Headscratchers / X-Men: The Last Stand

• If Magneto's dorky helmet was supposed to block Cerebro, why was he still wearing it after Cerebro was destroyed?
  • A) I thought it was to block telepathy in general B) Who says the X-Men can't rebuild Cerebro?
    • Yes, it is to block telepathy in general. Xavier says exactly as much in the first movie.
    • Also plausible: to protect himself from Jean's (a bit out of control) Telepathy
    • Also, it's just a helmet, and he's an old man who could get clonked in the head by a rock or something.
• Why couldn't Magneto just stop the darts? The needle part should be made of metal, and yet they act like only Jean can control it. If the needles were plastic, then that implies they were designed with Magneto in mind, which makes it all very stupid as they're loaded into metal guns.
  • There are plenty of non-ferrous metals available... Most drinks cans are made of aluminum!
  • Magneto explicitly says the guns were plastic. The officer ordering the men to arm up with plastic weapons said they were plastic and the troops were to turn in all metallic objects and replace them with plastic weaponry. I'm at a loss for how you missed a very obvious scene explicitly laying this out.
    • Obviously I was referring to before that scene during the rescue of Mystique.
    • In that case, remember that Magneto can only stop metal he knows about. The guard who was shooting him was shooting him from behind and surprised him.
    • Also, the chances of actually encountering Magneto are minimal, and Magneto's observed combat tactics prior to that scene always involved him stopping the bullets before they reached him, and then taking control of his opponents' weaponry. In such a case, in the time between Magneto going "haha, I stop your metal bullet!" and "oh, shit, that's made of plastic!" he'd already have been hit with the needle.
    • Alternately, logistics. They were manufacturing plastic weaponry, but they simply hadn't had time to fully arm the guards with all-plastic weapons before the attack.
    • In the scene when Magneto rescues Mystique, Magneto and his Brotherhood are unaware that the mutant "cure" has been weaponized in this manner. They don't discover this until a guard (assumed incapacitated) shot at Magneto while his back was turned, leading to Mystique's act of Taking the Bullet and being depowered. Hence, as another troper pointed out, he couldn't have stopped metal that he was not aware of. Incidentally, why would the original poster say he or she was "obviously" referring to this scene, when the original question specifically says "and yet they act like only Jean can control it"? Jean was not present during Mystique's jailbreak. Magneto hadn't recruited her yet; heck, they weren't even aware she was still alive at that point.
    • Except that in X2 Magneto sensed the metal inside the guard right as he entered his cell, even though Mystique could hardly warn him when exactly she'd be able to infuse the guard. So nope, the fact the guard in X3 shot from behind shouldn't have mattered, because the gun itself was definitely metal (Magneto drew it to him after Pyro killed the guard).
    • In the case of X2 it can be argued that he sensed the metal inside the guard because he had gone so long without having any around. In everyday life there's metal everywhere so he was desensitized to it, then Magneto is placed in an enclosed area where there no metal at all for a long amount of time. When the guard comes in with the excess of metal in his blood Magneto is hyper-sensitive to it. When he's breaking Mystique out he's desensitized as he was before the incarceration.
    • Most likely, Magneto simply assumed that the guard had been rendered unconscious and, thus, was not a threat. The guard took advantage of Magneto's attention being focused on the Juggernaut and tried to shoot him In the Back, but Mystique noticed at the last second and took the hit for him. Sensing that the gun is made of metal is meaningless if Magneto doesn't notice that the trigger is being pulled.

• Magneto catches Wolverine sneaking around his camp for mutant uprising. He easily catches him, via controlling the metal bones Wolverine has. Fine. Then he just sends Wolverine flying out of the woods, despite the fact that Wolverine knows where Magneto is, knows where Jean is, and knows that Magneto's got some sort of an uprising going on. With all of that, you'd think that Magneto would take more care not to let his secret plan get out. Instead, he just lets Wolverine run off to warn the X-Men and the military. Was Magneto really that cocky that he believed he could win even with everyone forewarned?
  • You do remember what happened when the military did show up, right? How Magneto had moved everyone and everything out of the area, and set up a decoy? He explicitly had a plan for the inevitable attack. How did you miss that?
    • So that takes care of the military but what about the X-Men? Wolverine goes to them, tells them "Magneto's attacking Alcatraz Island" so they suit up, get in a jet, and go straight to Alcatraz. And get between him and Leech. Wouldn't it have been smarter for Magneto to have knocked out or tied up Wolverine until they were well on their way to attack? Considering that he was the master of metal and had a huge army of worked up mutants, surely he could have arranged something.
    • Magneto is arrogant though. The only one of the X-Men he respected was Charles, the rest as far as he was concerned, couldn't find their own arse with both hands and an atlas. It isn't an entirely unjustified POV either, but really, it was Magneto's own arrogance and ego at work in that he has his army of gods and they have a handful of dimwitted, demoralised, handicapped by morals he doesn't have, disorganised malcontents. It is his villain fatal flaw.
