10 Major Movie Characters Given Nothing To Do In The Sequel

10. Cyclops - X2 & X-Men: The Last Stand

James Marsden was quite perfectly cast as Cyclops in the original X-Men, and though the first film didn't give the character a terrific showing, there was clearly room for growth in the sequels.

But in X2, he gets captured early on, disappears for a huge chunk of the movie, and only returns for a few minutes near the end of the film while mind-controlled no less.

Yet he got done the dirtiest of all in the third X-Men, The Last Stand, where he's unceremoniously killed off by Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) and... that's that.

Ultimately Cyclops was underserved in favour of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), Professor X (Patrick Stewart), Magneto (Ian McKellen) and Jean Grey throughout the trilogy, but given that he's one of the most popular X-Men, it's totally bizarre how quickly he became a second-rate also-ran superhero.

That said, Marsden has recently expressed his willingness to reprise the role in a future film, and with Deadpool 3 rumoured to feature numerous characters from Fox's X-Men movies, we can only hope that he gets his wish.