X-Men 3: The Last Stand: Two Disc Edition (Blu-ray) (2006)

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General		Extras
Category	Science Fiction	Audio Commentary Audio Commentary
Rating
Year Of Production	2006
Running Time	104:05
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered Dual Disc Set	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Brett Ratner
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Hugh Jackman Ian McKellen Kelsey Grammer Famke Janssen
Case	?
RPI	?	Music	John Powell

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English DTS HD Master Audio 6.1 ES Discrete English Dolby Digital 5.1 Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 Portuguese Dolby Digital 5.1 Thai Dolby Digital 5.1 English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.40:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	1080p
Original Aspect Ratio	2.40:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired English Audio Commentary English Audio Commentary Spanish Portuguese Korean Korean Audio Commentary Korean Audio Commentary Chinese Chinese Thai Indonesian	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes

  After the awesomeness that is X2, fans were clamouring to see more of what Bryan Singer and his team could do with what a friend of mine once dubbed a study in what Batman would be like if he were given actual superpowers. But then the first wave of bad news hit: Singer had either passed on the opportunity to direct, or had been fired by Fox (it depends on who you talk to, and considering that Singer was one of the directors who turned down the opportunity to direct the new Wolverine film, it shows the wisdom of letting him leave or firing him very clearly). Worse yet, replacing Singer at the helm was Rush Hour et al "auteur" Brett Ratner. An equal amount of the blame is due to the screenwriters, of course, but a director has the power to reject any script he deems unfit. That Ratner did not do this to the script that ended up on the screen is a demonstration of just how little he truly groks the X-Men.

  And the script is such a pungent piece of s*** that many of us could smell it from as far away as Melbourne. I will tell a little story here in order to give this criticism of the script its proper context. I first became involved in the autism civil rights struggle around 2003 or 2004. Among my activities in this direction have been the creation of videos describing the amazing levels of abuse on numerous levels that I had to tolerate as a child because of ignorance, and a statement that, in essence, anyone who tries to cure me of what makes me different to my former teachers or healthcare specialists will get their genitals ripped off/out and stuffed down their necks. Ratner and his creative team have doubtlessly seen videos like them, because they attempted to incorporate parallels to this struggle in the finished film, and they stuffed it up so badly that my fellows in the movement and I frequently refer to this film as X-Men In Name Only.

Two sequences in particular caused me to want to throw a Molotov cocktail at the screen in the cinema:

• "Einstein was not a mutant..."
  There are numerous facts about Albert Einstein that the curebies (this is a derisive name most of us use to refer to our enemies in the struggle) are unwilling to admit to or actively try to negate. One of them is that Einstein spoke his first words at the age of four. Another is that his first words were not the usual one-word utterances that are expected of two year olds, but rather a whole, complex sentence reporting hunger. Another is that his speech following these first words frequently echoed that which he heard from others. That is a phenomenon called Echolalia, which is both common in autistic children and one of the few things I have in common with Einstein (ask my family about it and they will tell you numerous stories about my Echolalia). When you add this to his pervasive, intense, unusual interest in theoretical physics and his difficulties with inadequately prepared teachers, the idea that Einstein would be diagnosed as being one of the real world's equivalent of Mutants is not merely a possibility, it is assured. (Note: yes, I know they try to cover up their mistake with a "perhaps he was..." speech by Patrick Stewart, but this is so clumsily and half-assedly delivered that it ends up making the reaction in this vein worse rather than better.)
• The Alcatraz island battle
  Let's ponder a question here. You are born with a distinct difference from the expected norm that at the same time makes aspects of your life so difficult you contemplate suicide, and also gives you abilities that people who are getting paid better than you or receiving more attention than you (usually both) would cut something vital off themselves to have. You suffer years, even decades, of abuse for your difference that leaves you with a good case of PTSD. Suddenly, your government announces that they have found a cure for what makes you different from your family (in the extended sense, mine is mostly made up of people I consider may be legally retarded, hence my disowning them), your abusers, and even your friends. One group of people weaponises this cure and starts shooting your people with it. One of your colleagues takes a battalion to where the cure in question is being made and threatens to skin the people who created this cure whilst they are still breathing. Do you lift a finger to save the curebies? Well, if you picked any answer other than "I join right in the fun and stick Bob Wright's head on a spike to parade around on the White House lawn as a message", you are wrong. Not just wrong as in guessing the wrong answer on a multiple-choice quiz, but wrong like you have invested your retirement in an Ed Wood film.

  So in effect, X-Men In Name Only not only insults the people who were waiting for it since the last film mounted a serious challenge to other films in a similar vein, it insults its most guaranteed audience in the bargain.

  Making matters worse is a clumsy attempt to sandwich a Phoenix saga story into the film. The Phoenix saga, in which Jean Grey (Famke Janssen in the film) dies and is reborn with powers that make her an enormous threat to the universe as we know it, is a comic book arc that spans hundreds of pages, and requires at least a dedicated film of X2's length to be told properly. Incidentally, the cure story arc also needs a film of at least that length to be told properly, spanning at least several hundred pages. Hence, X-Men In Name Only is not just an insulting film to its primary audience, it sucks dead animals through a straw on a general filmmaking level to boot. Any filmmaking student can tell you the choices of camera angle, composition, and editing style just flat-out stinks. The dialogue is clumsy at best and downright stilted at worst, with some Braveheart-style speeches that will make one wince to listen to. The only legitimately effective shot in the entire film is one where Magneto (Ian McKellen) uses his power to play toss with a bunch of cars. Other shots involve close-ups where medium shots or even long shots would make the onscreen action far clearer.

