Dwelling in Probabilities

Okay, so maybe it's the killer cold I had all weekend and most of last week or hearing on Thursday afternoon that a job that seemed locked up isn't going to work out. Or not. At any rate, we went to see "X-Men 3" on Saturday night and I emerged fairly irritated with the whole thing (so if you're dying to see it, stop reading now). On the one hand, the queer subtexty and not-so-subtexty parts were fun: the trannie(?) mutant, the lingering glances passed between Magneto and Xavier, the whole connection between the mutants' civil rights struggle and others including GLBT.
On the other: why the hell are almost all the female characters so bloody passive? It's 2006 and Dark Phoenix, who is supposedly just short of being a goddess, stands around looking undernourished and angsty through the majority of the film, all so she can make some stuff spin around and get skewered by Wolverine at the end. Storm can control the weather but can't seem to reason her way out of a paper bag. Mystique gets "cured," suddenly loses all links to her identity and next appears when she's betraying Magneto and the other mutants, just in time for one of the generals to be a sexist ass. Rogue gets "cured" so she can make out with her boyfriend. And it goes on. Granted I haven't read the comic books in a long time but I don't remember them being this bad. :-(