    • Letting the X-Men know he's attacking is actually a really good plan. The X-Men will going in, ready for war, right to the place where a battalion of soldiers are armed with cure darts. Magneto was likely hoping that a few of them would get hit in the crossfire and he would have that much less mutant opposition to deal with.
    • He was probably hoping that the army would shoot a few of the X-Men with cure darts when they arrived to help, not only removing a thorn in his side but giving him a deliciously ironic victory.
• Did anyone else wonder how on Earth Wolverine was somehow able to ride a motorcycle from New York to San Francisco and back with enough time to warn people and stop Magneto's uprising?
  • He phoned home?
    • But he clearly was shown in the mansion after being in San Francisco. Anyway, wouldn't that really hurt his nuts?
    • That's exactly the sort of thing a healing factor is good for.
    • Not even, they actually encased his testicles in adamantine too.
  • He was given a lift by Chuck Norris.
    • Also, who assumes that Magneto's uprising is within a day or two of their gathering? Ever try to rally over 100 people to march on something? It takes some preparation.
• Hey, forget Magneto and the darts - they had, what, four darts all together? So why use ALL of them on Magneto? Even if you're going on the assumption of greater mutant powers require a greater dose, why is it they don't save even one to use on the psychotic mutant destroying the place and killing everyone?
  • Because said psychotic mutant would've disintegrated the needles long before Logan could've brought them close enough, duh. Besides, as mentioned elsewhere Magneto was a very powerful mutant. Beast wanted to be sure.
  • The dart cartridge itself is the size of a pack of gum; the darts are even smaller. I assumed that the effort required to disassemble the thing and handle the darts individually would require time, tools, etc. that they just didn't have. Magneto was the immediate threat, he had to be neutralized A.S.A.P.
• Magneto wanted to kill Leech. So what does he do? Pick up the Golden Gate Bridge and use it to fly his army over to Alcatraz and then assault it in the conventional manner. Why didn't he just drop the bridge on the building? Problem solved. Was the bridge long enough?
  • Presumably they wanted to destroy the research and cure as well (they mention wanting to be able to develop the cure without Leech). Dropping a bridge on Leech would still keep some of the serum intact. The bridge was a way to bring his army to Alcatraz.
    • As I recall, he wanted to kidnap Leech so that he could force the cure upon mutants who didn't join him.
    • Nope. He explicitly tells Juggernaut to kill the boy when he sends him after him.
    • Yeah. but this was after the X-Men had shown up to intervene. In that situation, Magneto could have decided "Plan B. If I can't have him, no one can."
    • Ok, so then he turns the metal from the bridge and cars into a whirlwind of shrapnel and tears every living thing on the island into shreds. We've seen the damage he could do with two small metal spheres - the battle would've been over in a minute. He even got the right idea with throwing flaming cars. Except what the hell did he wait and sacrifice his troops for?
• Not really an IJBM, but I've been wondering for years: who is that mutant who has Immolation Breath? Near the beginning of the Alcatraz battle, with the leathery skin? Was he created for the movie, or is he a comic book character?
• Why is Magneto not in prison at the end? Especially when (apparently) depowered he could go in a normal prison? Instead the guy who planned the whole thing is in a park, playing chess by himself apparently free as a bird. Aren't the police, military and X-Men looking for him?
  • He's still a pretty sharp guy, so there's no guarantee that they'd be able to catch him right away even if he was depowered. The most obvious answer is that he wasn't as weak as he looked and either ran off or kept a mutant in reserve exclusively for this contingency (Magneto has always shown himself to be both cunning and Crazy-Prepared). Besides finding him would be a far larger challenge than it seems; as Magneto he's a larger than life character wearing a stupid cape and a novelty helmet - but as Eric he's just another old man in a park.
  • With Xavier and Jean "dead" they wouldn't be able to use Cerebro. The X-Men probably wouldn't be too inclined to help recapture him at any rate, as they saw in the second movie that it can be fairly dangerous to put someone who knows a great deal about the school - thanks to his prior work with Charles - in government custody.
  • I just figured it was a "prisoners' retirement home" sort of thing. Magneto was an Auschwitz survivor, putting him somewhere in his seventies, after all.
• Juggernaut's power is said to be super-inertia or some such thing (Once he starts moving, he can't be stopped). This is the reason he is completely restricted when imprisoned. Then how is it that, when Kitty phased him into the floor, Juggernaut was able to break out, even though he couldn't get any momentum?
  • This one bugged me from the film point of view, I always thought that Juggernaut's powers were magic based, rather than mutation.
    • They were, it's just different in some versions.
  • Juggernaut in the comics also has a few other powers, including superhuman strength. One presumes he used that to break out of the floor. (One also presumes that the restraint rig he was held in also included a sedative IV drip or something. Just enough to keep him too groggy to escape.)
