crappy performances such as the President and the underutilization of Angel. The special effects are pretty good and there are a few X-moments that can be considered fairly classic, such as Iceman going to full ice form and the fastball special. And judging by the two endings of the film it is safe to say that this is not the last we have seen of the X-Men.
The DVD is not what one would expect from the �final� installment of a franchise. It�s got the movie and that�s about it, the DVD itself is pretty disappointing. With the coming onslaught of the Ultimate Superman Collector's Set as well as the Bond movies being re-released on DVD, you may actually find yourself thinking twice before picking this standard DVD because there really isn't much substance. There are ten deleted scenes which are pretty much different takes and have no overall effect on the movie and three alternate endings which also don�t change the flow of mighty rivers. I was disappointed not to see a "Making of" which featured everything from casting to costume design to which mutants to include. Although I'm sure this will be coming in a future release of the DVD, just another way to hit our pockets. The commentary is also standard and aside from a few good trailers the special features are slim pickings.
There are two versions of the Collector�s edition I have spotted, Circuit City and Best Buy�s has a 96 page comic book with an all new X-story by Stan Lee, Target�s features a tin box with trading cards. I did not splurge for either of these as the DVD itself does not warrant a $25 price tag with only one disc and hardly any special features. Only after I picked it up at Best Buy did I notice that Wal-Mart�s 2 pack features an exclusive disc with 50 minutes of �The Making of X3.� If you are looking for something more than the movie head to Wal-Mart or wait a few months, there has got to be that big DVD set coming soon. But if you just want the movie, pick it up.
There was very little buzz around the cure storyline up until the first few issues of Astonishing X-Men were well received. One let-down, I felt, was the exclusion of certain characters including Emma Frost, Apocalypse and even Havok. But with so many X-characters in the universe, they picked out a pretty good bunch to feature even if many of the characters included were simply eye-candy for fans, such as Psylocke, Multiple Man and Avalanche. If this truly is the final X-film then it feels as though the loss of Bryan Singer was a crushing blow to Marvel's second best franchise. One of the most fun things while working as an intern on the movie's pre-production was finding mutants using their powers straight from the comics. For example, Magneto ripping the Golden Gate Bridge was ripped out of Morrison's final arc and Wolverine's final stand against the Phoenix was reminiscent of both Morrison and Claremont, so it was very cool to see those epic moments come to life on screen.
Adopting from IGN.com (Credit where credit is due), Here's our system:
X3: The Last Stand
X-Men 3 is a movie that I hold close to my heart. When I interned at Marvel Studios, I spent a great deal of time working on pre-production for the film. It was my first Hollywood movie I actually had something to do with, so to say that I feel attached to the film is an understatement. While Avi Arad and Kevin Feige went after a new director, Jason Miller, myself and two other interns spend hours in comic geek heaven compiling artist renderings, storylines, character profiles, uses of powers, tossing around story ideas about everything and anything X-Men. However, with the return of my all-time favorite character Hal Jordan and the announcement of a Superman movie, my attention shifted drastically from Marvel to DC.
KP Says: Fan Buy