Made it to the local Vue for a screening of X-Men: The Last Stand. The response has been kind of ho hum in the press, and TLC was under-impressed. I thought in a lot of ways it was the best of the trilogy. It was certainly the truest to the spirit of the books, and wasn’t ashamed to raid ideas from them. There were elements of stories from Chris Claremont, Grant Morrison and Joss Whedon in there, and this is A Good Thing. Also, the battle scenes finally felt right, properly epic, graceful and fun. Again, a good thing.

In general, I picked up a lot of that elegaic sense of loss and sacrifice that’s so much a part of the X-Men mythos, and I’d have been more honked off about the deaths of three of the main characters, if not for the knowledge that in the X-Men NO-ONE EVER STAYS DEAD. How many burials has Scott Summers endured for his flame-haired wife now? Four? For me, this really pins into the work Joss is doing on “Astonishing X-Men” at the moment, playing with the idea of being unable to grieve over the loss of a loved one and move on… because she keeps coming back.

To be honest, this one was more for the fans, with a ton of little injokes and references (Danger Room! Sentinals! squeeee!) that kept me happily geeked out for 2 hours 10.

Oh, and Clare griped about Dark Phoenix looking a little too much like dark Willow, from Buffy.
Fair point, but Chris Claremont was there first…