This is the one X-men
film my daughter had seen before…at age three.
That, “Little Warren
cuts his wings off” moment is pretty visceral isn’t it. That’s probably why she remembered it from
way back then.
She also responded to
him denying the cure and the last minute by blasting out of his wings and
flying out the window the same way she did at age three, “Whoah. Awesome!”
The film is nowhere
near as good as the first two, but as part of the series, it does have some
merits.
Someone giving Halle
Berry a comic book between X-men United
and this one definitely helped.
Hank’s big speech about
morals and ethics sums up pretty much the core of the whole X-series, and
increased my daughter’s already being considerably offended at the thought of
mutants being a disease. The more I see
her incredible outrage at racism, the more I can’t wait to see what happens
when we get to Blazing Saddles. (Aside
from the occasional angry letter from school, I mean.)
The whole idea that Professor
X can be a scheming jerk a great deal of the time is also a core to the comic
book X-series, and used pretty well in this outing.
Magneto comes off as a
truly charismatic leader - a crazy powerful, charismatic leader. He does have several moments that remind
everyone that he is a villain, yet how much he cares for Charles is still
always apparent.
He also pulls off some
“unleashed” moments that are at least equal to Wolverine.
Beast unleashes pretty
impressively his blue furred self as well.
In the unfortunate
tradition of Marvel women not being able to handle their powers, Jean’s
unleashings blow everyone else’s away as they cross into the realm of
uncontrolled.
In fact, her powers blow
absolutely everything away, except the most indestructible substance in the
universe…
Wolverine’s pants.
In a universe where her
hospital gown is a little black dress, that is to be expected.
Again, while not as good
as previous efforts, it still captivated my daughter.
She was excited by the
reunion between Jean and Scott, and impressed that she could stop his eye
beams.
She was less impressed
when she disintegrated him, especially when my answer to, “Where did he go?”
was, “He went to make Superman Returns.”
Much like any sane
person, her reaction to a “telekinetic cocoon” as Jean’s reason for not being
dead was, “That makes no sense.”
I also have to agree
with her that the Juggernaut saying he needs to pee is far funnier than it
should be.
The return to Jean’s
home may be the key moment of the story. While not as flashy as the final, army
sized battle; the stakes are much more personal and emotional. All the actors played their parts to the
hilt, and while my daughter was disturbed by the outcome, the power of it all was
visible on her face.
Storm and Wolverine’s
silent bonding moment following Phoenix unleashing Charles all over the walls was
one of the few examples in the movies of the strong, platonic connection
between those two that the comics often highlight so well.
The opening Danger Room scene,
and later one’s with Rogue perfectly demonstrated the two sides of Logan when
relating to the younger mutants.
His complete and total
lack of patience makes Wolverine a lousy teacher.
However, his massive
amount of heart makes Wolverine a perfect mentor.
My daughter is always
quick to pick up on mundane uses of powers.
For the girl “magically”
taking notes, she asked, “Is that all she can do? And they let her in the school?”
While Bobby’s
demonstration of creating ice skates for him and Kitty was supposed to prove
that boring uses of “gifts” can be awesome, doing it while Rogue was watching
proved something else to her:
“He’s a jerk.”
There was a similar two
sided view of young Pyro:
I felt that Pyro
represented followers of a cause who embrace the fight without comprehending the
principals behind it.
On the other hand, my
daughter felt Pyro was a “Stinkpot McPatootie Head.”
She did, however
recognize the Beast’s catchphrase, “Oh my stars and garters!” and laughed
appropriately. Since he isn’t in the
comics we’ve read together, she either remembered that from the 90’s cartoon
that I unsurprisingly own on DVD…or from me.
She also laughed inappropriately
at a few points making me an excessively proud papa!
It was more of an evil
chuckle when Calisto got electrocuted by Storm.
Bonus points for Storm avoiding any “witty” remarks this time.
It was a straight out
belly laugh, after admitting it was disturbing as, once again Hugh Jackman gets
a pass from her for inappropriate behavior.
This would be during the
scene where the guy kept growing back limbs as Wolvie sliced them off.
So he simply fell back
on a long distance field goal style kick to the mutant’s man mangoes, followed
up by:
“Grow those back.”
As a conclusion, I’d
like to point out The Last Stand also
had the first post credits scene of this franchise
With a musical sting so
scary and sudden, it startled my daughter out of noticing Erik moved the chess
piece.
IndeX-Men
IndeX-Men
No comments:
Post a Comment