Plot
Twenty years before the movie's current events, Professor Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr meet a young Jean Grey at her parents' house. Ten years later, a young Warren Worthington III tries to cut off his wings.
The next scene opens with the X-Men in battle against a giant robot in the Danger Room. Kitty Pryde and Colossus have joined the team, although Cyclops is absent. Storm insists on working as a team, but Wolverine has Colossus throw him as he cuts the giant robot's head off. Storm is upset with Logan for not working as part of a team.
Sometime afterward, the pharmaceutical company Worthington Labs announces it has developed an inoculation to suppress the X-gene that gives mutants their powers and makes them different from other humans, offering the "cure" to any mutant who wants it. While some mutants are interested in the cure, including the X-Men's Rogue, many others are horrified by the announcement. In response to the news, the X-Men's adversary, Lensherr, now known as Magneto, raises an army, warning his followers that the "cure" will be forcefully used to exterminate the mutant race.
Cyclops, still depressed about the loss of Jean, returns to Alkali Lake. Jean appears to Cyclops, but as the two kiss, Jean takes on a fearsome appearance. Psychically sensing trouble, Professor X sends Wolverine and Storm to investigate. When they arrive, the two X-Men encounter telekinetically floating rocks, Cyclops' glasses, and an unconscious Jean. Cyclops himself is nowhere to be found. Xavier explains that when Jean sacrificed herself, she unleashed the powerful alternate personality she calls "Phoenix". Wolverine is disgusted to learn that Xavier has kept Jean in check telepathically, but when Jean awakens, he realizes she is not the Jean Grey he knew. Jean pleads with Wolverine to kill her, but when he refuses, the Phoenix surfaces and knocks out Wolverine, before escaping to her childhood home.
Magneto, alerted by Callisto to the presence of a powerful mutant, realizes that it must be Jean Grey. Magneto and his allies are already at Jean's childhood home when Xavier and his X-Men arrive. The two men vie for Jean's loyalty until the Phoenix resurfaces. She destroys her family's house, disintegrates Xavier, and leaves with Magneto.
The X-Men regroup to confront Magneto's army, despite being significantly outnumbered. Magneto has diverted the Golden Gate Bridge to provide access to Alcatraz Island, the location of Worthington Labs facility. The military troops defending the facility are armed with plastic "cure weapons" able to neutralize the attacking mutants, and non-metallic to counter Magneto's powers. Magneto lets the lesser-powered mutants charge ahead, with heavy initial losses, but then they rapidly begin to overwhelm the troops. The X-Men Wolverine, Storm, Beast, Iceman, Colossus and Shadowcat arrive to battle Magneto and his troops.
During the fight, Beast injects Magneto with the cure, nullifying his powers. Meanwhile, Shadowcat has entered the facility to find Jimmy who is the source of the cure and saves him from the murderous Juggernaut. They escape as Army reinforcements arrive, only to be obliterated by Phoenix, lashing out with her power and destroying everything around her including the lab itself. Wolverine realizes that due to his self-healing power, he is the only one who can approach her. He tells Storm to evacuate everyone and faces Phoenix alone, his power barely neutralizing her disintegration attack. Jean, momentarily gaining control, begs Wolverine to save her. Telling Jean he loves her, Wolverine kills her and holds her dead body as he weeps.
The school continues without Xavier, with Storm now as headmistress and Logan as a teacher. The US president appoints Beast as ambassador to the United Nations, Rogue returns, telling Iceman she has taken the cure and the two hold hands skin-to-skin.
In the epilogue, Magneto sits alone at a chessboard in a San Francisco park. He gestures towards the queen, causing it to tilt slightly.
In a post-credits scene, Dr. Moira MacTaggert checks on a comatose patient who greets her with Xavier's voice. Startled, she replies, "Charles?"
Read more about this topic: X-Men: The Last Stand
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“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
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