X-Men The Last Stand

Filed Under: Film, Reviews | Article Tags : DVD review

By: The Dweeb

DVD Features

Video: 2.35:1 Audio: DTS 6.1, Dolby Digital 5.1, French: Dolby Digital 2.0, Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0

Full-Length Audio Commentary
Producer Commentary by Avi Arad, Lauren Shulder Donner and Ralph Winter
Deleted & Extended Scenes and 3 Alternate Endings with Optional Audio Commentary
Exclusive Custom Comic Book Written by Stan Lee

Theatrical release: 5/26/2006
DVD released on 10/03/2006 by 20th Century Fox
Running time of 104 minutes

Starring: Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Famke Janssen, Anna Paquin, Halle Berry, Kelsey Grammer, Rebecca Romijn, Ellen Page, Hugh Jackman, Vinnie Jones, James Marsden, Ben Foster, Shawn Ashmore

Director: Brett Ratner

Plot: After a controversial "cure" is discovered, mutants can choose to retain their superhuman abilities or give up their unique gifts and become "normal." When peaceful mutant leader Charles Xavier clashes with his militant counterpart, Magneto, the battle lines are drawn for the war to end all wars.

After a rough start with the departure of director Bryan Singer, swapping places with Brett Ratner, the third installment of the X-men franchise pulls a lot of punches, and I mean literally. Each film upped the ante a bit, but this one is the darkest yet. For those familiar with the comic, this one fares best of all with the introduction of several significant characters missing from the first two, but at the price of losing a few others and not giving enough time for character development with the ones in this film. Actually I was quite taken aback by the choices Brett took with this film, I won’t give it away but there were some huge characters that were killed off. It makes the future of the franchise seem in doubt, at least with this cast. Although never say never in comic books, and there is plenty of other material to mine from this series to crank out another movie.

As the title suggests, this is it for our band of merry X-men. The cards are all out on the table as they fight the Brotherhood Of Evil Mutants led by the nefarious Magneto (Sir Ian McKellen) for all the marbles. It has just the right mixture of drama and action, and we finally get to see the Danger Room! There are bunch of new characters added to the mix, although mostly they have more of a cameo role, like Angel (Ben Foster), Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page), and Juggernaught (Vinnie Jones). Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) has toned it down a notch. Too bad, I liked him as a brooding loner. Beast was just perfectly cast with Kelsey Grammer, he was awesome as the blue furball in a pin stripe suit. I thought it was a nice touch he put on the ‘retro’ uniform and he didn’t fit in it anymore. Only a true X-men connoisseur would have noticed that, along with all the other little tidbits buried in the film.

As expected the picture and sound quality for this DVD is pretty durn good. You know they probably have a hi def version in the wings so they just plunked this one down to DVD no problem. They tease the fact that there are several endings to the film, and the menu even hints at that. But I found it doesn’t make a difference which side you choose before the movie, the ending is the same. Too bad, that would have been a cool option. Instead, the alternate endings are lumped in with the deleted scenes. Also included are the trailers and a ton of promotional material for other Marvel/Fox movie properties. Meh, I know there’s better extra materials out there. Will we see a collectors edition or even a box set with all 3 films in the future? Probably.

Overall, if this is the end of the series, it goes out with quite a bang. I don’t know how you could top something like this, but this is comic books people, anything can happen. I thought it was well done, and good popcorn fodder to boot. By the way, keep watching until the very end after the credits. So when is this Wolverine film coming out?