Rewatching 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand 20 years later feels pretty strange. Still carrying the reputation of being one of the X-Men franchise’s biggest movie misfires, there’s a lot from Last Stand that’s…not great. However, rewatching the movie with Avengers: Doomsday on the horizon changes some things for me.
As messy and often frustrating as X-Men: The Last Stand is, I don’t think it’s completely without value. There are some themes and ideas I could easily see being used for the MCU’s X-Men in the future, though I’m eager to see how Doomsday might provide a true “Last Stand”.
With that in mind, here are some of my biggest thoughts following our Super Rant Rewatch of X-Men: The Last Stand on the road to Avengers: Doomsday.
The Last Stand Is The Worst Of The Original X-Men Trilogy (But Still Has Some Good Moments)
The Last Stand is by far the weakest of the original trilogy, and most everyone knows it.
In 104 minutes, we got a rushed Dark Phoenix Saga, beloved characters being sidelined with undercooked arcs (or cut entirely like Nightcrawler), and major players being killed off like Cyclops who deserved far more than what they got.
Those are often at the top of a much longer list of grievances, not counting the fact that basically none of the major status quo changes actually matter by the end of the movie’s credits.
That said, there are still some Last Stand moments that genuinely work for me. Magneto rallying mutants to his cause is very well done, drawing from his own horrific experiences as a Holocaust survivor, not to mention the objectively impressive Golden Gate Bridge/Alcatraz maneuver (one can only imagine what Magneto’s powers will look like 20 years later in Doomsday).
Kelsey Grammer’s Beast is also pitch-perfect casting, hence my great excitement when we saw him returning to the role in the post-credits scene for 2023’s The Marvels ahead of a bigger role alongside other OG X-Men actors in Avengers: Doomsday (Alan Cumming’s Nightcrawler is confirmed to be returning as well).
Likewise, in the midst of a new mutant “cure”, there are indeed some compelling themes about mutant identity and the threat of extinction buried in Last Stand’s overall chaos and poor execution, themes I’d actually love to see continued when Marvel Studios reboots the X-Men post-Doomsday/Secret Wars (which is probably what struck me the most during this week’s rewatch).
20 Years Later. I’m So Ready For Doomsday To Be The Fox X-Men’s TRUE Last Stand
Beyond all the issues, the main thing I felt after watching was this sense of unfinished business. Given all the Fox X-Men timeline problems, changes, and reboots that followed, there really wasn’t anything truly final about The Last Stand.
There was no solid farewell/conclusion for the core cast, many of whom would make subsequent returns in future movies culminating in Avengers: Doomsday/Secret Wars later this year. Now, there’s a real chance for some genuine finality for Fox’s version of the X-Men and its actors never really had.
Imagine James Marsden’s Cyclops finally leading the X-Men in a meaningful way, or Magneto and Professor X getting one last ideological confrontation that actually breathes the way it deserves (expanding on their dynamic in Days of Future Past, though we’ll get to that movie’s rewatch soon enough).
Avengers: Doomsday has the advantage of hindsight and two decades of superhero storytelling evolution to give us something truly special for the live-action X-Men. With that in mind, rewatching Last Stand this week actually made me hopeful about all the ways Doomsday could effectively redeem the 2006 film.
Let us know your thoughts in the comments about X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), and be on the lookout next week for our Super Rant Rewatch of Iron Man (2008)! You can also check out our Super Rant: Doomsday Preppers podcast on Spotify and YouTube.
- Release Date
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May 25, 2006
- Runtime
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104minutes
- Director
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Brett Ratner
- Writers
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Brett Ratner