X3: The Last Stand

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Post by VanHelsing »

I also feel that the visual effects were good, if not great. And don't forget the sound effects as well. The whole theater was shaking when Magneto slammed down the broken Golden Gate bridge onto the ground.

Alas, I don't think the Academy is ready or even willing to give any nomination to a film like X-Men. Well, they can shock us if they want to. But if X-Men does get nominated for visual/sound effects, it deserves them.
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Post by OscarGuy »

Well, X-Men 3 was designed by WETA, I guess that gives it a shot. I though the effects were pretty damned good. They were all over the place but they fit with the story. I was very pleased to see that when the X-Jet landed, although it was cloaked, the dust it stirred up did give it a bit of shape, which fits perfectly with reality (if cloaking were real).
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Post by rolotomasi99 »

what do you think it's chances are for a nomination in visual effects?

personally, i thought the f/x were pretty bad. they did not distract me from enjoying the movie, but the f/x for the "superman returns" trailer looked much better, as did the f/x for "pirates of the caribbean 2."

i think the award will come down to between those two. what will round out number three? maybe "world trade center" or maybe "eragon." i guess if nothing else can do any better they will just nominate "x-men 3." hell, if "the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe" can get nominated for its f/x, anything can.
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Post by Penelope »

Well, having never read any of the comics, I quite enjoyed this film; as I said elsewhere, I thought it was better than the first entry, and pretty much on par with the second. Personally, none of them approach the level of genre greatness achieved by the first Superman and the second Spider-Man, but the X-Men trilogy as a whole, I should say, comfortably rests in the top 10 for comic book adaptations.
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Post by OscarGuy »

SPOILERS: Don't read further.

I think there was plenty of emotional resonance behind both Xavier and Jean Gray's death. There was even emotional resonance to what happened to Magneto. However, there are several points to make.

1. We know that Leech only temporarily effected Beast that means that we should have known that any "cure" made from his dna would be temporary as was proven by the last shot with Magneto.
2. Since Magneto's getting his power back slowly, Rogue will too.
3. The scene after the credits where Xavier has transferred his mind into the body of the braindead man was completely foreshadowed by two things (one in-film, the other out-of-film). The in-film is when he's talking about the transferring of conciousness into the man in the bed. The other is what I surmised all along. I've never read the comics but I'm familiar with the setting and there's an "astral space" type place where Xavier and others have transferred their minds in the past. Knowing X, it wasn't a perma death when he died anyway. I saw that he could easily transfer there and wait to take on a new body. Then that final-final scene he did, so it vindicated.
4. Since Jean has similar talents as X mentally, it's not inconceivable that she, too, transferred her mind. Plus we all know that the Phoenix rises from the ashes even after death, so her death is definitely not permanent.
5. That leaves Scott Summers. We never saw him die. We can't be certain that he is dead other than a gravestone. Frankly, I'm glad he's dead, I hate his character. However, it's also possible that if Phoenix rises, I don't see why she couldn't (if she can disintegrate bodies at her power level) reintegrate Scott with her power level.

I don't care about Gambit. I've heard about his character and it annoys me. I couldn't care less if he ever showed up in a franchise film.

This is also a super hero franchise. These are the type of people who, even though they die, they come back. (Toad was killed in the first movie by a very good electricity surge...but there he is in the scene where Magneto first appears to collect mutants for his cause. So, anyone can come back from anything.

Don't blame Ratner for the deaths of the characters. Perhaps the execution of the scenes but not the deaths themselves.

As was said in the past by the makers of these films, X3 was always designed to be the cap of a trilogy arc. Now, that means when the next movies start coming out, they'll start anew with a different theme and arc, so it's conceivable that we should see one of two events: the "not too distant future" and a battle with the sentinels as foreshadowed twice now. OR it could be an origins arc where we learn how the original X-crew got together. Or it could just be something completely different. We won't know until they realize what a huge success they have with this film.
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Post by MovieWes »

I'm coming back briefly to vent on this film as well.

