Fury this world has never witnessed = scrap in a car park = epic fail

Hey there, I know this is slightly late but after seeing this again the other night I couldn’t help but share my thoughts on the whole X-men trilogy. Right I love comic books, as a kid I used to collect as many as I could with what little money I had.  Batman will always be my favourite till the day I die, so you can imagine how grateful I am at how Warner Brothers and Christopher Nolan are treating this property. X-men are another one of my favourites too, I used to record the Saturday morning cartoon and watch it repeatedly and collect any cards or souvenirs that included Wolverine or Cyclops photo. I like to forget Marvels first foray into films and I consider the fucking awesome ‘Blade’ to be their first major screen adaptation, so you can imagine my excitement in 1998 when I heard the news that there was going to be an X-men feature too. I thought the first x-men trailer to be very ‘Blade like’ with its pumped up techno soundtrack highlighting all of the films key action points including the scrap on top of the statue of liberty. I think it was because of this trailer that I felt kinda… underwhelmed with the first picture, I enjoyed it and thought Hugh Jackman was a perfect fit for Wolverine, but Cyclops was underused and the whole ex-machina mechanic they used at the end of the film with the device turning people into mutants was just shit. Never mind though, as Xavier and Magneto explain in the coda – the coming war will come…

Flash forward to 2003 everyone’s swept up in the Matrix Reloaded mania including myself, X2 was kind of under the radar I thought, never mind I was just hoping to kill off some more time before my precious Reloaded was released. My expectations weren’t really that high after the first X-men, but boy didn’t Brian Singer step it up! X2 was phenomenal, it was like literally watching the comic books and the Saturday morning cartoon come to life, the fight between Deathstrike and Wolverine was shot beautifully easily doing a toilet function on anything Reloaded had to offer, I still missed Cyclops but the rest of the flick made up for Cyclops shortcomings and again there was talk of the oncoming war between mutants and humans, my excitement was at fever pitch at this point and I couldn’t wait for the final part of the trilogy… Ok then we had the whole fiasco with Brian Singer being thrown out of Fox’s studios, Matthew Vaughn stepping in but leaving in early pre-production due to family commitments, then Brett Ratner from the ‘Rush Hour’ films stepping up. I’ve got nothing against Fox or Ratner, I’m not going to go into a rant on how I think Fox is the devil and Ratners his bitch, but I like to think that when they have these board/brain storming sessions in pre-production, that everyone on board – both Fox execs and Ratners crew at the very least want to achieve the best film possible!? I have to believe this… for my own sanity.

Okay it’s the end of 2005, Shane Ward has just won X-factor, I flicked over the other side caught X-men the last stand teaser… very nice I thought, looked really neat, liked the whole Wolverine looking like he just stepped right into a scene from Terminator 2, I liked it very much indeed, maybe Ratners knocked this out of the park? The second trailer was released in 2006, very epic in scope, there was fantastic metallic percussion score booming away, Megneto chanting to all his Brotherhood of Mutants “WE SHALL UNLEASH A WAVE OF FURY, THIS WORLD HAS NEVER WITNESSED!” I thought fuck me – this looks awesome. I was ignoring any kind of spoilers that would ruin it, I was hoping for the same experience I got with X2, then as the film was closer to release, we got word that the film was about 1 hour and 40 minutes long, what?!? your capping a trilogy which includes a ton of characters, all in just over a hour and a half!? Are you fucking serious!? X2 was around 2 and a half hours, this should be pushing nearly 3 hours with all the character development!! Anyway I tried to maintain a brave face, in hope of seeing something spectacular after all, this is it, this is what we’ve been building up to, the massive fucking war – pitting mutants vs. mortals with the mighty X-men trying to police the situation, this is the “Wave of fury this world has never witnessed”.

Ok… it kicks off with Angel as a kid hacking his wings off, ok great… then we flash forward to the ‘not to distant future’ the Terminator 2 scene, everything’s exploding Rogues still acting useless, Iceman and Collossus seem to be stepping there game up… Wolverines acting all smug – what’s that there fighting? a sentinel? Oh my god I can’t believe it… yes its all too good to be true, after all the ‘Days of future past’ episodes I watched terrified as a kid watching as sentinels snatched mutant children out of there beds, the mighty Sentinals were relegated to a cameo role? I’m not going to cover the whole phoenix fiasco as I think Harry Knowles is far more educated in that area and did a great job covering it in his review, but why the hell did they try to cram the Dark Phoenix saga and the mutant cure storyline from Joss Whedons Astonishing X-men all into one film? One film that lasts 1 hour 40 fucking minutes!??? Both of these storylines would need a trilogy of their own? Why not go with Omega Red or Mr Sinister for a change, give Magneto a break? Mr Sinister would have been fucking awesome to see on the big screen! Look I’m not bashing Ratner, I think he did an admiral job considering he was given just under a year to try and finish a trilogy that already seen a high benchmark in X2 – it seemed like a thankless task to begin with. But come on – the upcoming war that we’ve been hearing about two films prior, to be relegated to a bunch of guys scrapping it out in Alcatraz car park? What the fuck man, we hear the president talking about their bombers would be useless against magneto, how does he know? What’s magnetos range? It would have been great to see magneto tear the arse off a few stealth bombers… at least it would have looked like they’ve attempted some kind of war! The Brotherhood of mutants can rip the Golden Gate Bridge from its foundation put can’t pull one fucking kid out of a building? What the fuck! The whole trilogy was completed by a scrap between two bunch of guys on a car park, the sort of thing that happens with West Ham fans nearly every weekend… fucking war my arse.

X-men the last stand: should have been on the same scale as Lord of the Rings its a shame.