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'Last Stand' complicated by roster of characters
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of action violence, some sexual content and language;
Wolverine
Kerry Hayes/20th Century Fox
"Last Stand" is the third and supposedly final installment in Marvel Comics' feature-film X-Men franchise, but buffs can exhale. Episode Three kicks the door wide open for another sequel.
This one has prologues set both 20 years ago and 10 years ago before stepping into a "not-too-distant future" that plainly isn't next week.
The well being of good and faithful mutants led by Professor Charles Xavier (a wheel-chaired Patrick Stewart) is threatened by the army of renegade mutants led by Xavier's former ally, Eric Lehnsherr (Ian McKellen), whose alter ego is Magneto.
Almost everyone has an alter ego. Because some have shape-shifting ability, too, the quantity of variations on each character multiplies exponentially.
Except for humans such as The President (Josef Sommer) and Warren Worthington II (Michael Murphy), who are referred to icily as homo sapiens, the film's many major characters are mutants, which, it is strongly implied, is a metaphor for, but not the literal equivalent of, homosexuals.
Magneto, manifesting his race's encoded version of gay pride, opposes the introduction by humans of an antibody that can suppress the X gene that makes mutants what they are.
The thematic subtext then is whether it's appropriate to "cure" mutants because the term "curing" presupposes illness or defect.
The metaphor might be interesting to examine in a context that isn't hellbent on building toward a climactic battle of special effects at Alcatraz.
"Last Stand" is densely populated with emotional characters whose relationships are never more than shallow posturing -- attitudes backed up by assigned magical powers.
But then, the X-Men series is overwhelmed by its own mythology, which in this case is so vast that only so much can be reiterated in each film, and still the picture bogs in terminology and exposition.
There's something to be said for series such as the original Superman -- not necessarily what Superman has become in the modern era. When you have just one or two characters with unusual powers, all other plot content can be rooted in a stable, identifiable reality.
In X-Men movies, so many characters exhibit sci-fi peculiarities so often that it's impossible to sustain a workable appraisal of who they are and what their vulnerability might be.
Characters keep rebounding from death, which trivializes every battle.
And then there's the mysterious female factor. Though most of "Last Stand" focuses on the heroic Logan (Hugh Jackman), a few of the characters are women, including Ororo (Halle Berry), Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) and Rogue (Anna Paquin) -- every one of them a babe.
But that only begs the question: Where on earth are all of the other women -- the ordinary-looking and older ones? Don't they exist after they stop being as young, beautiful and able-bodied as Berry, Janssen and Paquin?
