X Men 3, directed by Brett Ratner, is premised on the development of an antidote for mutants by a pharmaceutical firm based on Alcatraz Island. The antidote is blood from Jimmy (played by Cameron Bright), a mutant who can reverse mutant conditions. Although some mutants take the antidote, Magneto (played by Ian McKellan) leads the opposition with the words, "We are the cure." Mutants, who now number in the hundreds if not thousands, then converge on Alcatraz to destroy the antidote. Although subtitled The Final Stand, the film leaves the outcome just ambiguous enough to make an "X Men 4" a possibility. An innovation in the plot is the character Charles McCoy (played by Kelsey Grammer), a blue-faced gorilla-headed mutant who is Secretary of Mutant Affairs, a position in the President's Cabinet, who later becomes UN Ambassador; he hopes that mutants and humans will coexist peacefully. But, as before, gratuitous special effects pepper the movie, which uses the mistreatment of mutants as a paradigm for racism, sexism, homophobia, and other social maladies. The genetic engineering issue implicit in the existence of an antimutant vaccine (next an antigay vaccine?), however, is presented as a matter for combat, not ethical debate.
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