Ruined for Everybody: X-Men: The Last Stand

For a more spoiler free review of the movie read the one that Stephen Notley wrote. Mine is all about the spoiling.

When, within the first half hour of a movie sequel, one of my favorite characters is vaporized in a way that doesn't allow for any emotional connections, I tend to disconnect from the rest of the movie and throw all expectations out. Which isn't to say that I had many expectations because I'd read the headlines of the early reviews over at Ain't it Cool News, all of which were negative. In the end, I'd give the movie a rating of "blah." If you liked the first two and can disconnect from the problems, like I did, you'll survive unharmed. If you're one of the people nearly cream your pants every time you read a rumor about the Wolverine solo move, you'll probably love it.

So, here’s how the movie goes:
It opens with Xavier and Magneto twenty years ago meeting a young Jean Grey who is powerful enough to lift all the cars on her block (as well as steal Chris Claremont's lawnmower and make the water from Stan Lee's hose slow down and start falling up). Can you all say "retcon"? I knew you could.
Then we meet a kid using a rasp on his back to shave his budding wings.
There's a useless Danger Room sequence that "reinforces" the fact that Wolverine is not a team player, even though he keeps coming back to the mansion to spend time with everyone and he even helps out in a class when he's asked to. Yeah, he's a real loner, isn't he? We get to hear a Sentinel, and see its head. I'd rather there wasn't a Sentinel at all because if I can't actually see the team fighting a giant robot, it should be kept out of the film all together.
Scott Summers is still depressed over Jean Grey getting crushed by tons of water. Wolverine chews him out for not being in class. Scott runs away to the lake (A lake, really? Do these people understand how reservoirs work? They block the water from a river filling up a natural valley. When the damn breaks, it all turns back into a river, there's no lake. If only this was the worst part of the upcoming scene.) where Jean died. He cries a little. He yells at the voice of Jean in his head a little. And he takes off his glasses and zaps the water. A hole forms, Jean rises, they kiss, strange lines appear on Scott's face, and it looks like the life is being sucked out of him.
Professor Xavier sends Storm and Wolverine to find Scott. Instead, they find Jean and a pair of red Ray-Bans.
Oh, somewhere in there, Mystique was captured and a "cure" for mutants was announced. That's important because it allows Magneto, along with Pyro, to gather an army of mutants. Magneto sets out to rescue her. This scene has him standing in the middle of the road, crushing cars and flinging them away. Pretty awesome. It also has Mystique getting shot with the "cure" and abandoned by Magneto, but he does rescue Juggernaut (a crappy character, no matter what) and Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man.
By then it's revealed that Xavier had blocked off portions of Jeans mind, which severely limited her power and created a second personality which calls itself Phoenix. (This, I thought was cool because Xavier has fucked with everyone's minds in the comics, closing off portions for some, opening portions for other, or planting false memories for everyone. It's just too bad an earlier film hadn't mentioned this, even in passing, it would have been more effective then that the blocks he made were breaking down.)
Jean eventually wakes up and decides to make out with Wolverine, who is into it at first, but changes his mind for some reason. Jean asks him to kill her before she kills again. He says no and shows her Scott's glasses. Jean goes nuts, disintegrates the glasses, throws Wolverine across the room, and runs to her childhood home.
The X-Men and Magneto's people all go there to convince her to be on their side. Xavier upsets Jean, who throws Magneto across the room and uses her brain to lift Xavier out of his chair. Wolverine and Storm get their asses kicked. Jean disintegrates Professor X. And another of my favorite X-characters is killed.
Jean goes with Magneto and his crew to the woods.
Somewhere in there, Rogue sees her boyfriend, Bobby "Iceman" Drake, ice skating with Kitty Pride on the fountain in the yard and decides to go get the cure so she can finally touch her man, proving that Rogue believe that the only way to keep a man faithful is by putting out. Also, Angel escapes from the cure and flies from San Francisco to New York. (Later, he flies from NY to SF, almost as fast as the X-Men's jet can fly.)
There's a cool scene where Jamie Madrox becomes a whole camp of mutants to screw with the government.
Wolverine goes by himself, to once again reinforce that he's loner, to save Jean. He fights a guy who throws pointy bones. He kills the guy who throws pointy bones. Magneto throws Wolvie against a tree. Magneto throws Wolvie across the forest. Wolvie limps his way back to the mansion to ask for help to save Jean.
Magneto, literally, takes the Golden Gate Bridge to Alcatraz. It was very nice of him to lay one end of the bridge on the peninsula so the US army could get across later in the movie.
Magneto sends his "pawns" in and they all get shot with the cure.
Some mutant, I couldn't tell if it was a guy or a girl, claps his or her hands and destroys the guns. The army guys get scared. The X-Men (although I hate calling them that without Cyclops there) arrive and fight. Storm gets to beat up the chick who beat her up earlier. Wolverine uses his claws on lots of people, but never seems to get them bloody. Beast bounces, throws bad guys, and partially quotes Churchill. Kitty runs away from Juggernaut. Iceman makes a wall of ice. And Colossus does stuff, but I don't remember him being shown much. (I guess he was too expensive to show all the time.)
After a long, wall crushing chase, Kitty saves the mutant who is the cure by having Juggernaut run into a wall. Yeah, it's stupid.
Iceman fights Pyro and finally ices up to... head butt the guy.
Colossus hurls Wolverine, in a "fastball special," at Magneto, who stops Wolvie in mid air and pontificates a bit. Beast jumps up from behind and pokes Magneto with the cure.
Jean goes even crazier and starts disintegrating all the people who didn't have speaking parts.
Kitty appears with the cure kid and no one thinks that if they can get him close to Jean, she'll stop turning people to dust.
Everyone runs across the bridge to the peninsula, except for Wolverine and Jean and all the dead people.
Wolverine gets close to her, trying to talk to her so she'll stop being crazy. She doesn't stop and she can't disintegrate him as fast as his body regenerates. He gets close to her, stabs her in the stomach, she dies, and he cries.
There are three headstones in the lawn at the mansion, which doesn't creep any of the kids out, right? Storm hugs the cure kid. Rogue is back, touches Bobby's hand and kisses him.
Magneto is sitting in a park at a chess board. He puts he had near a piece and it wiggles toward his hand. He smiles. The movie ends.

