X‑Men: The Last Stand

The Gold­en Gate Bridge isn’t the only Amer­i­can icon strand­ed in the rub­ble of X‑Men: The Last Stand. The only thing ​‘extra­or­di­nary’ about these mutants would be if the smok­ing ruin of their rep­u­ta­tion can be sal­vaged in time for a fourth film. Let’s hope not.

Not so much pick­ing up from as repeat­ing the plot of the first two films, The Last Stand sees ten­sions ris­ing as a ​‘cure’ for mutants pro­vokes civ­il war. Added to the mix is the return of Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) – now called the Phoenix – a per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of Freudi­an pas­sions and world-shak­ing power.

Or so we’re told. Most­ly her job is to stand around look­ing blank while Wolver­ine and the gang hit the head­less chick­en but­ton. She gets to cut loose a cou­ple of times in the movie’s best scenes, but most­ly direc­tor Brett Rat­ner doesn’t have the brains, inter­est or bud­get to do her any kind of justice.

So it’s more of the same. Halle Berry and Hugh Jack­man get in the way of the cam­era; Ian McK­ellen does his Brit bit as best he can; and the new faces – blue fur-ball Beast (Kelsey Gram­mer) and armour-plat­ed foot­ball hooli­gan Jug­ger­naut (Vin­nie Jones) – try in vain to reg­is­ter per­son­al­i­ty through the prosthetics.

All to no avail, because the sheer inep­ti­tude on dis­play is breath­tak­ing. No, it’s an insult to every­body who pays to be slapped in the face like this. Ratner’s X‑Men is a cav­al­cade of slap­dash film­mak­ing. From basic con­ti­nu­ity errors and care­less cam­er­a­work to a stag­ger­ing­ly wrong-head­ed epi­logue that crys­tallis­es a key ques­tion: what the fuck is the point of all this bullshit?

James Marsden’s Cyclops is dis­patched with an almost audi­ble ​‘sod off to Super­man’. Mutant pow­ers come and go, day becomes night, char­ac­ters wan­der off aim­less­ly for chunks of the film, the emo­tion­al pay-offs are sign­post­ed in neon lights. It’s never-ending.

Is it faith­ful to the comics? Who cares? Sel­l­otape a page to your TV if you want to see a com­ic book come to life. As an exer­cise in the basic mechan­ics of film­mak­ing, X‑Men: The Last Stand is a sham­bles. For­get Posei­don, this is the summer’s big dis­as­ter movie.