20 Years Later, The Movie That Almost Killed X-Men Is Better Than You Remember

Superhero fatigue accusations have existed for years, and after X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006, many believed the genre was reaching diminishing returns. The film’s reputation was influenced by production disruptions tied to Superman Returns, which pulled key X2 contributors away from X3. Brett Ratner replaced Bryan Singer, creating a shift in creative leadership. Despite uneven execution, the cast worked to carry the film, including Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Famke Janssen, and Halle Berry. The movie also started a pattern of killing off Professor X early, which later occurred in Logan and a brief appearance in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.

"Superhero fatigue, or at least the accusations of superhero fatigue, are nothing new. And if you were to ask people leaving the movie theater on May 26, 2006 - following a viewing of X-Men: The Last Stand - if the superhero genre was finally, and truly entering into a period of diminishing returns, the answers would have been a resounding yes. But although the X-Men would experience a massive comeback in 2011 with First Class, the strange irony of The Last Stand's bad reputation, 20 years later, is that it's not even close to being the worst X-Men movie, nor even among the worst superhero movies ever."

"Following the beloved X2 in 2004, X-Men: The Last Stand, suffered partly because of the existence of another 2006 superhero movie, Superman Returns. Five key people from X2, including director Bryan Singer, composer John Ottman, writers Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty, and actor James Marsden (Cyclops), were all pulled away from X3 to work on Superman Returns. Brett Ratner eventually replaced Bryan Singer, which today is a bizarre downgrade from one problematic director to another."

"This is all a long-winded way of saying that separating the art from the artist enters into gymnast-levels of intellectual dissonance when looking back on the early X-Men films. But we can all probably agree that the various cast members - from Patrick Stewart to Hugh Jackman to Famke Janssen to Halle Berry - all did their best to carry this totally uneven film. X3 also began a strange tradition of putting Professor X into an early grave, which, to date, has shockingly happened three times total: The Last Stand, Logan (2017), and in his very brief appearance in 2022's Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness."

Read at Inverse