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Australian philosopher, literary critic, legal scholar, and professional writer. Based in Newcastle, NSW. My latest books are THE TYRANNY OF OPINION: CONFORMITY AND THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM (2019) and AT THE DAWN OF A GREAT TRANSITION: THE QUESTION OF RADICAL ENHANCEMENT (2021).

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Magneto was right - major spoiler warning

I finally saw X-Men 3 the other night and was pleasantly surprised. I love this series (and grew up on the original comics), but was worried about how a new director might handle the climactic third movie. The misgivings were unnecessary - this was a surprisingly tight narrative that seemed to take no time at all, and left me wanting more. The scenes of Magneto levitating and "flying" the Golden Gate Bridge, and of Phoenix as a force of unlimited destructive power, annihilating everything around her, were (literally) awesome.

There is plenty of room for sequels, of course. Charles is apparently not dead after all; Magneto's powers seem to be returning, or just not completely removed (we did see in the first movie that he was able to withstand Rogue's touch to an extent); Phoenix, perhaps, can't be killed; and is this really the last of Cyclops? If the cure is not permanent, and Magneto's resistance to it is not something peculiar to him, where does that leave the other "cured" characters (who happen to include two of my favourite characters in the whole X-Men franchise: Mystique and Rogue)? As in the other two movies, the bad guy, Magneto, has actually achieved his main aim, though not in quite the way he planned and at terrible cost to everyone around him. How will he react to the next major threat to mutants? Roll on X-Men 4, though I gather we'll be seeing a couple of spin-off movies first.

1 comment:

Russell Blackford said...

Rogue rocks! I mean the original Rogue in the comics, who was part of that group of sexy, kick-ass female characters developed by Chris Claremont.

But I don't mind really mind the reinterpretation in the movies. She has room to grow.