So the answer may be as simple as this: the people in the rest of the world are too busy seeing The Da Vinci Code to see X-Men 3.

Any other theories?

At the same time, I'm not so sure how traditional the values are in the X-Men films, with regard to the current debate in our society. The films haven't been very subtle in how they draw parallels between mutants and homosexuals — the second film has a “coming-out” scene in which a mutant reveals to his parents the truth of who he is and his mother asks, “Have you ever tried not being a mutant?” and much of the third film occurs “back where it all began” in San Francisco.

The other thought I had about the question you asked in your original post regarding the connection between the audiences of the films is that perhaps the rest of the world likes poorly written novels, whereas we Americans like pictures in our books.

In all honesty, I'd be curious to see how the other two X-Men films fared overseas as well as the superhero genre in general. Some argue that the comic book is one of the truly American inventions along with jazz and baseball (a specious argument, if you ask me). Jazz has a better international audience than baseball does. I wonder where comic books fall in that contiuum.

I may write a more detailed theory of my own if I get time later this week, but in a nutshell, my answer has to do with secularism and relativism/pluralism.

The main idea promoted by The DaVinci Code is this: No religion is based on actual fact. Instead, the purpose of religion is to use metaphors to create wonder in our hearts–a religious feeling, and it’s very dangerous when people start to believe that their metaphors are true. This obviously would appeal to the secular mindset of Europeans.

But something else follows from that…relativism. Without any truth about God, right/wrong, or good/evil, everything is just preference. In fact, there is no real evil, but only things we don’t understand–things we’re biased against because of our own culture’s preferences. Therefore, people who call things evil are at the very least unsophisticated, and quite possibly dangerous, because they’re arrogantly claiming to have actual knowledge about such things. And people who fight what they call evil are the most dangerous people of all because they’re acting on their own delusion/bigotry/arrogance.

So to bring it all together, cultures that strongly resonate with The DaVinci Code are not likely to find the provincial, crude ideas of good vs. evil in X-Men 3 very appealing.

Whether or not this is really the case depends on which countries the box office receipts are coming from. I’d have to look into that. I’m basing this theory on my knowledge of Europe, but there could be something else entirely that’s going on in some other part of the world.