  • Better yet, why didn't that kill the Juggernaut? Super powerful or not, the entire lower half of his body was rematerialized into solid matter. His muscles, bones, circulatory system, and some of his vital organs (stomach, liver, spleen) should have been bonded with the cement or whatever material that floor was composed of. Even if he was too tough to die of the system shock or heart failure and somehow managed to break out, he'd have been severely debilitated and would have probably died shortly thereafter unless there was another mutant available that could fix him. I mean, I assume this is what should have happened, since there doesn't seem to be any indication that his body displaced the floor when he rematerialized. Maybe Kitty's power is also capable of sending the displaced material into Hammerspace?
    • Kitty's power does cause that sort of thing in the comic books. Upon first viewing, I assumed it was the Juggernaut's invulnerability but it's more likely that, as a film that has to be family-friendly to be accessible to a wide audience, Kitty's film powers just have the Required Secondary Powers of leaving people intact to avoid the Fridge Horror that comes with her phasing powers.
    • Dude, it's The Juggernaut. His skeleton once got back up and kept fighting.
    • Assuming he didn't become one with the floor, all he had to do was get his arms and legs moving and he could break free. Most floors/ceilings aren't think enough to encase a tall man while he's standing up.
• I might just be forgetting how it happened, but when Magneto dramatically drops the bridge, how come none of the Brotherhood die? I mean, that was at least a 200 metre drop.
  • Rewatching the movie, based on where Magneto's levitating after he drops the bridge, it's more of a 20 foot/6 meter drop. There'd be a lot of Brotherhood tossed on the ground, but falling 20ft on a solid surface is easily survivable with no injuries. The camera angles probably just made it seem a lot higher.
• Sometime after the events in X2, Mystique has been captured and placed in a mobile prison that consists of an armored truck and several escort vehicles, in which she and several other criminal mutants are kept in (somewhat) custom-designed cages. Now granted, the idea of a mobile prison with a top secret location was, perhaps, the best option for keeping Magneto from attempting a rescue, and they had no way to know that he'd eventually meet a mutant who could track down Mystique, but still—it had to occur to them, at some point, that they should be prepared for the possibility that Magneto would find her. Given Magneto's presence in the previous movies, they had to know the metal vehicles and weapons would be no match for a mutant of his abilities.
  • Although come to think of it, I have no idea how someone might create an armored truck with no metal at all. I'm sure you'd be talking about a lot of carbon fiber, fiberglass, hard plastic, maybe even stone—but no metal at all? I have no idea. Where are the mutant engineers?
    • Confirmed by the novelization.
  • Realistically, keeping three dangerous and powerful mutants on the same prison truck probably wasn't the best of ideas, either. I'm sure the taxpayers would have been more than happy to pony up the dough to get another couple of those trucks built and hire the people to guard and maintain them.
  • And another matter to speculate on: that bit when Mystique morphed into a little girl seemed a little inconsistent with her previously-established abilities. The kid was a foot or two shorter than Mystique's normal form, meaning that she would have either had to lose some of her physical mass or compress it. The visual of that little girl with her arms stretched up to stay in those shackles was strange, too—she looked like she could have easily slid her hands out of them and was only keeping them in place to...I don't know, maybe for the sake of politeness? If Mystique is capable of shrinking down in such a way, it seems like a self-adjusting harness or even a ventilated metal coffin would have been a better choice for keeping her imprisoned than a pair of shackles and a cage with widely-spaced bars.
    • It's possible that Mystique was only pretending that the cage and shackles were keeping her there. Given that she was expecting Magneto to pick her up ("What took you so long?") and given the planned ending that Mystique and Magneto's betrayal of one another was yet another plan between the two, it's entirely possible that she let herself be captured by the government so she could gather information about imprisoned mutants and the cure.
• If the government has weaponized the cure, why don't they use it against Multiple Man, Mystique and any other mutant criminal in their custody who has proven their willingness to use their powers to commit crimes?
  • My only guess is that there are legal implications of using the cure on prisoners that don't exist while using it as a weapon. Just as the police are allowed to shoot at suspects, but prisons aren't allowed to inflict pain as punishment, the government probably figures it's safer to just use the weaponized cure the same way it'd use any other gun, at least until the justice system's decided whether depowering captured mutants as a matter of policy is constitutional.
    • That's the most likely reason, and it makes sense given that the cure was weaponized so soon after it was created that they haven't yet fleshed out the legal precedents. Still, with the CIA doing waterboarding of terror suspects, one would imagine at least somebody in the chain of command would bring up the idea or casually 'suggest' it to Mystique's guards, given that she was responsible for nearly killing off the UN in movie 1 and the whole human race in movie 2.
    • There's a big difference between torturing prisoners and giving them a simple injection that completely removes their ability to pose a threat to you without any negative side-effects.
    • Any negative side effects?!? As far as anyone in the movie knows, it permanently removes the natural abilities mutants were born with. By that logic, chopping off people's hands or gouging out their eyes "completely removes their ability to pose a threat to you without any negative side effects." A mutant's power is a part of their body. They were born with it, it's who they are. The Constitution doesn't lay down some kind of baseline for human abilities and then allow the government to permanently cripple people as punishment so long as it doesn't go any lower than average. The legal system would take years to sort through the issue of whether depowering mutants is cruel and unusual punishment. It'd inevitably end up going to the Supreme Court. The only reason using it as a weapon isn't as thorny a legal issue is because police are allowed to use lethal force if necessary, and depowering isn't lethal.
