The Last Stand, the closing installment of the commercially and critically successful Marvel movie franchise, still fails to generate the satisfying bang created by the first and, particularly, the second edition. With creative force Bryan Singer having vacated the X-Men universe for the highly anticipated "Superman Returns," Brett Ratner has taken the reins, and though the picture is not without its wow-inducing, SFX-driven moments, that potent X-factor is considerably diminished in Singer's absence. The gang's pretty much all here for the purported final go-round, which sees the makings of a virtual mutant civil war ignited by the introduction of a pharmaceutical cure for their afflictions/attributes.

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