[Jason Vines]

I just came back from seeing the latest X-Men movie, The Last Stand. Naysayers bashing the film, as well as the movie's 52 percent rating at Rotten Tomatoes, had worried me about how good the experience would be. My fears turned out to be unjustified; X-Men: The Last Stand is wonderful. Not only is it exciting, but as the two previous X-Men movies did, it inspires sympathy for society's outcasts and asks us to reevaluate what we think of them. The Last Stand's messages weren't complex, but themes need not be convoluted in order to be weighty. So, contrary to what some of the haters claim, The Last Stand isn't just a dumb action movie. Brett Ratner's effort possesses the heart and soul of the X-Men installments Bryan Singer directed.

My only disappointments are these:

Spoiler

• We didn't see enough of Dark Phoenix! She should have been the primary villain, but instead, she was a sideshow. Archangel should have been excised, and the running time lengthened, in order to feature more of Phoenix.
• Professor Charles Xavier's death should have came later in the movie. I would have liked to have learned more about his relationship with Jean Gray/Dark Phoenix.

Also, the movie was too short! The story had enough meat to have lasted two-and-a-half hours, IMO.

That said, The Last Stand is my favorite of the three X-Men movies.

Grade: A

[Bondo]

I've never really gotten the X Men movies. I enjoy them, but they aren't really that special. Plus, the movies are entirely lacking in Gambit.

The first was particularly bad. The second is more or less a classic, because it cut out the dumb mutants (mainly the brotherhood of the first film) and kept only Mystique, and introduced a great new character in Nightcrawler, and the film could basically sail through on the basis of Alan Cumming's performance alone. and X2 had, far and away, a better script.

For the third film:

Spoiler

The biggest problem is that it is that they went to the lunatic father with a son who can control/kill (or, in this case, cure) of the second film. Its saving grace is that Angel is more interesting than Stryker's son., and the dilemma is more interesting too. And as for FX, X3 has the biggest stuff,.. and far and away the better realized stuff (I'm not a FX freak, but I fault X2 for Pyro's embarassing attack on the cops) but its not quite Magneto breaking out of his plastic prison awesome.

The best thing about X3 is the character development... but whacking off people is not the best way to do it, (and the series has always sidelined Cyclops in favor of fan-favorite Wolverine) plus we got lots of new boring mutants thrown in, (Mainly Magneto's clan, save Juggernaut) which was the problem with the first one. And Kelsey Grammer's Beast was quite good. Still, no Gambit.

And X3 finally got Storm's hair right. It actually looks like hair this time.

[Joshua]

Personally, I really liked it.

Spoiler

I practically spat out my popcorn at the line, "Don't you know who I am? I'm the JUGGERNAUT, BITCH!" I thought it had more character development than the others. My only beef with it is that wolverine had to go and kill Jean instead of just poking her with one of the needles lying around. I absolutely loved the end, however... It was pretty powerful, seeing Magneto sitting there alone at a chess board, trying to move one of the metal pieces... And if you noticed, it was the king he was trying to topple. Awesome symbolism.