The film opens twenty years in the past. A young Jean Grey, terrified and powerful, sits beside her parents in a car. When her psychic powers manifest uncontrollably, she accidentally unleashes a telekinetic wave that causes her mother to suffer a fatal brain aneurysm. Professor Charles Xavier arrives, gently containing the screaming child. He takes her to his school, promising to help her build psychic “walls” to contain the unimaginable power within her.
Cyclops rushes to embrace her, but the Phoenix mind, fragmented and dark, lashes out. In a flash of disintegration, Cyclops is vaporized. x-men 3
The central tragedy unfolds at Alkali Lake. Wolverine and Storm escort a grieving Cyclops to the site where Jean Grey supposedly died in X2 . Cyclops, still hearing Jean’s psychic echo, follows it into a crystalline cavern. There, he finds her — naked, alive, but utterly changed. The psychic “walls” Xavier built have crumbled. The rage and power of the Phoenix, a primordial alter ego Jean suppressed her whole life, has broken free. The film opens twenty years in the past
With Xavier dead, Magneto seizes the moment. He recruits Jean as his ultimate weapon. Storm takes command of the X-Men, vowing to stop Magneto from destroying the Alcatraz laboratory where the cure is being produced. In a flash of disintegration, Cyclops is vaporized
Xavier refuses to abandon his student. He steps forward, reaching into her mind. But the Phoenix awakens fully. As Magneto watches in awe and horror, Jean unleashes a wave of psychic fire. Professor Charles Xavier, the heart of the X-Men, disintegrates atom by atom into the wind. His empty wheelchair rolls away.
In the present day, a young mutant named Warren Worthington III awakens to find his father, the industrialist Warren Worthington II, staring at the feathered wings growing from his son’s back. Desperate to “fix” him, the elder Worthington reveals a scientific breakthrough: a boy named Jimmy (dubbed “Leech”) whose mutant power nullifies the abilities of any mutant who touches him. From Leech’s unique genome, a pharmaceutical company, Worthington Labs, has developed a “cure” — a serum delivered via syringe that permanently suppresses the X-gene.