First, in my opinion, a story about the Dark Phoenix doesn't work if the audience hasn't seen the Phoenix be good. If the Jean had come back with all the power of the Phoenix and help the X-Men and slowly go insane until she becomes the Dark Phoenix it would have much more impact on the audience. There's a reason Claremont and Byrne set the original story of the Phoenix up that way: They knew what they were doing.

Second, did anyone really believe that Wolverine loved Jean as much as or more than Scott? Scott was the one who loved her, openly, in the last two movies. Scott was the one broken-up over her death. Scott was the one who found her at the lake. He should have been the one to hear Xavier's mental block story. He should have been the one who tried to rescue her in the forest. He should have been the one to kill her in the end to provide the most emotional impact. Instead, he was killed off screen. Just thrown away.

The best thing about this movie was Kelsy Grammer as Beast, it's just too bad he's not that important to the movie. (Sure, Ian McKellen was fun, again, as Magneto, but there were points where he seemed bored with what he was doing.) I knew when I'd first read about him being cast that he'd be wonderful. He has a voice that sounds kind and intelligent, just like the voice of Beast I hear in my head. With Grammer as Beast I could see the joy Hank McCoy got out of reading a book, visiting with old friends, or ripping enemies apart. He was the only character who brought a smile to my face. Hearing him say, "Oh my stars and garters!" made me grin from ear to ear. I did have two problems with him, though. (Neither had to do with the actor.) The first was the lack of a furry face. Without the furry face he looks too human, not beastly enough. It shouldn't have to have long hair, like they put on his body, but hair that looks like a freshly buzzed head, where it's less than a half inch long. That, I think, would have made his make-up perfect. The second problem was not showing him being acrobatic in any way. Yeah, the first shot of the guy is him hanging upside-down reading in his office, but it would have been cooler if he had been told his meeting was delayed a few minutes and he said, "Fine, that gives me some time to catch up on my [pretentious Russian author]." Then he grabs the book, bounces off the wall, flips, and grabs on to the ceiling with his bare feet. And the fight at the end would have been a lot more fun to watch if he had been more talkative and less beastly.

The movie has lots of missed opportunities like those:
We didn't get to see the whole Sentinel.
Iceman only sprays a mist to freeze things; he doesn't make anything with his ice. Why couldn't he have thrown an icicle? And he ices himself up only to head butt Pyro? What was that about? Why not have him ice up as he steps out to duel with Pyro? Pyro mocks Bobby, Bobby ices up, Pyro take a moment and realizes that he has some respect for his enemy. It would have been ten seconds of screen time that lets the fanboys drool and give Pyro some characterization. The characterization actually fits because at one point Magneto explained to Pyro that he had a deep respect for Xavier, even though they worked differently.
Speaking of Pyro, he only throws fireballs. Where is his artistic flair? In the first movie he made something out of his flame for Rogue; I think it was a flower. I'd have liked to see him using his control over flame to amuse himself and others when he wasn't fighting. But that would be considered more characterization, which was forbidden in this movie.
Where was the Phoenix raptor? I thought it would appear at the end just before Jean was killed by Wolverine. I was waiting for her to be surrounded by the giant flaming bird.
And then there’s the end, which I think would have been better if Magneto was sitting at his chess board and human Mystic walks over, and sits down. Magneto looks up at her. Her eyes change back to the Mystic yellow and the skin surrounding the eyes turns blue then change back to normal. She smiles. He smiles. The movie ends.

So, there you go. I hope I've ruined it for everyone.

If you're no longer interested in seeing the movie, I say you should do one of two things:
1) Do as my brother is doing, save the money and put it toward a ticket to see Superman Returns in 3D at IMAX.
Or 2) Go see Art School Confidential instead. It may not be as good as Ghost World but it's a damn good movie.