Surfergeeks

I went to see X-Men: The Last Stand last night. No, I didn’t make a typo above; however, I will concede that it’s not the WORST movie ever – it’s the SECOND WORST. The worst movie ever title goes to, and shall forever be held by the Donald Sutherland/Adam Horovitz joint Lost Angels.

***WARNING!!! DANGER!!! WARNING!!! BELOW *WILL* BE SPOILERS. IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE YET BUT FOR SOME REASON FEEL THE NECESSITY TO TORTURE YOURSELF DO NOT READ FURTHER UNLESS YOU WANT THIS HORRIBLE PIECE OF SHIT, WASTE OF FILM, RUINED EVEN FURTHER FOR YOU! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED ***

Back when the first X-Men movie came out, I was a little bit pissed on how they managed to completely massacre the timeline of the comics. By the time the second movie came out, I had accepted that Marvel likes to fuck with things. Afterall, how many times have they relaunched the Fantastic Four comic book, updating it each time? (at least twice) With that acceptance, I thought that the first two movies combined, give a good “relaunch” to the X-Men mythology and the casting for these movies is nothing less than superb. I was truly excited to see the 3rd movie. Then things happened.

The first thing that happened was that Brett Ratner removed himself from the Superman Returns project. The reason? Apparently Warner Bros. was balking at the proposed $250m budget. This started a chain of events that will hopefully culminate in the homicide of the aforementioned Ratner. Bryan Singer, the director of the first two movies then decided he wanted to direct the Superman project and left X-Men. Then, in some strange spousal-swapping scene right out of a porn movie, Ratner decides to join the X-Men project. This immediately pissed off a LOT of fans of the comics and first two movies. You see, the biggest problem is: Ratner is a FUCKING IDIOT! I’m not sure what confuses me more: Brett Ratner thinks he has the skills to direct a movie this big or the movie studio agrees with Ratner’s ego that he is talented enough to direct a movie this big. Whichever it is, they’re both wrong. Then I saw the trailer for the movie. I thought, “Hey, maybe everyone was wrong. Maybe Ratner didn’t fuck up the franchise worse than Clooney’s Batman. This actually looks pretty decent.” To quote the character of John Locke from ABC’s Lost, “I was wrong.”
In recent interviews, both Halle Berry and Hugh Jackman have stated that the third movie was supposed to be the final one, but that there are tons of stories out there to be told (and, indeed, they are spinning off Wolverine into his own movie, along with one focusing on Magneto) and if the fans demand it, who knows? Very cryptic. There’s only one problem with that little theory:

They’ve killed off basically EVERY SINGLE FUCKING MUTANT THAT HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE X-MEN!!!!!

I was pissed off right from the start when “Dark Pheonix” killed the love of her life, Scott Summers. We didn’t actually see the murder but it was implied, then later confirmed. Then the stupid bitch went and killed Xavier. Yes, you read that write, she killed Chuck. If I hadn’t been with people, I would have walked out of the movie right there. But wait, the death toll doesn’t stop there…

In addition to the above deaths, and the ones to be recanted soon, they also “cured” Mystique by force, turning her into a human and resulting in Magneto turning his back on her. The movie also introduced Juggernaut and Callisto into the fold. Since they join Magneto’s Brotherhood, we’ll talk about them now. Juggernaut – great casting with Vinnie Jones. Problem: HE’S NOT A MUTANT! Make note of this, it comes into play later. Callisto. Ah, sweet Callisto. When I saw the trailer for the movie that showed Callisto, I thought to myself that they did a fuckin’ A-One job of casting her. The look was almost bang-on (except for the eye-patch, mysteriously absent from the movie). Oh wait? What the fuck??? I was wrong. The character I *thought* was Callisto was actually the character of Arclight. Instead, Callisto is played a rather attractive latino woman!!!! Oh, and her powers? I thought you’d never ask. She has super-speed (makes The Flash seem down-right pokey) and can detect other mutants. Now, for comparison’s sake, let’s take a look at what www.marveldirectory.com (as well as two other sources) say about Callisto’s powers: “Superhumanly keen senses of sight (including night vision), hearing, smell, taste, and touch.” So, let’s run down the list: Horribly ugly – nope. Eye patch – nope. Leader of the Morlocks – nope. Correct powers – nope. Fights Storm – check. Well, hey! The dumbass (Ratner) finally got something right. Somebody needs to stick a knife in his eye.

Oooh. I know we were right in the middle of racking up the body count but I can’t forget about The Love Triangle consisting of Rogue, Kitty Pryde, and Iceman. What. The. Fuck? I don’t even know where to begin with this. Wait, yes I do. Ratner needs to be shot. Kitty Pryde was NEVER involved with Bobby Drake. She was in love with Piotr Rasputin. There isn’t a triangle, circle, square or any other shape. It just never existed.

