Apologies for the extreme length in advance but I have had a wee think and come up with the main areas where atrocities against good classical film story construction were committed.
1) Rogue’s arc makes no sense. In X-men, Magneto all but kills Rogue as part of his plan and only Logan’s intervention saves her. She finds a home with the X-men and is the main character with the most tragic power but her inability to have contact is mitigated by the finding of a loving supportive environment.
In X2 her arc is continued and deepened. The tragedy of her powers re-emerges through the frustration of her burgeoning relationship with Bobby. The potential of her powers for good is shown through her actions that save the lives of the police men when Pyro looses it outside Bobby’s house. The necessary fallout of Magneto’s attempt to kill her is also properly dealt with. She actively wishes to return the favour and it is her emotional connection to the group, the X-men, that stops her – exemplified in Bobby. This is all part of her growth into a future hero; as is her terrified but determined handling of the X-jet to help save her comrades. Rogue’s character grows both as a hero and a tragic figure.
Then we come to The Last Stand. Rogue in this film becomes further frustrated with the tragic nature of her powers because of what she sees as the potential threat of Bobby leaving her, possibly for Kitty. Then she hears of the cure and pretty much disappears from the film except to briefly act as foil for Strom’s attitude towards the cure. A potential mutant human war having been averted in her absence, she reappears at the film’s end de-powered. Where is the arc? Essentially, all her growth as a hero from the first two films goes straight out the window in the face the fear that her boyfriend will cheat on her. The character that acted as the initial emotional link for the audience way back in X-men is just dumped by the writers. That’s just bad writing.
Just off the top of my head, wouldn’t it make more sense for Rogue to re-join her team after say Pyro’s attack on the clinic and finally become a hero in her own right by helping take down the man who attempted to kill her? It also offers a way out of the atrociously handled Magneto de-powering scene that was within seven minutes reversed without a hint of even the most ham fisted foreshadowing or any story logic to back it up. Magneto could have been hit with the cure darts while Rogue was touching him. She absorbs the curing of the gene leaving him temporarily weakened. Thus the resurrection of his powers makes some semblance of sense, and Rogue’s tragedy gets flipped around and becomes about her loosing her powers in an act of heroism. Bitter sweet goodness all round.
2) The final battle was just so lamely handled: Take cute little passive power Kitty versus the big hulking unstoppable Jugernaught. She beats him by ducking; Duc-king. Its lame and its anti-climactic and its very unimaginative. She can phase object she touches for god’s sake. It we absolutely have to have him be defeated by running into a wall why not have her heroically leap through him, then grab and phase his helmet away from him as she passes. ‘Dunk’ his head hits the wall just as before but at lest there is an element of proper physical excitement and heroics in this.
Hell having Rogue save the life of a mutant Magneto has ordered killed for the cause makes much more sense - it having happened to her previously. Plus she gets to save the life of the only living creature she is able to touch. They could even team up to do this thereby coming together as a team, always good in superhero team narratives, burying any tension between them over Bobby.
In order to get around having given all the guards plastic guns the writers realising they had in no way set up who ‘random goth mutant #3’ was and what he could do actually had Magneto name check him, describe his power and comment on the action he was to perform – were into Sex and the City voice-over territory with rubbish like that. Bad bad bad writing.
Magneto, having gone to all the trouble of getting Phoenix on his side, including loosing his oldest friend, which he cares about deeply for exactly two scenes, (awful emotional continuity there) has nothing for her to do in his grand scheme. She just stands there until everyone is already defeated then in an inspired piece of story logic – just goes bonkers. All I can assume is that the writers realised that they had made the character so powerful in an attempt to make her a threat that they couldn’t find a way to use her other than the lamest most linear video-game like way possible. Everyone was defeated in a nice orderly little sequence that exemplified no skill and created no tension. Bad bad bad writing.
Again the Magneto depowering – he was fooled by being snuck up on from behind. That’s it, that’s the big taking down the bad guy climax. Lame. Nay not lame, GARBAGE. You can’t care its just so ludicrously handled. Its both lazy and utterly unexciting.
The big Pyro Iceman showdown is such a letdown. Nothing acrobatic, or even mildly imaginative happens. They throw their respective power in a straight line towards each other and then one of them wins and quips at the other. Its even quite a decent quip but its just such a dull climax for their rivalry it honestly pained me. Apparently becoming made of ice protects you from fire whereas just blasting it is no good at all. Its poor, by any standard.
3)Little issues I’m just going to state.
- Mystique just disappears and then returns in a video screen shot to retroactively explain how the army knew what was going on. Bad writing.
- Angel is utterly redundant to the story. Totally unnecessary waste of an fx budget that could have gone on making Colossus look cooler, or actually showing us Sentinels.
- Cheating on the Sentinels, my little sister, not a comicbook fan or a movie buff is indoctrinated enough into the rules of a classical Hollywood film that she spent the entire film waiting for the big robots to show up. They didn’t. Bad writing. Why tease us with them in the danger room sequence. Just to piss off the audience?
- Stupid dull redundant generic goth (for some reason) mutants with stupidly convenient powers. ‘I have both super speed and the ability to sense mutants and their power levels thus plugging two annoying plot holes simultaneously.’ Lame, dull, stupid, boring, bad writing.
- Despite having their bad guy build an army to take human army the best thing the writers could think to do with Jamie Maddox the Multiple Man was have him be a decoy.
4)Pacing: The entire film was this sequence of events running into one another with no time given to set-up and development. The writing seems overall to act like it was done to facilitate the creation of nice sequential levels for the tie-in game.
The potential weight of events was never allowed to build momentum or gain any gravitas; a key example of this being the potential closure of the school. In the same scene we see both the discussion of the closure of the school and suddenly through the door walks Warren Worthington III inspiring Storm that she still needs to keep the school open. Grand, fine, we knew that was going to happen. But it happens all together, the closure of the school is a threat for all of ten seconds before the necessary inspiration to overcome this obstacle makes itself known. It becomes a redundant plot point brought up and dealt with immediately and is of no further concern or relevance to the story. Storm has no time to come to a proper heroic resolve to keep the school open herself then have this validated by the arrival of a new student desperate for acceptance and help. It’s a hallmark of how weak the writing and how little dramatic thought and effort was put into the film as a whole. |