    • Mutant abilities are all caused by the same gene. Objectively speaking, it would be no challenge to isolate exactly what part of a mutant constitutes a "genetic threat" to the rest of the population and take steps to minimize the threat. Granted, permanently curing dangerous mutants is analogous to the death penalty, which takes a lot of legal machinations to finalize but a temporary cure injection could keep the prisoner at a manageable enough level to be controlled while allowing for the possibility of their powers returning if in the foreseeable future they can be rehabilitated and become productive members of society.
    • I should probably add that, if the cure turns out to be temporary like the last scene implied, then they probably would start treating mutant convicts with it just as a security precaution. But for the length of the movie, everyone's assuming that once you're injected, you're no longer a mutant.
    • While you're right from an ethical point of view, think of it in practical terms. Let's say you're an unwillingly "cured" mutant criminal. What're you gonna do about it? Traces of torture, a missing arm or an eye are easy to present, but missing superpowers? How are you even going to prove you've ever had them? Now, if there was an all-national registry of mutants...oops, the good guys made sure there isn't one. Nice job breaking it heroes! But let's say you do prove that you had superpowers. It only gets funnier; how are you going to prove that you actually lost them? Unless you're one of those relatively few deformed mutants, you are at a loss, and any lawyer worth his salt will dismiss you as a scam. So, yeah, I agree with the OP, "curing" the captured mutant delinquents was perfectly reasonable.
    • The Other Wiki says they're using a retrovirus with Leech's cells to create the cure. Viruses trigger antibodies and antibodies show up in blood tests. You could easily modify any blood test for viruses, like an HIV test, to find out if a mutant's ever been injected with the cure. Alternately, if it's not a retrovirus that changes the genome then the X-gene's still there and it can be confirmed with a DNA test. And besides, the movie is assuming that the government is not evil, and actually does concern itself with legality, rule of law and constitutional rights. If they don't care about any of that, then screw halfway measures like a weaponized cure - they could just kill them all and be done with it. I already said that once they found out the cure is temporary there'd be no reason not to use it. This is all only concerning the movie timeline, when they assumed the cure was permanent.
    • Then how did the cure work so quickly? Retroviruses spread even slower than real viruses because they spread via DNA, rather than RNA; in other words, each new copy of the cell it infects produces a new copy so the virus spreads only as fast as the cell can reproduce.
    • Ask The Other Wiki (though it's gone now, so maybe it got flagged as unsourced). I accounted for both possibilities, so it's really beside the point.
  • The simplest explanation is that its the same reason cops don't kick in doors and go in guns blazing: the wanted to end the situation with the fewest lives lost on both sides. By surrounding the camp in stealth mode, they hoped to take everyone by surprise and bring them into custody peacefully. Barring that, they would shoot anyone who attacked them, much as they would shoot a knife-wielding redneck on COPS.
• Multiple Man is just as big a waste of power as Dark Phoenix. If you've got a guy who can make himself into a one man army, wouldn't it make more sense to have sent him and his clones out first during the siege at the island to be used as pawns? Having him as a decoy was a complete waste; its not like the government would be any closer to catching the Brotherhood just because they didn't find them at the hideout he and his clones were in.
  • The only thing I can guess is that, in this continuity, maybe Madrox feels pain across all his duplicates, which makes them useless as cannon fodder (if a bullet hits any one of them, they all go down). The army used satellite imagery to "confirm" the Brotherhood's presence in the forest, so his being there bought Magneto at least a little bit of time while they were busy planning a siege of the camp.
• How exactly did several dozen mutants of Magneto's army manage to walk all the way to the bridge without anybody noticing them? They leave their camp in the middle of some forest, and next thing, POOF, they're on a lively highway.
  • Well they probably didn't walk all the way to the bridge in that way. It's just narrative licence, to make for a better shot. It's not specified how they got to the bridge.
• Moments before Phoenix kills Cyclops, she disables his mutant powers; wouldn't that ability have come in pretty handy just prior to Wolverine stabbing her?
  • She didn't really disable his power, she just held back his beams with telekinesis.
    • Which is what she could have done to Logan; used her telekinesis to keep his claws inside his arms. But she wouldn't have done that because she wanted to die; Jean Grey reasserts control over herself in that scene and she asks Logan to stop her so really, she allows Logan to kill her.
  • Did you not see the part where Jean is using her powers on Logan. She's disintegrating his flesh but he keeps restoring himself. She can't switch off his healing factor. When he gets to her, Jean overpowers the Phoenix for long enough to allow Logan to kill her.
• What bugged me the most about this film was Magneto's reaction to Mystique being depowered. If nothing else, she was a symbol of what the weaponized cure really meant.
