10 Stupid Comic Book Movie Deaths That Should Never Have Happened
3. Cyclops (X-Men: Last Stand)
X-Men: Last Stand has the noted distinction of being the film that burst the X-Men bubble. The first film had been a family-friendly smash that helped normalize superhero movies at the turn of the millennium, the second was well-constructed around an above-average script, but the third movies in the series was when everyone collectively realized that Brett Ratner was a terrible director and maybe Bryan Singer had just gotten lucky. And then the series continued for ten more films.
One thing that helped to destabilize the film was its blatant apathy towards the characters it was working with. Case in point, X-Men staple and field leader Cyclops is axed off mere minutes into the film. Cause of death? Disintegration by his telekinetic and recently resurrected girlfriend.
The real kiss of death from this plot point wasn't that audiences didn't really care that a main character had been killed before the first act was even over, though they didn't. It was that it made audiences realize they'd never really cared about Cyclops to begin with. James Marsden had played him fine, but Cyclops is an inherently boring character by design.
Once audiences had worked that out in their subconscious, other inconsistencies, both blatant and subtle, became more obvious.