MUMBAI: This New Year’s Eve, Star Movies will air the X-Men trilogy. In a first for Asia, all three X-Men movies will air in a back-to-back marathon starting 29 December at 11 pm and runs for three consecutive nights.

On 31 December at 9pm, Star Movies premieres X-Men: The Last Stand. This final chapter follows what happens when scientists discover a cure for mutants. Although some mutants welcome the breakthrough, others fear that it will threaten their population with extinction.

While the first two X-Men films were helmed by Bryan Singer (Superman Returns), this last entry was directed by Brett Ratner, the man behind the Rush Hour trilogy. Since The Last Stand was to be the final film in the series, Ratner wanted to go out with a bang.

“I went to the writers and I said, ‘What are the things that weren’t in the first two movies that fans are dying for, that real fans of the comics want to see? The Last Stand has everything you want in a movie. It’s got drama, action, emotion, intelligence,” Ratner explained.

The Wall Street Journal’s reviewer called Ratner’s film “terrifically entertaining” while the movie critic for the Dallas Observer noted that, “If this is the last stand, it’s a stylish farewell indeed.” Finally Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s William Arnold wrote that “X-III packs more action and razzle-dazzle visuals into its 104-minute running time than Mission: Impossible III, Poseidon and The Da Vinci Code combined.”

The X-Men movie franchise has been wildly successful, taking in over US$1 billion worldwide. Each film in the series has earned more than its predecessor with X-Men: The Last Stand, bringing in over US$235mil at the US box office.