  • Same here. But maybe that's what they were going for; showing that Magneto was just as much of a cold-blooded Fantastic Racist as any anti-mutant human. Word of God confirms this: in the commentary, he points out that the reason the Brotherhood will always fail is they're cold.
  • It makes a bit more sense if you consider the planned ending: the entire thing was planned between Magneto and Mystique, to justify her giving the government info on how to find Magneto and, by extension, leading the army on a wild goose chase looking for his camp, while he was busy invading Alcatraz.
    • Because that was the entire US military surrounding Magneto's camp, and what could easilly be done through a few tips and intel leaks is totally worth sacrificing your best soldier for.
• Probably not explicitly a head-scratcher, but what kind of bugged me about this installment was the sudden shift in Magneto's portrayal. In the first two films, he's this subtle, extremely sympathetic extremist who's doing what he does for the good of his own kind, and more - you know, very much a Malcolm X with magnet powers. In this one, he's suddenly become a cartoon super-villain who mugs at the camera and it becomes very obvious that his only reason for his entire plan is his own megalomania, barring for a few scenes that are mostly out of context and don't impact his character in the rest of the film all that much. It's jarring and a little silly, but I guess this could be due to the shift in directorial duties - Bryan Singer > Brett Ratner.
  • Ratner is the director, not the screenwriter. To some degree, Magneto is still the Malcolm X guy, what with his speeches at the beginning, but they might have been taking direction from the comics. Most non-Chris Claremont writers like to portray Magneto as a cardboard cutout villain who uses the rhetoric of his Well-Intentioned Extremist self to justify pretty much whatever self-aggrandizing evil he sees fit. It's a part of his loaded portrayal that he can be both an Anti-Villain and a standard Evil Overlord who milks the Anti-Villain reputation for sympathy.
  • Yeah, this bugs me too. I think part of it is that the movie was just generally lower quality and they largely ditched character development for anyone who wasn't Wolverine. Another part of it may have been that they were worried about making his point of view too sympathetic. I mean, even some of the X-Men (like Storm) are completely disturbed by the idea of a "cure," and given events in the previous movies it's very far from inconceivable that the government could start using it against mutants without their consent. Even with their consent, it's fairly creepy - given how society treats mutants, the choice for anyone with a visible mutation boils down to "take it and get the same opportunities as a regular human, or don't take it and we'll keep persecuting you." (The best comparison I can think of is with states that have a state religion and don't outright ban other religions, but make life a lot harder for you if you follow something other than the state church. Heck, most of Europe was like that until the mid-1800s.) Even if people aren't being forced, there's an element of coercion in the cure even being offered. The filmmakers don't want to be bothered making a strong argument against Magneto's point of view, so they just give him a bunch of Kick the Dog moments.
  • Even with coercion, the way Magneto and his supporters kept equating the cure with "extermination" and "genocide" didn't seem appropriate at all. Both those words imply an agenda to kill the mutants, whereas a treatment that suppressed their powers would be the best way to keep them alive if the non-mutants (who still vastly outnumber the mutants) won out in the end. Having a freakin' Holocaust survivor cheapen the word "genocide" to mean "convert them to ordinary people so they can return to society" seems really, really patronizing and ignorant, when you think about it.
    • Not really. Try it like this: Say that someone came out and said "We can cure Jews of being Jewish, all those Jewish Genes, we can get rid of them and they can be normal people." See how abhorrent that sounds, and how it would sound even worse to a holocaust survivor? That is pretty much what Magneto is hearing. Sure it isn't as brutal and overt as marching the mutants into a gas chamber, but it is eradicating mutants just as surely as the gas and ovens. Its a more subtle eradication, which makes it all the more horrifying to those that know their history and are politically aware.
    • Not really, that doesn't sound particularly abhorrent. Confusing, rather, since what exactly would they be curing them of? Appearance? Traits? Cultural inheritance? It's a poor example, because no such thing as "Jew genes" exist, and "Jew" is a multifaceted term, with deep ethnic, cultural and historical connections, so "curing" it is not good or bad - it's hardly feasible. "Mutant," on the other hand, is a clearly determinate entity, so it would be clear what exactly is removed. Also, I doubt that a proponent of a Jew-cure would be able to build up a convincing argument for his cause, i.e. explain why should such a cure be applied. On the contrary, a cause for curing mutants is self-evident - they are dangerous. Let's not mince words or try to hide behind liberal pleasantries - they are. They are not Jews, they are not gay or religious apostates, they are people with weapons: concealed and potentially horrendously destructive weapons, which they don't always have control over. Thus the unwillingness to share a house/city/globe with a walking nuclear bomb with a potential for Super-Power Meltdown has nothing to do with bigotry or ignorance - it's basic self-preservation. And by the way, saying that the cure exterminates mutants is absurd. It's akin to saying that corrective surgery exterminates a short-sighted person. Oh, sure, most mutations we see are beneficial to their owners, but I'd say a threat to public safety is an adverse effect in itself. After all, Typhoid Mary was immune to her own disease; would it be wrong to cure her?
