X-Men: The Last StandSave

We open in a flashback. Twenty years earlier, Professor X and Magneto visit a young Jean Grey at her family's home. They detect extreme telepathic ability. Charles places telepathic blocks on Jean to protect her — and the world — from her own power. The blocks are described as 'cages' for an entity within Jean named the Phoenix.

Cut to: present day, after the events of X2 (2003). Cyclops, grieving Jean's death, has been visiting Alkali Lake daily. Jean reappears at the lake — alive, transformed, having survived the flood through her newly-emerging Phoenix powers. She does not remember most of her recent life. Cyclops embraces her. Jean kills Cyclops with a thought — the first death of a primary X-Men cast member in the franchise.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government has approved a corporate mutant-cure program. A pharmaceutical company called Worthington Labs has developed a chemical agent that suppresses the X-gene — making mutants 'normal.' The cure is offered as voluntary medication. Many mutants line up to receive it. Many more, led by Magneto, see it as the threat they've been warning about for decades.

Magneto recruits a small army of mutants and prepares for war. The film's middle act is consumed by parallel character arcs: Wolverine's obsession with retrieving the resurrected Jean Grey, Storm's elevation to school leadership after Charles's eventual death, Iceman and Rogue's romantic problems, Mystique's loss of her mutation when accidentally hit by the cure.

Phoenix-empowered Jean kills Charles Xavier in the most-controversial sequence of the franchise. Charles attempts to neutralize her with his own telepathy. She destroys his physical body before his consciousness can leave it. Patrick Stewart's Charles Xavier is gone. The film proceeds without its central anchor for the second half.

Magneto attacks Worthington Labs on Alcatraz Island. The final battle features mutants on both sides — Jean Grey siding with Magneto out of cosmic apathy. The X-Men intervene. Wolverine, the only mutant capable of regenerating from Phoenix-level attacks, walks up to Jean during the climax and stabs her — the only way to kill her, the only act that can stop the Phoenix from consuming the world. Jean dies in Wolverine's arms. Magneto is shot with multiple cure-darts and loses his powers, becoming a powerless old man on a park bench.

The film closes with Charles's funeral at the Xavier mansion. The X-Men have suffered enormous losses. Wolverine, having killed the woman he loved, leaves the team. The mid-credits scene shows a coma patient in the school's medical wing — a hint that Charles transferred his consciousness into the body of a brain-dead man before his death.

X-Men: The Last Stand grossed $460 million globally on a $210 million budget — strong commercial success despite scathing reviews. Critics widely cited the film as a failure of franchise continuity. Days of Future Past (2014) retroactively erased The Last Stand's most-controversial character deaths — Charles, Cyclops, Jean — from continuity by establishing a new timeline.