![]() Since Sabretooth’s victims are all lame, his past competence still doesn’t rehabilitate his street cred. ![]() The younger Sabretooth has a much better work ethic, being willingly complicit in the kidnapping, experimentation and murder of his fellow mutants for the human military industrial complex (this should’ve been a giant red flag to Magneto if he bothered doing background checks for Brotherhood recruitment). They couldn’t even be bothered making Schreiber resemble Mane because apparently a blond hair-metal wig would’ve broken the budget. Revealing he can extend his fingernails with bad CGI doesn’t help. In Gavin Hood’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Liev Schreiber plays a Sabretooth who’s so sly he forgets to be intimidating. At least Tyler Mane appeared appropriately ferocious. Pitting “The Best He Is At What He Does” against “The Least Likely To Ever Win Henchman Of The Year” just doesn’t seem like an epic battle for the ages. He’s easily defeated by both Storm & Cyclops, which would be far less embarrassing if they weren’t terrible in the film. Making matters worse, Sabretooth is so inept he makes Toad look like a consummate pro. It would’ve made more sense to save his film debut for X-Men 2 (where he’s conspicuously never referenced) in place of Lady Deathstrike so audiences wouldn’t need to wait nine years to find out why he’s fascinated by Wolverine’s dogtags. The fact that neither of them can remember their epic blood feud, however, makes this deviation from canon pointless. In the first X-Men movie, Sabretooth was added to Magneto’s Brotherhood just so Wolverine could battle his archenemy. The X-movies served up two distinct portrayals of Sabretooth, but each is halfbaked. (Non-biracial Sunspot dressed as The Ray with Magma’s powers has me worried.) But which characters are unfortunate enough to be the ten worst adaptations of X-Men on film (so far)? So cross your fingers & toes that Singer takes the right liberties in translating DoFP so that it doesn’t contribute any brand new character assassinations. Chronic victim Mariko Yashida was likewise enhanced with the cinematic addition of a spine.) Unfortunately, Fox’s batting average on that account is still more misses than hits. (For example, the movies changed Toad from one of the most pathetic villains to one of the most versatile & entertaining. The rare instances where radically deviating from the source material actually benefitted characters also get passes. I’m looking for fundamentally bad characterization – not nitpicks like Hugh Jackman being too tall and vascular to be Wolverine or Nightcrawler not doing any swashbuckling. In honor of the forthcoming DoFP (seriously, why don’t any of the official posters look like this?), I’m counting down the top ten worst cinematic adaptations of X-Men characters, and for an anal retentive fan, the tricky part was narrowing it down to just ten… This sprawling scope is nigh-impossible to replicate one movie at a time, but 20th Century Fox could be more ambitious than churning out Wolverine solo movies co-starring Magneto with special guest appearances by the X-Men. ![]() The fifty-year-old X-Men comic book franchise is akin to Game of Thrones is that they star a vast array of diverse characters with their own complex backstories & relationships. ![]() Where the X-movies tend to disappoint most (besides uninspired costume designs) is in characterization. ![]() The overall X-film franchise is much less embarrassing than the Generation X telefilm, but that’s a low hurdle to clear. After suffering through the execrable X-Men: The Last Stand (an obsolete title, so it’s now X-Men 3 as far as this article is concerned) & X-Men Origins: Wolverine, many X-fans are overjoyed, but Singer’s initial contributions to the series aren’t free of their own flaws. Bryan Singer is finally returning to the X-Men film franchise with an adaptation of the seminal X-Men: Days of Future Past. ![]()
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