  Hence, it disappoints and angers me beyond belief when I learned that not only did Fox decide to make X-Men In Name Only a forced sale in Australia, they also chose to package the discs so that removing the real X-Men films from the box and tossing the rest in the garbage where it belongs a non-option. In this one move, Fox has effectively told the consumer exactly why they had such a hard-on for BD to be region-coded, and strengthened the opposition to region coding manifold. When region coding is negated or defeated, and it is a matter of when rather than if, I plan to melt down this boxed set and (SPOILER ALERT: highlight with mouse to read) ram it into a Fox marketeer's butt , one piece at a time.

  We now return to your scheduled serious reviewing.

Video

  The transfer is presented in the aspect ratio of 2.40:1 within a 1920 by 1080 progressive window.

  For once, I will not compare this particular disc to its DVD equivalent, mainly because I would not even waste the time and effort to pirate it. The transfer is as sharp as one would expect on BD, with shadow detail being slightly improved over the previous two films. No low-level noise is evident.

  The colours in the transfer are well-rendered, with no oversaturation or bleeding.

  Compression artefacts were not noted in this transfer. Film-to-video artefacts are not evident. Film artefacts were not noticed, but I might have blinked and let one or two go by.

  Subtitles are offered in English for the Hearing Impaired. They are accurate, but slightly lacking in detail.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

  Seven soundtracks are offered on this disc.

  The first, and default, is the original English dialogue in DTS HD Master Audio 6.1, which I listened to in its entirety. Second is the original English dialogue in Dolby Digital 5.1, which I listened to briefly for comparison purposes. Third and fourth are Dolby Digital 5.1 dubs in Spanish and Portuguese. These are of slightly lower fidelity than the English soundtrack. Fifth is a dub in Thai Dolby Digital 5.1, which again sounds like it was recorded and mixed on the cheap. Sixth and seventh are a pair of audio commentaries in Dolby Digital 2.0, which I listened to as much as I can stand of.

  The dialogue is clear and easy to understand at all times, with even more separation of elements offered by the 6.1 soundtrack. It is ironic, then, that the soundtrack is in every sense less impressive than the DTS HD MA 5.1 efforts on the previous two films. No problems with audio sync were noted.

  The score music in this film is by John Powell. Aping cues from the previous two films, the score has everything that a 210 million dollar total budget can buy, excepting originality, insight into what the story is about, or a sense of individuality. In contrast to the other two films, I was utterly unable to remember a single cue from this film after I was finished trying to restrain myself from destroying the theatre. And my reaction to the score music is no different after hearing it in a lossless format. Cues that should induce tears, especially in conjunction with the concepts of the scenes they accompany, are instead met with total indifference.

  Now, one would think that a 6.1 channel soundtrack would have a wealth of awesome effects where the viewer is immersed in the location or onscreen action. Not so. Even clear opportunities for a solid directional effect, such as when a guard fires the weaponised cure at Magneto at 36:18, go begging. As does the subsequent use of Magneto's power to wrest the gun away from said guard. The film itself does not allow uses of disembodied voices like the other two, so no such opportunities exist here. One cannot help but compare the three transfers, and for sure, the other two transfers were gimmicky a lot of the time, but they also helped to justify one's investment in good sound hardware. In respect to surround channel usage, the verdict on X-Men In Name Only is one of disappointment.

  The subwoofer is more aggressively utilised in order to support such bass-heavy effects as Magneto's powers. It supports these effects well without calling too much attention to itself.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

  Quantity, check. Quality, absent.

Menu

Audio Commentary - Brett Ratner (Director), Simon Kinberg (Writer), and Zak Penn (Writer)

Audio Commentary - Avi Arad (Producer), Lauren Shuler Donner (Producer), Ralph Winter (Producer)

  I would rather see footage of these three reacting when they learn for the first time what their two hundred and ten million dollars bought them. But then, it is hard to make an interesting audio commentary when the subject is this patently awful.

The other extras, like this film, can blow me, so I will just list them here:

BonusView

In-Feature Photo Gallery

Deleted Scenes

Trailer - X-Men

Trailer - X2: X-Men United

Trailer - Daredevil

Trailer - Fantastic Four

Disc Two

Featurette - Brett Ratner's Production Diary

Featurette - X-Men: Evolution Of A Trilogy

Featurette - X3: The Excitement Continues

Featurette - X-Men Up Close

Featurette - Anatomy Of A Scene: Golden Gate Bridge

Featurette - Generation X: Comic Book History

Featurette - Fox Movie Channel Presents: Life After Film School

Featurette - Fox Movie Channel Presents: Casting Session

Featurette - Vignettes

Featurette - Blogs

Featurette - Previz Animatics

Photo Gallery - Character Stills

Photo Gallery - Concept Art, Storyboards & Models

Trailer - Trailer A

Trailer - Trailer B

Trailer - Extended Trailer

• The ability to purchase the real X-Men films without having to purchase this one.

  As if Fox could not announce any more clearly that they support region coding because it gives them the ability to discriminate against consumers outside of the USA, the real X-Men films were available weeks in advance of this boxed set. To call this a slap in the face with a concrete slab is an understatement. Fox's enthusiasm for Region Coding is demonstrated by the fact that they are the only studio to have used it on a hundred percent of their titles. Which prompts the following question: how do you expect us to respond when you force us to buy a product that we do not want?

  The video transfer is excellent.

  The audio transfer is surprisingly disappointing.

  The extras are not worthy of a glance or listen.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall