Professor X: [to Eric] There's so much more to you than you know, not just pain and anger. There's good in you too, and you can harness all that. You have a power that no one can match, not even me.
I'll be honest, I was a bit worried going into this movie. A prequel/reboot?
I had nothing to worry about. From the very start of this movie, I was hooked. I'm going to try hard to not give any spoilers for this review. Except for one spot, but it will be hidden.
So...
We see both Charles and Eric as young men, both starting to use their powers. Rave/Mystique breaks into Charles's house, and he takes her in as his sister. We then move to 1962, where Charles and Eric are on their own paths. Charles as a student of genetics, and Eric bent on finding and killing Sebastian Shaw. Needless to say, their paths cross and history is made.
This is where we state to see some 'checklist moments'. These include:
-First use of Cerebro
-Eric's helmet
-Charles's hair
I didn't mind these at all. Oh, here are some minor spoilers. Highlight to see.
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During the recruitment scene, Charles and Eric approach Logan and are told to 'go fuck themselves'
At one point Raven was seducing Eric, and when told that 'maybe when she's older' she morphed into Rebecca Romaine
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Needless to say, it all comes to a head. We see the centerpiece battle, revolving around the Cuban Missile crisis. The plot of Shaw is familiar to fans of X-Men, but when you see everything put together and think about it, I forgave them for recycling plot from another movie.
At the end, we see Professor X's school starting and the Brotherhood of Mutants starting. I'd be ok with out a sequel, but we all know its coming.
Iron Man and Iron Man 2 have long been the standard by which I judged super hero movies. I might have found a new standard.
Logan: Control? You know, sometimes when you cage the beast, the beast gets angry.
And here we are. One of the more divisive movies I know, people either love it or hate it. The end of X2 set us up rather nicely for a telling of the Dark Phoenix story. And we did get a telling of that story. Just not the one that is from the comics as I understand.
See, I've never really been into the X-Men comics. So I had very little invested in the movies. With one exception. Portions of this movie was taken from the Joss Whedon penned Astonishing X-Men. And they treated that material well.
Dark Phoenix however...
I dunno. It felt forced. Killing off Cyclops was... pointless? Plot device? Apparently Professor X did some mind control on Jean to protect her from herself. She's crazy powerful. And then the Phoenix cam through and wanted to tear things up. So naturally she kills Prof. X and joins with Magneto.
BTW, there is also a mutant cure. Which Rouge takes. And then sits back on the bench, cause, ya know she had nothing else to do in this movie. Magneto wants to (again) destroy all humans! The X-Men (again) want to stop him.
And here we are on Alcatraz Island. Probably one of my favorite battle scenes. On one side we have a shit ton of the Brotherhood of Mutants. On the other, puny humans and some X-Men. Storm, Wolverine, Colossus, Iceman (who totally goes full ice!), Beast, Kitty Pride. And that's it. Intense battle ensues.
In the end, Magneto is 'cured', Professor X is 'alive' and Jean Grey is dead. I like the movie. Like I said, its got some good action pieces, including a part in the danger room against a Sentinel.
I look forward to X-Men: First Class. This was a nice end to the trilogy. I know its not without issues, but what movie is truly perfect?
Wolverine: You picked the wrong house, bub.
And right there in the quote I chose for this film, I represent again how well X-Men set up for this movie. Intentional or not, to me this hearkens back to the line in X-Men where Professor X pities the poor fools who choose to attack his school.
In this case, the attacker is one Stryker, the person responsible for Wolverine's adamantium skeleton. Stryker would like to destroy all the mutants in the world because Prof. X couldn't help Stryker's powerfully mutant son. So in one of the most ill advised moves in cinema history, Stryker attacks Xavier's school, so he can kidnap some of the kids and test his mutant killing version of Cerebro. Bad idea. Yes, he does take some, but I maintain Stryker's team got the shorter end of the stick.
Speaking of mutants, we also get to see Nightcrawler. Very cool, very well done. And he didn't even need to tell us he's invincible. (Bond joke there. Look up Alan Cumming, and Goldeneye)
But wait! In one of my favorite escape scenes, Mystique has injected a guard with iron who somehow gets past the metal detector and walks into Magneto's plastic cell. So, Magneto extracts the lead from the poor guard and escapes with a certain panache. All hell begins to break loose. Of course, Magneto wants to kill all the humans. Magneto and Stryker meet, hugs and kisses ensue.
Um, no. We all meet up at Alkali Lake, the location of Stryker's super secret love shack. And just as all the mutants are about to be destroyed, Magneto shows up and starts the process on destroying all the humans!
Well, that's not really that important. No one side gets obliterated. What we do get is Jean Grey dieing, and setting up for what should be a pretty bad ass telling of the Dark Phoenix saga.
What we got was X-Men: The Last Stand. Which isn't completely fair, as I think X-Men: The Last stand is pretty decent, but I won't be going into that here.
Cyclops: Well, what would you prefer? Yellow spandex?
Going into this movie, oh, 11 or so years ago, I knew very little about X-Men other than names of the characters and their powers. So, I went into this movie with no expectations other than to be entertained. And I was not disappointed. This is a great super hero movie. One of my favorites.
Plot here is simple. Magneto wants to take over the world, and Professor X is going to stop him. In the process of this occurring, we are introduced to some of the bigger X-Men and villains. Cyclops. Wolverine. Rouge. Mystique. Storm. Toad.
One of the things I forgot about this movie was how well it set up for X2. One of the cleanest endings to any movie with a predictable sequel. Not much to review here, just a simple super hero action movie.
I give it 8/13 X-Men
