Can it really be the final episode of the X-Men series? Would any studio kill off a healthy franchise while it is still, in box office-milking terms, in its infancy? But the title sounds pretty final: X-Men: The Last Stand.

We’re barely ten minutes in to the main story when one of the central characters has been perfunctorily dispatched. Admittedly, it’s one of the duller central characters, who has spent the last two episodes looking sanctimonious. And the trade-off is that we get a new, improved Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) back from the dead (she was a casualty at the end of X2).

Jean is endowed with un-equalled new mutant powers, cheekbones like knives and a voracious and deadly sexual appetite. She also has a terrible temper and the ability to chuck buildings around and reduce people to ashes with the force of her wrath. How I wish I could do that.

It’s a pity then that Jean Grey (aka Phoenix when she’s in her building-trashing incarnation) isn’t given that much to do for most of the film apart from stand around looking like a bored supermodel waiting to stalk on to the catwalk. Less significant, newer characters have an even tougher time of it in this instalment, the first not to be directed by Bryan Singer. Angel (he has a large pair of wings) gets a pre-title mention and a couple of scenes; Kitty Pryde, a rising student in Professor Xavier’s school, serves as little more than a love rival for Rogue (Anna Paquin).

The problem with this instalment is that, having taken the time to get to know a handful of the mutants really well, we now find them used as disposable devices by which yet more showy special effects are introduced into the mix. The dialogue is clunky, the characterisation cursory. The plot — a pharmaceutical company develops a “cure” for mutants which quickly becomes a tool for their oppression — is an intriguing opportunity largely wasted.

On a more positive note, the action sequences are hilariously over the top and, on several occasions, genuinely impressive. Sir Ian McKellen is, as ever, also deliciously sardonic as Magneto, the leader of the rebel mutants who sees the vaccine as an excuse to start a war, and Jean Grey as the ultimate weapon.

The high body count of integral characters would suggest that the studio is serious about limiting the X-Men series to three main films. But there are already two spin-off films in the pipeline — one featuring Wolverine, the other telling of Magneto’s early years — both scheduled for release next year. And diehard fans of the X-Men who sit through until the end of the closing titles might find some cause for hope.

WENDY IDE

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