tala @ so-phobic

X3: The Last Stand

Warning: Contains spoilers. Read at your own risk.

2 Sir Ian McKellen films in 1 week! Yay! This fangirl is satisfied. The movie is the worst of the trilogy. The dialogue was cheesy, there was hardly any musical score. My favorite scenes were all the Professor X - Magneto ones, the original Brokeback duo. (Wait, is Patrick Stewart gay?) The opening credits were snapshots from the comics like usual, plus some scenes of cells with midichlorians. Oh wait, wrong movie.

At the top of my head, these were the things I liked about the film, and also some highlights:

• The snarking of Charles and Erik during the start of the film, before entering Jean Grey’s house and while witnessing her powers. Sidenote: According to my seatmate, a comic-canon guy, young Jean was only a telekinetic at that time. She shouldn’t have been able to read Charles’ and Erik’s minds. The snarking during the parallel scene where they both come to the Grey house, this time for Dark Phoenix.
• Magneto telling Pyro off after Charles’ death. Pyro mentions something about wanting to kill Professor X before (during X2 I think) and Magneto tells him that Charles has made one of the greatest contributions to mutantkind. I think Magneto is one of the more realistic villains. He recognizes the skill and genius of Charles, eventhough they are enemies. And they are enemies only in means, I think, since they started out with the same end dream.
• In lieu of the obligatory car-chase-scene-in-a-Hollywood-blockbuster, we have Juggernaut crashing through walls, chasing Shadowcat (who walks through walls). Very entertaining! Ellen Page, the actress who plays Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat, is pretty cute too.
• Angel spreading his wings. You can see this in the trailer. Beautiful wings!
• Magneto “picking up” the Golden Gate Bridge. Brilliant scene! Sorely lacking in score, but the camera work was great. Magneto breaks the Golden Gate Bridge into halves, moves one half and lands it unto Alcatraz, with the line: “Charles always wanted to build bridges”. Spectacular!
• Magneto getting 4 shots of the “cure”, taking away his mutant powers, making him human. Okay, I was really shocked at this scene. I couldn’t help yelling “No!” in the cinema. I actually anticipated it when the exchange among Logan, Storm, and Beast happened - them eyeing the syringes. The part where Magneto stops Logan was fairly predictable too. But I still can’t believe it happened! That’s blasphemy! (LOL) Magneto CAN’T lose his powers! Noooo!
• Professor X dies. I have no problems with Xavier dying. He’s died like what, 3 times in comic-canon? He’s the X in X-Men, he has super mind powers! He can leave a part of his soul in a horcrux! Oh wait, wrong fandom…
• …or maybe NOT. Stick around till after the credits for the appearance of the horcrux.
• The ending scene. Human Magneto is at the park, facing a table with a chess board and pieces laid out, but with no opponent, since Charles has gone kapput. He holds out his hand, and, the chess piece moves. The scene flashes so quickly and the camera is at a very clever angle. Did he push the piece slightly with his finger, or are his powers back? Of course, every one believes that he still has his powers. Maybe they should have tried out more camera angles, and picked the one that obscures what really happened. Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if the syringes were actually empty (some philosophical we can’t do this to a fellow mutant reasoning from Storm, Logan and Beast). After all, there was nothing mutant in Magneto’s physical form, so any change wouldn’t manifest physically (unlike Mystique’s). Whether his powers come back or not doesn’t have anything to do with the Magneto spin-off though. The film will be about his past.

There will be an X4. Fox has confirmed it. It will have a different story arc though.

Jane and I were gushing about Iceman all throughout the film. We thought that it was the guy who plays Troy Vandergraff on Veronica Mars. Look at how similar they look:

It turns out that they’re twins! Shawn Ashmore plays Iceman while his twin (older by a minute) Aaron is Troy!