X-Men: The Last Stand (DVD, 2009, Widescreen; Movie Cash)

X-Men: The Last Stand’ may have been regarded as the final offering in the Marvel Comics based mutant saga, but past successes (ca-ching!) have given cause for a change of heart.


Why kill a good franchise when it’s as lucrative as this one?

Previous efforts netted mega millions in box office receipts with a combined cost of around $200-million.

So, no trilogy. The final moments literally shout out ‘there’s more, there’s more!’ and a four second tease at the end of the credit role is proof positive.

Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen) are the hero/ giants of this sci-fi world, the yin and yang, dark vs. light, good vs. evil. Their wonderfully ripe performances, which overcome the absolute inanity of the whole thing, are admirable.

They fire every frame with their presence or the sense memory of it, transforming a garden variety, CGI genre piece into the engaging and amusingly faux-intellectual series it is.

What pretenders could ever come close to their standard? The lads from London own the franchise.

Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Storm (Halle Berry) are muscle and window dressing, in fact, each super powered mutant offers something distinctly physical, maybe kinetic, but decidedly not genius or arcane, like the lads.

The story begins twenty years ago, innocuously enough, in a suburban US tract home, wherein their latest recruit resides. Her parents believe she has a disease, but Magneto and Prof. Xavier, who’ve come to fetch her, know the truth, Kitty Pryde or Shadowcat is a mutant, like them, with formidable powers.

This is back when Magneto and Xavier were allies and friends united in their ambitions, before they fell out and became mortal enemies... but that’s another story.

Then ten years ago, we meet a young mutant angel boy, who is mortified by his wings and tries to chop them off. His father, a powerful medical researcher, in trying to help him, develops a ‘cure’ for mutants, which releases them from their genetic ‘defect’.

In other words, take the super out of superhuman and make us all the same, an abhorrent notion these days. Like Nazism, American imperialism – the power plays to erase individuality excused by the erroneous idea of ‘the greater good’.

This discovery divides the mutants into two factions, under peace loving Xavier or warlike Magneto.

Mutants protest other mutants voluntarily seeking a cure for their condition; humans want them all to be cured.

It’s a war that could lead to the destruction of the civilized world.

Alcatraz is transformed into a kind of prison centre for mutants undergoing treatment. Captured and under armed guard inside is a young boy named Jimmy (Cameron Bright), who is the source of the cure.

In the mutant civil war, Jimmy is the ultimate prize. Removing him removes the human’s ability to neuter mutants.

In the battle to save the mutants to find an acceptable peace, members of Professor Xavier’s team are killed and eventually, the good professor himself.

Eye popping visual effects like the levitation of the Golden Gate Bridge and what happens afterwards are exhilarating and Dr. Jean Grey / Phoenix (Famke Janssen) who is back from the dead literally sucks the world into her vortex.

Now that’s an eyeful!

The battle scenes are unusually long and impossible to see properly. It takes a lot of patience and care to lay out a battle scene that answers all our questions.

Too often, directors focus on