This is trully one of the best scenes in the series not the movie the series. The producers and the director truly did a great job in this scene. They showed how powerful nightcrawler can be and this set the tempo for the movie and where it was going "mutant freedom".
I agree that it is a shame that night crawler wasn't in the third movie, but look at it this way. The third movie was "The Last Stand" where Cyclops, jean Grey, Professor Xavier, and a few others were killed. So this doesn't mean that Night Crawler is done in the series. Espcially considering he signed on for two movies and as weve seen he has only been in one.
So with Origins of Wolverine coming out soon it will bring new mutants into the picture such as Gambit who is my personal favorite. So obviously I don't want him to be killed in the movie so they can hopefully do a spin off movie on him considering he is a fan favorite, but back to the point I was trying to make maybe it was for the best that he wasn't in the third movie. Considering that they brought in so many new mutants such as beast, Multiple man, jugernant, Kittie pryde, and a few others. Also they gave more camera time to Ice man, Pyro, and Colossus.
So honestly as it was they had a lot of character to try and introduce along with establishing them. In my opinion we haven't seen the end of Night Crawler in the X-Men Series.