I'm a huge X-Men fan. I own the first two films on DVD. That being said, I wasn't expecting a lot from this one, since Brett Ratner is probably the director I resent the most in Hollywood. Maybe he's not the worst, but he certainly is the most uninteresting. How does one even describe a Brett Ratner movie? His movies smack of cheap imitations of more popular films. The Rush Hour movies are nothing more than a cross between Lethal Weapon and Beverly Hills Cop. The Family Man is Rob Reiner’s worst nightmare. And Red Dragon? Meh. Give me Silence of the Lambs or Manhunter any day of the week. Michael Bay may suck, but at least he has an unmistakable flair that makes a Michael Bay movie a Michael Bay movie. Brett Ratner doesn’t even have that much. He can’t set up a half-way interesting shot. He has no vision. His movies are just there. Boring. In other words, his movies are generic. I never saw After the Sunset, and I have no intentions to ever watch it.

Which brings me to X-Men: The Last Stand. It's not nipples on the Batsuit bad, but it's not very good at all. In fact, as a lifelong fan of the comics, I was extremely pissed by what I saw. Ratner and Co. took so many liberties with the comics that I found myself scowling throughout much of the film. Beware of spoilers, but it's probably no big secret anymore that there were some major characters that bit the big one in this installment, and it angered me so much that I am wondering if I even want them to make another movie. The characters that got axed were so essential to the franchise that future sequels will suffer from their loss. And the manner in which they died were so completely devoid of anything resembling emotion that it bordered on self-parody.

I guess the only thing that will bring me back to the franchise is if they ever decide to use Gambit in a movie. I'm still wondering why they haven't used him yet, seeing as he's the second most popular character in the X-universe behind Wolverine.
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Post by VanHelsing »

Dark Phoenix was underutilized? I felt that after Wolverine & Magneto, she's the one with the best scenes. Granted, she does not have much dialogue to deliver but her facial expressions (with the help of CGI) more or less make up for it especially in the confrontational scene with Professor X.

As for Rogue, seriously, if she had not been in the film, I wouldn't have missed her. Truly wasted! I was looking forward to her participation in the battle scene. I think perhaps her comic book character is quite hard to translate onto the big screen.

And obviously, Cyclops is way more underutilized than Dark Phoenix which is to be expected since Marsden had to shoot for Superman Returns concurrently.

Last but not least, I find it extremely laughable and ironic that the film for which Brett Ratner got a lot of flak for, will turn out to be his most successful film to date. So many GFBs hated him for taking up directing duties for this film (some even vowed not to catch it all) yet from what I've heard, this same group of people are flocking into theaters to watch it and possibly making it the X-Men film with the highest gross.

IMO, the 3rd film was more or less the same standard in terms of entertainment value with the 2nd one and definitely much much better than the first one. At the end of it, I was certainly hoping for a 4th instalment.

And for the record, I'm an 85% GFB. So, there you go LOL!
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Post by kooyah »

Sabin wrote:The bad stuff is anything involving talk, and there's quite a bit of it; it's not very good talk, but it didn't have to be quite this bad.

That's all for bad? I was REALLY disappointed in the underutilization of Anna Paquin and Famke Janssen. The X-Men universe is enormous and they want to bring to life more and more of those characters, yes, but I thought the shortshrift given to Paquin and Janssen (particularly Janssen) was absolutely criminal.

And I gotta say, the Iceman and Kitty Pryde storyline was pretty creepy since Kitty looks like she is 12 years old.
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Post by OscarGuy »

I have to contradict. I though the first X-Men was good. The second one was fantastic. This one, while not admittedly as good as the first two, was still good. I don't enjoy many comic adaptations. The first Spider-Man annoyed me, the second was finally worth a crap and everything else has been appallingly atrocioius (Elektra, Fantastic Four, etc.).

