Instead of X-Men III: The Last Stand, a more apt title for the third X-Men movie might have been X Men III: Fear and Loathing (of Female Sexuality). Because really, that’s what the movie is about once you dig beneath the CGI.

I found the film to be incredibly misogynistic, surprising because I didn’t think one could express so much vitriol towards the female body in a film in which no character has more than 40-odd lines.

Jean Grey’s character, The Phoenix, is brought back in a deluge of water imagery, imagery which pounds you until the climax of the film. But she’s no longer Jean, we find out, not the Jean we saw at the end of the second film, who gave her life for her compatriots and her husband.

The audience is informed that as a student under Professor X, she developed some kind of split personality, the more destructive and carnal of which Professor X had to confine to some region of her subconcious keep her safe (from herself, ostensibly). Upon her rebirth, the Phoenix is released, with pleasure-seeking hedonism and destructive, chaotic tendancies in tow. As is evidenced by her first action after she is reborn, the sexual pleasure and the destruction go hand-in-hand.

In painting her character this way, the filmmakers depict a female body which is to be feared for its appetites and destructive powers. And worst of all, she is not in control of her body - instead, her appetites control her.

Attempts by Professor X and Magneto to either control or use the Phoenix are met with failure. Professor X’s “noble” desire to help Jean is “necessary” because she cannot control herself, and is ultimately futile because the Professor’s mental powers, and attempts to reason, do not match Jean’s telekinetic powers, and her powers in the physical world. Magneto’s attempt to recruit Jean, or to use her as a figure of revolution (something very unclear that the film never articulates) is thwarted because she simply will not serve a cause other than herself.

It takes Wolverine, a man whose carnality and impetuous attitude matches hers, to bring about an end to her rampage, which of course involves an act of physical penetration. But even before the climax, he notes to Professor X that one cannot “cage the beast.” He knows this from experience, and he sees in the Phoenix a beast to be feared. That beast, of course, is the feminine sexuality, and all the accompanying mystique, fear and destruction.

Part of the reason the misogyny is so blatant is because the filmmakers refused to characterize Jean in any substantial manner. She rarely speaks, which is curious. Even stranger is the fact that she is rarely spoken about, besides in hushed tones regarding location and a vague sense of danger. The name “Phoenix” is merely mentioned once or twice, and its connotations are completely glossed over. Rather than say something about the Phoenix representing the destruction of mankind and the rebirth of humans as mutants, Magneto makes his grandiose speeches with Jean at his side, standing there like a statue, or a queen on a chessboard. The chess imagery is obvious, as it was central to the first film of the series as well.

But this is a queen that stands for nothing - not Magneto’s cause, nor the death-rebirth imagery of her name. She is but power embodied in the female form, sexual, silent, and uncontrollable. She never even expresses a purpose for herself, and instead embodies some kind of vagina dentata, a threat of castration which endangers all of mankind.

If I were making this film, and had to work with the same plot (the Phoenix as Jean’s uncontrollable alter ego, Wolverine as the one who has to save everything), I would have at the least presented some kind of allegory between the two characters of Jean and Logan. Jean and Logan would make excellent stand-ins for the Hindu God and Goddess Shiva (Logan) and Kali (Jean). Kali, like the Phoenix, represents death as well as birth. Shiva is the destroyer of evil, as well as the ideal lover and the husband of Kali. They still represent distinctly male and female entities, but there is at least a significant amount of meaning to be explored there (death and rebirth, energy and substance, and most importantly, one’s codependancy on the other), as opposed to this film, which merely presents Jean’s uncontrollable form as a sexual, mindless destroyer.

Now, one might point out that the world of comics, especially Marvel and DC, have never been the greatest medium for progressive women’s roles. But for a series that has been recently (and often) hailed for its metaphors that pertain to homosexuality and treatment of minorities, we might want to re-examine the other sexual stereotypes and metaphors presented in the film before we start applauding.