The X-Men Masterclass - X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

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This September is “Masterclass Month” at Catching Up On Cinema!

Every September, Trevor and Kyle celebrate the anniversary of Catching Up On Cinema by doing a deep dive into one of cinemas most famous franchises.

September 2022 marks the 4th year anniversary of the show, and to celebrate the occasion, Trevor and Kyle will be reviewing the first 4 films of the X-Men film series!

This week, Trevor and Kyle review Brett Ratner's, X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)!

Produced under hurried and less than ideal circumstances, The Last Stand is the third X-Men film, as well as the first to not be helmed by (problematic) director Bryan Singer.

With Singer departing the series after X2 (2003) in favor of directing Superman Returns (2006), bringing with him X-Men alum James Marsden and X2 writers, Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris, The Last Stand had unfortunate beginnings at Fox as a massively expensive trilogy capper that went into production with neither a finished script, nor a director assigned to it.

Seemingly the studios last choice to helm the project after an industry wide talent search, (the problematic) Brett Ratner would receive the gig, fittingly as a result of essentially being the last man standing.

Significantly less visually interesting, less creatively inspired, and less willing to properly explore it's own thematic content, The Last Stand is not quite an outright bad superhero film, though it fails to live up to the lofty standards set by its more handsome and daring predecessors.

Oddly obsessed with needlessly and incessantly referencing the Marvel comics source material, while simultaneously contradicting and spitting in the face of it in equal measure, The Last Stand is a production that is not without heart or inspiration, rather a lack of organization and purpose prove to be its most damning liabilities.

One of the most expensive productions of its time, X-Men: The Last Stand only occasionally looks or feels its budget, and only occasionally feels like a movie that the majority of those involved were actually enthused about making.

Representing the first critical speed bump in the X-Men series, The Last Stand is a workmanlike effort that serves as the very necessary, but aesthetically and tonally dissonant resolution, to the first leg of a film franchise that would unfortunately need to get worse before it would need to reinvent itself in order to get better.

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