Okay, on with the Body Count. Who’s dead so far? Oh yeah, Cyclops and the Prof. Well, Dark Pheonix offs a bunch of other muties including, but not limited to, Arclight, Callisto, and some porcupine dude. Basically at this point, she’s pretty much offing anything that moves. She’s trying to off Wolvie but his healing powers are healing him fast enough to stop him from disintegrating. Yeah. Right. Dumbass. Anyway, he gets up to her and, in her final moment of Jean-Grey-ness asks him to kill her. So he does. Just before this happens, Wolvie and Beast manage to jab Magneto with four of those cure darts and rid him of his mutant powers.

So, let’s see here. Who’s left alive? Wolvie, Storm, Colussus, Iceman, Kitty, Beast, Eric Lensherr (no longer Magneto. Oh wait, what’s that? He’s playing chess in a park. Wait! He’s trying to move the chess piece by pointing his hand at it. *GASP* It wiggles. That means either he’s a Jedi, there was a strong wind, or Ratner’s a fucking idiot. Raven Darkholme is still supposedly alive. Umm…who else…probably a few lesser mutants at the Academy. The status of Pyro and Juggernaut is somewhat unclear. Pyro was frozen solid by Iceman and Juggernaut knocked himself out running into a wall. How’d that happen you ask? Well you see, the “cure” was devleoped from this mutant boy who supressed any other powers within a few feet of him. Juggernaut got close to him. Of course, since Juggernaut ISN’T A MUTANT it shouldn’t matter – his strength is mystical in nature, not a genetic mutation. Also, while I’m ranting on about Juggernaut, let’s talk about his relationship with Xavier. You see, they’re step-brothers. EXCEPT Xavier doesn’t even recognize him in the movie!!! One of the characters asks him about his helmet and he replies it protects his pretty face. Well, maybe it does, but it’s real purpose is as a mystical protection against psionic attacks. (thank you once again marveldirectory.com) Hmm…oh yeah! Xavier! If you stuck around past the credits you were treated to a “big surprise”. The scene shows Moira in a hospital room and the person in the bed says “Moira” to which she replies “Charles?”. It would appear that, prior to Jean disintegrating him into billions of tiny atoms, he transferred his “essence” (???) into this person in the hospital. Of course, the genius of this little stunt is that now they can cast a different person as Xavier if they do come back for a fourth time AND he can walk! Moron.
So, to breifly recap: This pompous dumbass of a director comes on board and fucks everything up. Okay, maybe that was too brief but it pretty much sums everything up. The real kicker of that whole director swapping shit is that the reported budget of Superman under Singer is supposedly going to top out at about $300m. That’s $50m MORE than what WB balked at under Ratner. Of course, Bryan Singer is an infinitely more talented director. Maybe WB realized that the more money you give the asshat, the worse he’ll make the movie.

If, for whatever reason, they decide to make a fourth movie it will inevitably be better provided that Ratner is no longer breathing the same air as the rest of the planet. Actually, ANYONE could have done a better job. They really should have considered someone else before hiring Ratner. Maybe someone like one of the homeless guys living under one of the bridges in L.A. At least if he wastes the studio’s money, it’s going to be on grain alcohol.

So, here’s what I would like to happen from all this shit:

1. Every actor and crew member involved with this movie publicly apologizes for following Ratner’s lead.
2. Some crazy fan who is seriously unbalanced ends up killing Ratner so we never have to be subjected to his movies again.
3. Superman Returns fails miserably and Singer never works in Hollywood again. He’s a great director, but this really is all his fault.
4. Ten or fifteen years down the road, they do another movie and start over, as if these three movies never existed (a la Batman Begins) and actually do it right.
5. Marvel Entertainment Group also apologizes for letting things get so far out of hand

Obviously, the most important thing that has to happen is number two. There’s enough crazy people in California to do the job. I really feel that the movie company, or, more specifically, Brett Ratner, owes me my money back. There’s more I wanted to say, but it’s early in the morning and my brain isn’t quite up to full speed yet. I may come back and edit this.

Actually, before I go, I do actually have TWO positive things to say about this movie: As I mentioned before, the casting in all of these movies is absolutely superb. Kelsey Grammar as Beast was perfect, as was Vinnie Jones as Juggernaut. I think the weakest casting was probably Ellen Page as Kitty Pryde. She just didn’t fully project the confidence that Pryde always showed, even at the very beginning of her career as an X-Man. The other plus was the CGI. Top notch. A good portion of this movie takes place in San Francisco, yet the cast didn’t set foot in The City by the Bay once during filming. It was all done using CGI. An amazing job was also done “de-aging” Xavier and Lensherr during a flashback. Again, this was done exclusively using CGI. No makeup or prosthetics were involved.

So, to all those involved with the creation of this movie, please feel free to send me your apologies along with your contact information. Mr. Ratner, if you would contact me, I’ll be more than happy to pass along my address to you so you can send me reimbursement for my wasted money and time. Please email me x3sucks (at) surfergeeks (dot) net.