By the way, what happened to Nightcrawler? I loved that guy in X2. It was disappointing. The Beast was my favorite new addition. And what about Rogue? Does she go for the cure in the comic? And one other question . . . did that chess piece really move?
Like SPURSX3 said, Alan Cumming did not want to return to make the third film and wasn't obligated by contract. His biggest reason was the 6-8 hours of makeup he had to endure, I know the crew tried to shorten the time some but he just didn't want to do it. I was very dissappointed he didn't do the project myself, of ALL the mutant characters they really hit the nail on the head in displaying his powers live action. That is if you get by the minor detail of over-powering his character a bit too much in the opening White House scene in the second movie. He's strong but not that strong, he's fast but not THAT fast.
I loved the Beast, Kelsey Grammar did a great job. The prosthetics were well done and not cheesy. Being introduced to his character as he is reading Scientific America upside-down is EXACTLY the way you should introduce Beast. The vernacular was spot on, but they should've conveyed the brainy, nerdy aspect of Beast more and the savvy politico less.
In X-Men: The Animated Series (Ran 92-95), Apocalypse (through Mystique) dupes mutants into believing he has a cure. Rogue's angst over not being able to touch anyone (especially Gambit -- NOT Iceman), sends her to Muir Island to undergo the treatment for the cure. As she's about to go through with it, she is interrupted (by Pyro and Avalanche). She dispatches them easily enough and realizes she needs her powers to aide the X-Men's collective dream of Human-Mutant peace. I don't know of any cure plot in the comics but Rogue never seeks one out. So its not like they cooked up this idea out of nowhere but making her go through with it does fudge things up for the character. Then again, they screwed Rogue the worst of any character in the movies, and really just to have a convenient plot device for Magneto in the first movie -- pisses me off!
...and YES the chess peace really does move.
Which keeps alive the great comic tradition of propagating the nemisis of Magneto NO MATTER what the X-Men end up doing to the guy! He has seemingly been killed many times, mind-wiped on at least two occasions I know of, altered genetically, and every base the poor man constructs ends up destroyed. Yet you can bet that a new writer to the titles will parade Magneto out AGAIN at some point.