    • Say that someone came out and said "We can cure queers of being queers,treating them and they can be normal people!". This trooper always found the mutants as some level of expies of LGTB+ people, so the cure can seem like all those abhorrent treatments for curing homosexuality and the like that actually exist. And as they were also targeted (at this same level) on the WWII Holocaust, Magneto is pretty conscious that with that cure, mutants are going to evolve like Jews in the first half of the XX Century.
    • Except this cure actually works. As far as we see, it's effective, and with no adverse effects. So, if that "someone" meant it like this, why shouldn't it be allowed?
    • Depowering superpowered people doesn't "exterminate" them any more than gun control "exterminates" gun owners.
    • In fact, now that you mention it, this cure for mutants is a much better metaphor for all the various aspects of gun control than any kind of genetic discrimination. No, gun control does not "exterminate" gun owners; but it does rob them of certain liberties. It does have the government endorsing social ostracism of the gun owners and encouraging persecution against them. It does potentially punish moral and law-abiding citizens while leaving immoral and sociopathic criminals at liberty to prey on disarmed victims. It's also an understandable (though wrong-headed) attempt to solve a problem that does need addressing. (Hey, people are shooting each other!) How many of these aspects apply to the cure for mutant powers? Virtually every one of them. Mutant powers, like guns, can be used for good or evil. A cure for removing those mutant powers, like gun control, may prove useful and beneficial to a few certain individuals (such as Rogue), but detrimental to public liberty and the greater good of mankind. (Do we really want to throw away Storm's talent for weather control when it could save so many of us from otherwise unpreventable natural disasters?) Really, the movies should have pursued this angle a lot more.
    • I thought about equating mutations to weapons, but there's one very significat distinction that precludes that - that randomness of distribution. To extend the metaphor, we have people being randomly given random weapons, from nerf guns to nuclear warheads, all of them concealed, untraceable and randomly controllable by their wielders. There's absolutely no background check and no way to enforce standards of mental capacity, training or safety measures - all of that is left entirely to the good will of the wielders, and the show itself constantly demonstrates how irresponsible even "good" mutants are with their powers (Looking right at Scott and his stupid unfixed glasses here). A law abiding citizen cannot procure himself a mutation. Governments cannot concentrate the mutations in their hands to ensure parity with foreign powers and enforce law and order within. Now, if mutants, at least significantly powerful, agreed to be drafted, and accept some kind of safety and containment measures *cough*powersuppressioncollars*cough*, then we could talk.
    • You can also go with compulsory sterilization if you still want a metaphor. You don't actually negate any essential trait of the people but at the same time you are taking from them something very important from them. Would you order sterilization on any oppressed groups (say homosexuals, jewish people...) with the excuse that some of them were rapists?
    • No. Because people of all nations and sexual preferences can be rapists, so this metaphor is invalid and, no offence, insincere. Homosexuals and jewish people are/were initially persecuted for made up reason, which is why you singled them out in your question. Mutants are not. They uniquely, a) can present a massive threat, and b) can present it even despite their best intentions. There's really no other honest and fitting metaphor for them except hosts of deadly diseases.
  • In the second film Magneto is ready to take advantage of his brainwashed friend and use him to murder the entire human race; in both previous movies he's willing to kill mutants if it ultimately serves his agenda (Rogue in film 1, any and all possible casualties of his plan in film 2- e.g., what if a mutant is flying on a plane and the human pilot dies?). His plan in the second movie is far, far more heinous and evil than his plan and his actions in this one (in fact its one of the most evil plans any version of Magneto has come up with, ever, maybe the most evil, especially since he hijacks it from an anti-mutant bigot); the only difference is we see more of this side of his character than last time. But its still very much in-character.
  • Even in the first movie he was pretty evil: He wanted to use a machine he created to turn humans into mutants. Not the most moral thing, but it's understandable. But a side effect of the machine is that using it in that way will inevitable kill him, so what does he do? Kidnaps a young mutant girl and forces her to activate the machine for him, even though it will certainly kill her. Yeah, not the nicest of things to do. Even Wolverine points out (quite rightly) that if Magneto was really so noble, he'd be willing to sacrifice his own life to succeed. So yeah, Magneto may have understandable motivations, but he's still a bad guy.
• Rogue's decision to take the cure: while I totally agree with it as a matter of personal choice (and I'm glad they decided to disregard Status Quo Is God like in most versions where the cure is either bad or gets reversed without explanation), it goes against a running thread in the films (and the novelization) where Rogue was getting Character Development to gain control over her powers. In the first film, she was the archetype of Blessed with Suck since her powers kept her from touching people and she had to contend with some of their memories and personality traits (well, she said she did; we never saw much of it). Then in the 2nd film, she starts to use her powers more actively and doesn't experience any obvious negative effects, and the people she touches lose their powers but don't get knocked out anymore. Then in the 3rd film, she manages to touch Colossus in the Danger Room scenario and copies his powers without stealing them from him. So Rogue was on the way to better control and focus with her powers and perhaps could have learned one day to touch people without taking their powers at all, which would give her a much-deserved ticket for the Superpower Lottery. In addition, Leech is now going to the X-Mansion; she and Bobby could just get the room adjacent to him and they'd be able to touch each other anytime they wanted without her having to lose her powers.
