While Hugh Jackman's Wolverine quickly became the focal point and undoubted star of the X-Men franchise, his arch-nemesis Sabretooth has been massively short-changed. Played by two different actors in two movies almost a decade apart, neither interpretation of the character has come close to capturing the essence of one of the X-Men's premier villains. The polar opposite of Wolverine, Sabretooth embraces the animalistic side of his nature that his long-time enemy is constantly at odds with, which is arguably one of the most interesting dynamics in comic book history. In the character's first big-screen appearance in Bryan Singer's X-Men, the hulking Tyler Mane certainly looks the part, but the role is reduced to that of a one-dimensional henchman that serves little purpose other than grunting his way through several action scenes. Refitting the character's big-screen backstory to that of Wolverine's half-brother, X-Men Origins saw Liev Schrieber take the role of Victor Creed, packing on 40 pounds of muscle in the process. Despite having such a talented actor in the part, the weaknesses in the script and narrative fail to make the second iteration of Sabretooth any more interesting; the brotherly dynamic is quickly established and then largely ignored in favor of making Creed a generically evil bad guy with confusing motivations, who wants Logan dead for the entirety of the movie, but then just leaves at the end with Wolverine very much alive.
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