Although it’s about to be rebooted by Marvel Studios, the The Dark Knight as one of the greatest superhero sequels ever made.
Unfortunately, 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand brought the trilogy to a disappointing close with a generic superhero blockbuster with an overstuffed script. Over the course of this initial trilogy, Charles Xavier’s mutants faced such iconic villains as Ian McKellen’s Magneto and such misguided ones as Vinnie Jones’ Juggernaut.
Juggernaut
Vinnie Jones played a live-action version of Juggernaut in X-Men: The Last Stand. Rather than being ed for his characterization or Jones’ performance, this incarnation of the character is mainly ed for the ridiculous line, “I’m the Juggernaut, b****!” Aside from this bizarre quote, which became a popular meme, Jones’ turn as the Juggernaut doesn’t have a lot to offer.
Ryan Reynolds would go on to play a much more faithful take on this character alongside his own Wade Wilson in Deadpool 2. Instead of ignoring the Juggernaut’s relation to Xavier like The Last Stand did, Deadpool 2 addressed it head-on.
Sabretooth
Tyler Mane played Sabretooth, the villainous version of Wolverine with the same powers but less of the drive to do good, in the original X-Men movie. As a conventional mutant mercenary and henchman of Magneto, this version of Sabretooth isn’t personally tied to Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine.
Liev Schreiber would later give a much more compelling turn as Sabretooth in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. This version of Sabretooth, Victor Creed, is Wolverine’s brother and, suffice to say, they share a complicated relationship.
Mystique
Rebecca Romijn did a great job of playing the shapeshifting Mystique as a classic femme fatale in the early X-Men movies. This take on Mystique is Magneto’s trusty second-in-command, and Romijn deftly held her own in scenes with the great Ian McKellen.
Mystique is so cunning and sadistic that her ruthlessness is probably even more useful to Magneto than her ability to seamlessly impersonate the voice and look of another human being (including world leaders). Still, the character is let down by being highly sexualized and framed with the male gaze in mind.
Deathstrike
Kelly Hu gives a memorable turn as Yuriko Oyama, better known as Deathstrike, in X2. She has a similar healing power to Wolverine’s, but she hasn’t broken away from Stryker’s influence as he has.
Based on Lady Deathstrike from the comics, Yuriko makes for a badass side villain in the sequel. But since she’s relegated to a small role, she doesn’t really get to shine.
Multiple Man
Multiple Man is a mutant that Magneto recruits to the Brotherhood on a prison transport in X-Men: The Last Stand. As his name would suggest, Multiple Man is capable of duplicating himself.
He only appears briefly in the movie, but he’s elevated by Eric Dane’s memorable performance. Now best known as Cal Jacobs from HBO’s Euphoria, Dane manages to do a lot with very little material.
Toad
While Toad is too one-dimensional to be the main villain of a movie, he made a great recurring side villain in the X-Men movies. He was played by Ray Park, who brought the same unparalleled physicality to the role that he brought to his other iconic blockbuster characters, Darth Maul and Snake Eyes.
Toad works as a henchman on Magneto’s behalf, doing his dirty work in the war against the X-Men. The character’s superhuman agility comes to life on-screen, thanks to Park’s own superhuman agility.
William Stryker
Introduced as the main villain in X2, William Stryker is the diabolical mastermind behind Weapon X. As the reason why Logan’s skeleton is reinforced by adamantium – and, by extension, the reason why he’s cursed with near-eternal life – Stryker is Wolvie’s ultimate nemesis. Brian Cox gives a brilliantly chilling turn as Stryker in X2. Despite the psychological effect of his experiments on Wolverine (and the other test subjects), he refuses to feel any remorse.
Cox’s version of the character has a much more tangible stranglehold over Logan than the younger version of Stryker played by Danny Huston in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. His plan in X2 is even more nefarious than the Weapon X program: he wants to wipe out all of mutantkind.
Magneto
Magneto, the X-Men’s arch-nemesis, was played spectacularly by Ian McKellen in the first run of X-Men films. McKellen’s nuanced turn as Magneto is often ranked alongside Heath Ledger’s Joker and Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock as one of the greatest supervillain performances of all time. No matter how amoral his actions became, McKellen always played Magneto as a deeply conflicted human being.
The first movie makes Magneto a sympathetic figure from the outset by exploring his backstory as an Auschwitz survivor in the harrowing opening prologue. McKellen gives a fantastic individual performance as Magneto, but his true strength as a villain is the terrific on-screen chemistry he shares with Patrick Stewart’s Charles Xavier as two sides of the same coin.
