Stryker is a fascinating character. Anyone who takes the unusual step of lobotomising his own son and creating a second, Adamantium-filled surrogate son in the form of Wolverine has to be a pretty fascinating character. The complex psychopathy on show should, by rights, make Stryker a uniquely unnerving villain, and in X Men 2 Brian Cox does a typically excellent job of imbuing him with critical levels of wild-eyed intensity and messianic zeal for a world without mutants. The only problem is that Brian Cox is well known over here in Britain for being a really, really, genuinely lovely bloke and as such its impossible to really commit to hating Stryker. He can bang on about creating Wolverine all he wants - I know that he remains passionately committed to keeping higher education free for anyone who wants it in Scotland, and that he did some adverts for Age UK free of charge. I know the real Brian Cox, and hes a big cuddly bear. Quite apart from anything else, the day Im frightened of the man who played the Green Dragon in Scooby Doo and the Samurai Sword is the day I give up on interacting with the outside world, move to a cave network in north Wales and become a perpetually terrified hermit.