  • The last idea is wrong on so many levels...
  • Not to mention that it's never really made explicit that the kid's powers work within a defined radius regardless of intervening objects. They might, but then again they might not.
  • Rogue never really gets better at using her power, just more comfortable at using it. She takes abilities immediately, and it requires extended contact to shut down those she absorbs. They only remain conscious because she doesn't drain them for too long. Colossus is visibly winded by Rogue's brief copying of his power. Clearly, she hadn't progressed to the point where she had any means of controlling the death touch.
• How was Juggernaut captured in the first place?
  • He's only unstoppable once he starts moving. Even he has to stop and rest some time, presumably.
    • No, he doesn't. In the comics he's described as not needing rest, food, water or even air. Then again, movie continuity might be different, since he said he needed to pee, or maybe he just stopped voluntarily for a beer or something.
    • Even if he doesn't strictly speaking need to stop and rest, he's still not going to keep running constantly. There's got to be some time when he's standing still.
  • The "not needing food or rest" thing is Hand Wave-able by the fact that in the comics his powers come from the Cyttorak Gem. While there are plenty of mystical and magical type of creatures in the comics that don't need sustenance, most mutants that aren't energy beings of some kind still need food/water/air no matter how powerful they are.
  • Given that the important part of capturing Juggernaut is getting him to hold still, there are several ways it could be done: tranquilizer darts, for example. Personally, I think they had someone challenge him to a drinking contest and roofied his drinks. When he passed out, they nabbed him.
• Why wasn't Nightcrawler in this movie? I mean, they introduce him in X2, and I'm sure a lot of people were expecting him to become an X-man, so why would they introduce him and not use him ever again? It makes very little sense.
  • At the end of the tie-in game, set between X2 and X3, Nightcrawler leaves the X-Men because he doesn't like the violent lifestyle.
    • And the behind-the-scenes explanation that made the info from X-Men: The Official Game necessary in the first place was that his actor Alan Cumming did not like having to undergo several uncomfortable hours of makeup to portray Nightcrawler, and his role in the 3rd film was going to be much smaller than in X2, making it not worth it to either him or the producers.
• This may have been addressed in discussions, but I don't know where to look. How come Wolverine can kill so many people and not go to jail for it? Mystique also killed that guard on the truck (and probably others). Are we to assume that part of her "deal" when she "gave up" Magneto included not going to jail?
  • "Hey, you know that metal-controlling mutant who just declared a genocidal war on your entire species? I was his second-in-command/girlfriend for many years. I'll tell you everything I know about his plans, his strengths and weaknesses, and his organization if you don't prosecute me for anything I did up until this morning." Seems like a far deal to me. As for Wolverine, weren't most of his kills in self-defense, i.e. the soldiers attacking the mansion?
• And What Happened to the Mouse?:: Where were Jean Grey's parents while their house was being destroyed? Do we just assume she killed them, too?
  • I think that was implied. Haven't seen it for a while but I'm sure Xavier makes some sort of comment to that effect.
  • I can't remember if Xavier implies it. But if she did kill them then that does add more motivation for her wanting Logan to kill her. She's already killed Scott and Xavier as well as other innocent people. Add her parents to the list and she's bound to want someone to stop her.
• When Jean was going full-out Phoenix at the climax, why didn't the X-Men have Leech walk up to her and negate her powers? Then they could have shot her with the cure, and she wouldn't have been able to stop the darts like she did. There was even a shot of Bobby and Kitty running away with Leech...
  • Leech would never have gotten close enough before being disintegrated.
  • And y'know maybe they didn't want to put a child in harm's way. They know Jean would probably disintegrate him before he was even in range. Logan was the only one that could get close to Jean, since he was able to restore himself. And ultimately Logan's plan worked. Jean both had to and wanted to die for her crimes.
• Out-of-universe, was killing off Jean really necessary? The "cure" could have been useful in the climax. Just have Wolverine inject her with The Cure. Having him stab her seems rather unnecessary.
  • He had to stab her because he was the only thing that could withstand her power long enough to do it. If they'd tried to use the cure Phoenix would have destroyed it before they could touch her, she tries to kill Logan several times before he's close enough, he only survives because of his healing factor and adamantium skeleton.
  • Possibly she could have disintegrated the cure darts before they even got close enough to use one on her. Look at how many people she easily gets rid of just because her powers are out of control. They don't seem to know that she's able to hold the Phoenix back for a certain amount of time.
• Those humans (including the family that was in the car after the bridge was moved) who might have been still on the bridge, either on the ground or in their vehicles could have been used by Magneto to lessen losing his troops. Yes his methods from the movies have varied from film to film, but if he was actually smarter then just sending all of his mutants to attack the facility, he could have used the humans on the bridge to get Leech and destroy the cure.