This film does seem to lack direction. There is a lot of posturing from the heroes but that's to be expected from the characters. The ones who tend to be sermonizing are. The ones who tend to be quiet are. The story fits in with the various characters' personality.

There was some lack of panache in the fight scenes which where, pretty standard for this genre. I do miss Bryan Singer's vision. I still enjoyed the film.
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Post by Damien »

Welcome back, Josh! We've missed you.
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Post by Sabin »

Okay...still relatively MIA, lurking occasionally, but just needed to, I don't know, vent. Spew, perhaps? Just spew a little. Lord knows, these are not very good movies. The first 'X' was a fairly stilted calling card of post-'Matrix' neo-fascist cool, but still stylish and entertaining. The second, though somewhat all over the place, benefited from some of the best blockbuster set pieces of the decade.

And now this. If anybody out there doesn't already know, Bryan Singer signed on to do 'Superman' which ended up conflicting with FOX and Marvel's plans to unveil their latest installment of the 'X-Men' trilogy Memorial Day weekend (unless I'm mistaken) due to a contract where the main actors got a pretty substantial pay hike if the duration of the trilogy exceeded so many years. Singer requested they push the shooting date back, FOX refused, and hired another director, Matthew Vaughn who dropped fairly quickly. Workaday hack Brett Ratner signed on (who, in all fairness, I don't like very much, but hadn't yet proven himself inept by any means, just inexceptional and uninteresting) to helm the film and has been touring a boatload of interview circuits as The Man Who Shot The Last 'X-Men' Film!

I can only assume that he'll be making fewer and fewer appearances as more reviews leak out, save for a childish outburst or two when Singer starts to emerge into the spotlight with 'Superman' - but I've yet to talk about 'X3'. It's not good. Oh, it's not a good one at all. Just all over the place. The writers have composed yet another over-the-top berth of operatics, which I now see was in sync with Singer's stylish compositions but left to Ratner's blah behest the result isn't quite a zero but really, really dull. I want to enjoy a blockbuster but it's getting very, very difficult.

I've read X-Men growing up and let me tell you: fans of the comic will be Capital P-I-Double S-ed. I won't say anymore about that. But you will be. OH YES. What I will say is that this film is a motley of comic snippets picked from some fairly wonderful sagas and edited together to what could be solid conceptual design, but ends up feel monotonous, heavy-handed, and EXTREMELY literal-minded. Talent is plucked and disposed of pretty quickly, characters speechify and talk at each other in literal homily, and this is supposed to take the place of fun. I have friends who actively support this comic book adaptation craze just to see their beloved characters on the big screen. At this point, it's just tiresome. 'Spider-Man' movies are actual movies. 'X-Films' are fun, but let's be serious...

Brett Ratner is in over his head in a big way. His staging is awkward, his actors look very confused and borderline parody, and his action scenes seem salvaged by just editing a lot of stuff together - trust me, that's the good stuff. The bad stuff is anything involving talk, and there's quite a bit of it; it's not very good talk, but it didn't have to be quite this bad. Even people who were less than pleased with the first two will miss the relative elegance that Singer brought to his scenes. Ratner does not ruin the film but his handling of the script - which is admittedly pretty grandoise stuff - is way off. There is no reconsiling platform and approach in this case.

This is a frustrating franchise film. Much in the way that the first 'Harry Potter' - and recently, the beyond boring 'Da Vinci Code' - was more of a companion piece than an actual film, 'X3' is afraid to take sides against the family and refuses to have much fun with the characters. These are serious mutants. And they cry. However, the innovations it does take are not terribly satisfying. I really wonder if anybody is really going to actively enjoy this film. If they do, it's with nerd teeth firmly gritted. I acknowledge that the first two movies are fairly messy experiences, but they're stylish messes, at times very entertaining messes. I can't honestly say I had much fun in this film. And I'm an 'X-Men' fan. I'm predisposed to enjoying seeing mutants on the screen.
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