Madrox is strictly the kind of character who ought to present up for a bit half in an X-Males film, a man with a cool energy and identify recognition, however who doesn’t have a Wolverine or Storm-level fan base to justify an A-plot. The Final Stand offers Madrox two scenes, and permits Dane precisely one line in every of them. And the Gray’s Anatomy star nails it.
The primary is Madrox’s introduction, when Magneto rescues Mystique from a truck carrying kidnapped mutants. Earlier than liberating Juggernaut, an important X-Males character who will get completely mishandled by the film and is miscast as Vinnie Jones, Magneto opens a door and out walks seven Madrox duplicates. “I can use a person of your skills,” sneers Magneto, to which A number of Man shrugs, “I’m in.”
Even higher is the second scene, which principally stays within the perspective of the battle room operated by mutant looking army man Bolivar Trask (performed right here by Invoice Duke, and performed by Peter Dinklage in X-Males: Days of Future Previous, as a result of this franchise is nuts). By way of infrared satellite tv for pc photographs, we see Trask’s troopers descending upon a secret camp stuffed with mutants. However because the troopers get nearer, the individuals all disappear, leaving one behind. We lower to the camp, the place we see that everybody there was a A number of Man duplicate, all of whom reabsorb into Madrox Prime.
“Okay,” he says with a snarky grin and his palms raised. “I hand over!”
All the pieces about Madrox in that scene feels prefer it got here proper out of a Peter David comedian. It’s not simply his costuming, the inexperienced and yellow shirt peaking out from beneath a leather-based jacket. It’s the completely smug means Dane delivers the road, the grin that may make you completely hate him if he wasn’t so darn good-looking.
Practically each different character in The Final Stand strays removed from their comedian ebook roots. Hugh Jackman performs Wolverine as a soft-hearted romantic, whereas Famke Janssen’s Phoenix is a generic 2000s horror monster. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen have sufficient presence to make even poorly-written Professor X and Magneto work, however practically everybody who isn’t Kelsey Grammer as Beast acts nothing just like the mutants we all know from the pages of Marvel.