  • One idea he could have done was gather the humans and place them in one area, then he would make an statement to the people at the lab and the soldiers that they could hand over Leech to his death, or refuse and he and his group would kill all the men, women, and children that were human. Maybe as an added encouragement on his part (even though he doesn’t care about humans other than they must rule over them as the film never explained if he wanted to kill them all or enslave them), he could threaten to kill someone(s) every certain amount of time, with the body count going higher and higher until it reaches everyone. The members have various personality and opinions on the human race, so it could be implied that they could kill those people without mercy if they wanted to. Why he didn’t do this is just stupid on his part.
  • Another idea to surprise attack the Worthington Labs if he was smart and also get his mutants down there, would be to have the humans and some of the mutants (who all look like humans of course) walk towards the Lab, and then suddenly start attacking the soldiers and even some humans to get the soldiers confused of who to hit, as they could be wasting ammo (darts) on humans and the effects of the cure on them is unknown, maybe fatal. Great surprise attack, and he never does it.
  • The reason for these approaches never used is that on the first one, the X-Men would have had enough time to get to the Labs, and the second would be the X-Men would be confused also if they are attacking Magneto’s army or the humans.
• Regarding Magneto’s motivation with the humans over the last couple of movies, his plans for humanity was never outright revealed what he intends to do with them after he kills Leech and destroys the cure. In the first one he only intended to get mutant rights, second he tries to kill all humans, and in the third one, just destroying the cure. Regarding the film’s quality and the fact that this is a trilogy, you would want to end with the highest stakes of all. Yes destroying the cure would stop the humans from helping mutants who want to be cure, and it wasn’t their intention of starting war, Magneto did that, but that would just make the humans come up with new ways to deal with them, and as long as that continues to happen, their kind would never be safe. Also, this movie was for nothing given that Days of Future Past brought the Sentinels in later. Magneto should have stated that when he was done with the cure, that he and his mutant army would cleanse the world of humans and those who stop them and build a new world for mutants because as long as they exist, they will always be forces to stop them. So why did he spare the family who was in the vehicle when the bridge was moved then?
  • Because Magneto, believe it or not, is not a Chaotic Evil Complete Monster. His morality is based on what he deems to be Necessarily Evil in order to preserve the Mutant Race. In the first movie, his whole plan was converting the world leaders into Mutants so they would be forced to accept Mutants or get registered and persecuted just like them; if not for the fact that it risks killing them like it does Kelly and would definitely kill Rogue, it could hardly be considered a true villainous act. The sole reason he picked Rogue is because he found out he couldn't use the machine without dying; a selfish act of self-preservation, yes, but also done so the Brotherhood wouldn't lose its leader and Magneto could continue defending Mutants. In the second movie, Stryker tortured Magneto to create the Dark Cerebro to exterminate all Mutants immediately, so obviously Magneto retaliated on the same coin when given the chance; he clearly could have built his own Dark Cerebro and attempted to control Xavier or find another Telepath to carry out such a plan (just like with the machine from the first movie), but he never did because it likely was too much of a Moral Event Horizon even for him before Stryker tried it. The third movie, Magneto was reacting to the current reality that humans now have the means to remove Mutant powers and are calling it a "Cure" (as in, they consider Mutation to be some kind of disease instead of natural evolution). Mystique getting shot with the weaponized Cure is basically the confirmation of his beliefs and validation he wanted to rally Mutants to fight against it. Most of time, Magneto DOESN'T want to enact a full-blown Holocaust against humanity. He would rather just subjugate humans and make Mutants the dominant power to ensure their survival or turn all humans into Mutants. So while he obviously will see human politicians, military and anti-Mutant movements as his enemies, he reasonably wouldn't assault random civilians like the family inside the car at the bridge; he locked the car with a look that's basically saying "You're just civilians caught up in the crossfire, so I'm going to spare you. Stay there quietly until we walk past you and you won't be harmed". While the Brotherhood of Mutants often has troublemakers and psychos like Sabertooth that brutalize and harm Muggles For the Evulz, Magneto himself is often portrayed as detached and only focusing his violence on actual threats like Kelly, Stryker, Warrington or Trask; attacking common citizens who aren't opposing humans is probably immoral and impractical where he's concerned. He obviously doesn't care about collateral damage, but he's also not going out of his way to maximize human casualties like En Sabah Nur/Apocalypse would. Conclusion: Magneto is as evil as the plot and/or writer demands, or as Magneto believes he should be in any given situation.
    • It's also important to note that since Mutants are the next stage of evolution, all humans becoming Mutants eventually is a Foregone Conclusion; Magneto just wants to ensure that Fantastic Racist humans won't kill them and/or the world itself before that happens. While any world ruled by Magneto that still has humans will likely have them become second-class citizens without any power over government and society, Magneto is rarely ever portrayed as the type of guy that would march humans down a gas chamber or an incinerator like the Nazis did.

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