Here you go, impulse Untitled


It will only show up when you do a full reply and not a quick reply.

I agree with most of your review until the end. It sounded to me like you were describing a terrible film, only to then see a positive grade. C- at best, I say.

Competing with Origins: Wolverine for worst film of the entire franchise.

And a huge, huge disappointment after Days of Future Past being so excellent. I had really looked forward to this film.

Last Stand is my #3 worst X-Men film, but I find it a head taller than this one. It had lots of great story points and character moments, but failed to make a cohesive whole out of them.

Superhero movies live or die on their characters and character arcs. And that's where this one died. Storm's story alone is enough to condemn this film.

EDIT to add: I missed your last comment. I think X-Men and X-Men 2 are great films, and X-Men 2 is one of the best superhero films ever. X-Men 2 is at least a 4.5 star film. This is at most a 2 star. X-Men 3 is a pretty poor film, but I rewatched both recently enough to be confident that Apocalypse is worse.

EDIT again: I checked my film logs. I last watched X2 about a year ago and gave it 5 stars. I think that was too high. I previously watched it about a year before that and gave it 4. 5 stars. That seems about right. I gave X-Men 4.5 stars when I watched it last year about the same time and 4 stars when I previously watched it back in 2014. I go back and forth between the two ratings. It's all about how many points I want to dock it for the Statue of Liberty sequence. I gave 2 stars to both Apocalypse and Last Stand. I watched both together last March specifically to compare them and decide which was worse.

Yes, Anna Paquin's portrayal has little to do with the comic book character. All the vitality was sapped out of her. A big part of her character is the contrast between outward bravado and inward vulnerability. They just dumped the bravado part. But I agree that it seems like a writing problem. Paquin can't act out what isn't in the script.

The irony for me regarding Patrick Stewart a Professor X is that if Stewart had just acting like Jean-Luc Picard it would have been closer to Prof. X he portrayed in the original trilogy. Xavier can be a demanding teacher at times. But Stewart just played him as a sweet, nice guy.

Ian McKellan gives the closest performance to his comic book counterpart in the original trilogy.

Thank goodness! I'd never been able to stand the comic's Rogue, but I loved Paquin's sweet, vulnerable Marie. As I've said elsewhere, I enjoy the X-Men movies (particularly the first two) more than I ever did the comic books.

Cei-U!
I summon the preferred alternative!

Last Stand had plenty to dislike, but, unlike X-Men Apocalypse, it had moments and ideas that redeem it.

• The idea that Secretary of Mutant Affairs is a cabinet position is a good one. The idea that it would be Beast was great. And Kelsey Grammar performed the role superbly.
• Storm's mood affecting the weather is a nice character moment.
• Professor X talking about Storm as the person who might take his place is a great character moment for both of them.
• "Since when did we become a disease?"
• "Is it cowardice to save oneself from persecution?"
• "They can't cure us. You wanna know why? Because there's nothing to cure. Nothing's wrong with you." This is double-edged. Out of context, it's a good line, a good argument against the cure, and with some obvious application to real-life issues like attempts to cure homosexuality. In context, it's spoken by a weather goddess to a girl who can't be touched. And perhaps shows a bit of a flaw in Storm's thinking. It's at the very least an interesting moment.
• The idea of a group of mutant activists meeting is great.
• The idea of mutants getting tattoos as a sign of identity is good. While also nicely rebutted by Magneto: "No needle shall ever touch my skin again."
• Pyro's wrist lighter is cool
• Good use of Leech
• The major deaths so early in the film were pretty cool and unexpected twists. Superhero filmmaking is mostly a pretty conservative genre, and Cyclops' and Professor X's deaths were exceptions to that.
• The idea that Professor X's meddling with Jean's mind created the Phoenix persona. He tried to play god because he feared her power and just made things worse. Good ethical dilemma.
• Ellen Page was awesome as Kitty Pryde
• The date between Iceman and Kitty Pryde was cute.
• "Charles Xavier did more for mutants than you can ever know. My one regret is that he had to die for our dream to live."
  
• "If you're with us then be with us."
  
• "They wish to cure us, but I say to you, we are the cure."
  
• The scene where Angel saves his father is a good character moment.

Side note to all this discussion:

What I think could have fixed Storm's ending: Show Xavier trying to decide what to do with her and then recognizing her as one of the people Logan had told him to invite to the X-Men. So he decides to trust in Logan and take her in to try to reform her.