That would kind of make his location pretty glaringly obvious. Wasn’t he lying low at that point of the story, marshalling his forces and what-not?
What was always glaringly obvious to me is that Ellen Page’s character could’ve just walked right behind the Phoenix Entity with the kid she was rescuing and uh-oh, AoE mutant power damping. No more crazy Phoenix destroying Alcatraz Isle all willy-nilly. No reason to kill Jean Grey off.
Wouldn’t work. The Phoenix Power wasn’t mutant. It was…something else. Not like they made that even remotely clear in the movie, but still.
Leech has no conscious control over his power and so Kitty would have been disintegrated in the attempt. Leech probably would have been too.
How Could X-men 3 have been better? If the powers that be had realised that after Singer’s departure, and Matthew Vaugn’s “creative differences”, that they weren’t going to make the proposed release date. They should have realised that they had defective product, and cancelled the movie until such a time that script problems were sorted and a suitable director found. Instead, in order to make the release date, they pressed ahead with a shonky script, hired the first director they could lay their hands on (who, funny enough, didnt seem to mind the fact that the script was a turd AHEMhackAHEM) and pushed ahead for the [proposed release date. This is probably the reason Cyclops gets such poor treatment; he didnt have time to commit to the film, as he had signed to star in Superman Returns. Ok, kill him off for no good reason. Everything boiled down to getting that movie in cinemas on time, and as such…suckola.
But it did set up the scene where Magneto put them in thier place
“I’ve been marked - no more ink shall touch my skin” (or something like that)
Brian
Hey, that was my biggest problem with the movie, disintegration-proof underpants! C’mon! He’s got layers of skin disappearing but his pants stay on? They could have just all made full body suits out of the same material as Wolverine’s underpants and walked right up to her.
Okay, there were other things that bothered me about the movie but a little Hugh Jackman nudity might have mollified me.
X-men 3? How could it be better? Easy.
Not letting Brett Ratner anyplace near it. He dumbed down the heroes, turned Magneto into Simon Legree, and added pretty explosions. He took one of the most essential pieces of X-men lore, turned it into a minor plot point, and then killed off two of the main characters simply “because”.
I’m hoping that the new Wolverine movie is not full of such major suckage.
So Leech’s powers wouldn’t have neutralized movie Phoenix’s mutant powers in a field surrounding him like they did for every other mutant he came near?
In the comics, no, the Phoenix power wasn’t mutant. In the hack of a movie that was X3, though, it WAS. It was just really really powerful class 5 mutant.
They didn’t make that clear at all, however. Using the Phoenix in the water at the end of X2 as foreshadowing leads us to believe that it’s the Phoenix Force that is manifesting, not just Jean going into overload.
Y’know, personally, I liked X3. It worked for me—maybe I’m just easily pleased, or maybe I just have weird tastes.
I’ll admit, though, I’m kind of surprised they killed Cyclops off so close to the start of the film. They probably could have done more with him…but that would have been a pretty radical departure from his treatment in the first two movies. 
In any case, as it was, having him become an unreliable wreck and then killed off like an anime love interest was unexpected enough that it seemed to work.
Maybe that’s part of what I like about it…it wasn’t like a typical superhero movie. I’m not saying it was Citizen Kane or anything, but it was like it didn’t really know to be more conventional or formulaic. It made it interesting.
They probably could have done more with Rogue, though. Either (as suggested in the other thread) letting her have one badass mutant-fu moment towards the end battle (if for nothing else than a “last hurrah” before going mundane), or maybe using some old-fashioned human smarts to help out in said battle—like clubbing a mutant henchman from behind with a tire iron, or running someone down with a car, like The Question in JLU. Something befitting a good southern gal. 
Plus, maybe at least a token more fretting/doubting over her choice before getting the cure (she basically disappears for a good section of the film) but that’s really a minor quibble. Probably even just a small minor of artistic direction that’d be different for any writer or director.
Tengu, I agree with all your critiques.
X-Men 3 = Batman and Robin.
I think that’s a step too far. Whilst X-men 3 was certainly the runt of the litter in that trilogy is didn’t make me want to claw my eyes out. The same could not be said of the other film that shall not be named.
