20th Century Fox
X-MEN The last stand
X-MEN The Last Stand (Movie Review) After a deadly confrontation, Jean Grey is left unable to control her world-consuming powers, forming a darker uncontrollable persona known as Dark Phoenix. The X-Men face not only her, but also the Brotherhood, a band of powerful mutants led by Magneto. Three years later, the X-Men are mostly disbanded, and Logan (Hugh Jackman) has settled in Canada with Kayla Silverfox. He is approached by Stryker, who offers him a new body through a procedure to bond indestructible metal adamantium to his skeleton. He refuses, but overhears that Creed, who killed his comrade, is being hunted down by the government. At a meeting of mutants, the leader wants to pursue peaceful negotiation with the government over the cure. However, Magneto shows up to recruit angry mutants for the Brotherhood. Among them are Callisto, who warns that Jean's instability could lead to a catastrophic confrontation, and Pyro, who claims that Xavier is keeping her on a leash. Beast arrives at Alcatraz Island to tour Worthington Labs with Dr. Kavita Rao (Shohreh Aghdashloo), the inventor of the mutant cure. There, he meets the young boy whose DNA was used to create it, Leech. At the President's command, armed forces soldiers charge in from all sides, their special rifles aimed. A massive battle sequence would be fine if it actually had some sense of scale, context and above all, meaning. Instead, it's all too easy to watch as characters move through a series of given motions that never go anywhere. Compared to the intricately choreographed fights in Peter Jackson's The Two Towers and The Return of the King, X-MEN The last stand is as aimless as a video game raid.