Where's Nightcrawler?

Rating: 8/10 (31 May 2006)

I just saw The Last Stand and I have to say, for all of the little blunders and inconsistencies, this was a fantastic movie. It gripped my attention from beginning to end with compelling drama and powerful action.
There's just one thing that bugs me. Well, two things. But the studio would never let an X-Men movie come close to three hours in length, so I'll not complain about the brevity of such a jam-packed movie, and move on to my main point.
The plot strays from the comic books, and I'm fine with that. However, within the context of the world set-up by the movies, the events of the first lead directly into the second. The same can be said about the second leading into the third. That is to say, these movies don't exist in a vacuum- Jean's "barriers" are somehow effected by the mutant radiation device at the end X-Men. In the second, she makes reference to this. Then, at the end of X2, she apparently dies. This is a crucial plot point driving into The Last Stand.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is this: All of the characters grow and change throughout the trilogy, some quite dynamically (Jean Grey, Pyro, etc.), and some less so. But it all...fits.
And then, we have Nightcrawler. This guy is introduced to us as a victim of shady government mind-control, and when the X-Men first find him, he's hiding out in an old church, afraid for his life. The X-Men give him a home, a purpose, and a family. They give him an opportunity to make amends for his unintentional attack on the President. Hell, they even gave him a lucrative spot in the official game of the Last Stand movie!!! And in spite of all of this, we are led to believe that NOT ONLY has our little blue buddy has decided to bamf on down the road (just when the X-Men need him most), but in very little time at all it seems the X-Men have forgotten him entirely.
So, did I miss that all-important line explaining his absence? Was Alan Cumming disinterested in reprising his role? Did the studio execs feel they had reached there quota of blue-skinned characters, perhaps? And did they feel it was easier to ignore his absence rather than explain it, perhaps, banking on the poor long-term memory of the average movie-goer?
Madness, sheer madness.