Finn saves [del]Christmas[/del] X3:
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The ‘cure’ is not really a cure, at all. Instead, Angel goes through with it, and ends up as Archangel.
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Due, of course, to Apocalypse who is one of the X-Men’s most badass villains, and is here to stomp some serious shit. Cue evil laugh, metal slicecy wings with shootey blades, and a few other Horsemen, too.
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Apocalypse starts wrecking some serious shit, but of course Xavier neither dies, nor switches his brain into some vegetable’s body anyways. The Brotherhood and the X-Men join forces. This time the Brotherhood gets some actual cool mutants, their most awesome member is neither a guy pretends to be a porcupine nor speedy girl. Actually, screw that. No Brotherhood, the Hellfire Club joins forces with Magneto. Gamibt is there. Beast is boring, he is not. Colossus actually does stuff.
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Apocalypse captures Ms. Marvel and transforms her into Evil Babe Alpha. EBA and the other three Horsmen attack the Mansion. Wolverine engages in personal combat with Archangel. Rogue grabs EBA in order to save Iceman. EBA flies up really high into the atmosphere in order to shake Rogue off of her, but no luck. EBA is killed and Rogue blacks out for a bit while absorbing new memories, and then snaps to her senses in time to fly around and kick some serious ass. The other three Horsemen are driven off. The X-Men/Brotherhood are still losing, Apocalypse looks unstoppable and EBA’s defeat was just a minor victory.
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Rachel Summers, from Days of Future Present, transports through time to save the world from Apocalypse. Cue tearful meeting between her and Cyclops, where she alludes to “the incredible course of events after you recovered mom’s body, in suspended animation, from Alkali Lake, and before things went wrong…” Rachel warns of the Sentinels and tips the X-Men off to Apocalypse’s Secret Weakness[sup]tm[/sup]
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The US government unleashes their secret Sentinel program. Mutants + Apocalypse + giant killer robots = liquid awesome. Sentinels go a bit nuts, attack everybody and their sister, three way brawl. Yeehaw.
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Apocalypse is defeated with Rachel Summers’ help. Sentinels still running amok. Martial law is declared. X-Men go into hiding, but not before retrieving the suspended-animation body of Jean Grey from Alkali Lake. Jean is revived but still unconscious.
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Cue long shot of a strange alien ship in our solar system, ships’ crew seen only in silhouette with weird hair. Sensor officer says to captain “Sir, we have detected an energy signal on the third planet. It’s what we were afraid of.” Captain says “Check again, we have to be absolutely sure.” SO responds “I’ve already tipple checked Sir, there’s no doubt. The Phoenyx Force has awakened again.” Captain, to comms officer “Signal the main fleet, priority alpha one, we need more firepower.” Havoc walks onto the bridge says “With all due respect Captain, we may be able to stop this now if we strike hard enough before the Phoenyx has fully manifest. I request permission to lead a strike team.” Captain: “Do it.”
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To Be Continued!
He has to be fairly close to the subject to neutralize its powers. Recall that Beast was in the same room with him without fully reverting; he only reverted (which was so effing stupid) when he was in handshake range and then he only reverted partially. Leech doesn’t have a power neutralizing force field that protects him from distance attacks. Magneto could drop a bridge on him from across the street and the bridge isn’t going to be stopped by Leech’s power. Phoenix was disintegrating people at a distance and there’s no way Leech could have gotten close enough to her to neutralize her before being killed.
And we have our first billion-dollar movie. Not box office…to make! And are still suffring from the “too many characters and sub-plots” problem that plagues most super-hero movies. You’re going to have to ditch 4/5 of what you wrote to make it even remorely do-able, I’m afraid.
What would make it any more expensive than any other CGI based movie these days?
And why would there be ‘too many’ characters and sub plots? How many is too many, and why?
The core of the X3 plot seemed pretty sound; the government’s come up with a way de-mutantizing people, which splits mutants into warring camps, and Phoenix is here to kick some ass.
The execution was just sloppy.
Finn, you explained your version of the movie in point form and sorry, but it still confused the hell out of me. It’s a movie; you’ve got fifteen minutes to capture people’s attention, two hours to tell the whole story. The entire film has to fit on 120 pages of very sparsely typed paper.