achtungbaby.net

Not that I was expecting Two Towers-quality cinematic genius (it doesn’t come around often, just watch ROTK!), but even my very basic, withered, atrophied need for either intelligence or genuine emotion in bites cried out in protest. I was probably more moved by Will Ferrell’s spiraling delivery of “I’m in a glass cage of emotion!” than at any point during The Last Stand.

Maybe I was expecting too much. Clearly, the first two episodes of the X-men trilogy had at least some honest exploration of the characters. Wolverine and Rogue as two loners who find comfort in one another (in a brother/sister context of course. Watching the bond between them begin to develop and eventually expand to allow others others at best was typical/standard movie adapation of comic book fare. It’s just shit you find youself willing to tolerate.

But in hopefully the last vehicle of the franchise, the semblance of dramatic conflict has been leveraged repeatedly — a few, repeatedly (what’s with these scientiest or military fathers who spawn mutant freaks and then dedicate their lives tomutan eradication?

While X-Men 3 begins with seeming to hint of at least *some* sort of argument as to why we should give a friggen damn about any of these characters, by the end of the movie, the audience is basically given the finger.

Case in point: the scientist who develops the mutant cure is tossed off a rooftop, apparently to his death, when he’s suddenly rescued by his prodigal, angel-winged son, who saves his life…almost…l-l-like an ANGEL would…

(pauses for dramatic effect)

(Actually during that scene laughter broke out sporadically amongst the audience — one of those ‘the director didn’t intend for this to be amusing but because of a seeming disconnect on drama 101, this scene now plays out absurdly.

There’s a few minutes of drama and human emotion, but mostly only thinly veiled/lazy attempts at such. I mean, come on people! This is a trilogy! We should simply be grateful at having to see them all again.

In the third vehicle, a new “cure” for the mutant disease has been developed, which of course threatens the existence of every mutant soul on the planet. The mutants, of course, respond in kind by essentially saying, “You wanna kill me? I kill you right back!”

That’s really the gist of it all. No major polemic (or even a weak attempt to present heaftier issues which serve as undercurrents to Wolverine’s growls. So consequently, as the film rolls on, despite a few geniunely surprising plot turns, viewers are sort of hurriedly pushed towards the a tired climactic sequence, which had pretty much everyone asking, “Why are they doing this? Do they care? We probably don’t.”