It was directed by Brett Ratner and features an ensemble cast including Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen, Famke Janssen, Anna Paquin, Kelsey Grammer, James Marsden, Rebecca Romijn, Shawn Ashmore, Aaron Stanford, Vinnie Jones, and Patrick Stewart.

X2 composer and editor John Ottman and X2 writers Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty also left to work on Superman Returns, as did James Marsden, who had very limited screen time in The Last Stand before his character was killed off due to his departure from the film.

Matthew Vaughn, who co-wrote the script (though uncredited) and was initially hired as the new director, left due to personal and professional issues, and was replaced with Ratner.

X-Men: The Last Stand premiered in the Out of Competition section at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival,[8] and was released theatrically in the United States on May 26 by 20th Century Fox.

During the fight, Kitty Pryde saves Jimmy from Juggernaut, Iceman subdues Pyro, and Logan distracts Magneto for Hank McCoy to inject him with the cure, nullifying his powers.

"[31] Daniel Cudmore appears as Peter Rasputin / Colossus: A mutant with the ability to transform his body into an organic steel, while also granting him superhuman strength and a resistance to physical damage while in that form.

While creating the role, the producers felt that a "different" president, like an African American or a woman, had become a cliché in itself and went for a traditional route with an elder Caucasian man.

Eric Dane appears as Multiple Man: A mutant and thief recruited by the Brotherhood in a prison truck, Madrox has the ability to create a very large number of copies of himself.

Various characters were included at the suggestion of editor Mark Helfrich, who brought Marvel's X-Men Encyclopedia to director Brett Ratner, searching for mutants who could make appearance.

X-Men co-creator Stan Lee and writer Chris Claremont have cameos in the film's opening scene as the neighbors of young Jean Grey.

Bryan Singer, the director of the first two 20th Century Fox X-Men films, left the project in July 2004 in favor of developing Superman Returns (2006) for Warner Bros.

[40] By the time of his departure, Singer had only produced a partial story treatment with X2 (2003) screenwriters Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty, who accompanied him to Superman Returns.

[47] Joss Whedon, whose comic book storyline "Gifted" from Astonishing X-Men which he wrote was integrated into the script's plot, turned down the offer because he was working on a Wonder Woman film.

[55] Vaughn cast Kelsey Grammer as Beast, Dania Ramirez as Callisto, and Vinnie Jones as Juggernaut, but family issues led him to withdraw before filming began.

[57] In October 2023, Vaughn stated that he left the project after a group of executives had tried to sign Halle Berry on with a fake script, which included scenes of Storm rescuing kids from Africa.

[65] The writers had to fight Fox's executives to retain the Phoenix plot, as the studio only wanted the cure story as it provided a reason for Magneto's conflict with the X-Men.

Still the disputes made them not add much for Jean Grey to do in most of the film's second half, as the executives considered the tone of the Phoenix story too dark for a mainstream summer movie, and that its appeal would be limited to hardcore fans rather than a general audience.

Xavier's death was intended to match the impact of Spock's demise in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), as Fox felt the script called for a dramatic turning point.

[67] Gambit was considered for both the convoy scene being freed by Magneto and the Battle of Alcatraz along with the X-Men, but the writers did not want to introduce a fan favorite character and "not be able to do him justice."

The effects team would shoot one minute of footage outdoors each day at "golden hour," complete with explosives in order to have enough plates to composite the scene.The visual effects team had to work without reference footage due to the city of San Francisco vetting any filming in the actual bridge, including aerial shooting as the area has restrictions on flying helicopters.

The game's story bridges the events between X2 and The Last Stand,[99][100] featuring Wolverine, Iceman and Nightcrawler as playable characters, voiced by their film portrayers Hugh Jackman, Shawn Ashmore, and Alan Cumming.

[8][103] Two days later, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry and Kelsey Grammer attended an advance screening at USS Kearsarge (LHD-3), as the ship was en route to New York City for Fleet Week.

[113] The film then grossed $122.8 million during the four-day Memorial Day weekend, which was the highest at that time, surpassing The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Shrek 2.

The website's consensus reads: "X-Men: The Last Stand provides plenty of mutant action for fans of the franchise, even if it does so at the expense of its predecessors' deeper moments.

Matt Mueller of Total Film was impressed with Janssen's performance and said, "Playing the super-freaky mind-control goddess like GoldenEye's Xenia Onatopp's all-powerful psycho sister, her scenes – particularly that one with the house – crackle with energy and tragedy.

"[128] Justin Chang of Variety said the film was "a wham-bam sequel noticeably lacking in the pop gravitas, moody atmospherics, and emotional weight that made the first two Marvel comicbook adaptations so rousingly successful.

"[129] Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly called it a "diminished sequel, a brute-force enterprise" and said it was an example of "what happens when movies are confused with sandwich shops as franchise opportunities".

[137] Matthew Vaughn, who was attached as director before dropping out, said that given the limited time they had to make it, the film was "pretty good"[138] but criticized Ratner's direction: "I could have done something with far more emotion and heart.

[151] X-Men: Days of Future Past, the direct sequel to The Last Stand, was released on May 23, 2014, with Jackman, Berry, Stewart, McKellen, Paquin, Page, Ashmore, Cudmore, Grammer, Janssen, and Marsden reprising their respective roles.

Wolverine's consciousness is sent back in time, to his 1973 body in order to guide the younger Xavier and Magneto into preventing the events that lead to the desolate future.