15 Perfect Superhero Casting Choices Wasted On Terrible Comic Book Movies

14. Liev Schreiber As Sabretooth - X-Men Origins: Wolverine

20th Century Fox

The original X-Men movies were plagued by iffy casting decisions, stilted action and a tendency to completely shaft plenty of its characters, but they weren't without their moments. The series gave us Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, Sir Patrick Stewart's Xavier, and Sir Ian McKellen's Magneto, but in the same breath also delivered Anna Paquin's Rogue, and Tyler Mane's Sabretooth.

Mane's rendition of Victor Creed certainly looked the part, but he lacked pretty much everything else that made the character such a fan-favourite villain in the comics. So, when the time came to recast the role for X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Fox approached Liev Schreiber (now of Spider-Verse fame) to take on the role.

Unfortunately, they managed to get it wrong a second time. Not because Schreiber was miscast, but because the film itself managed to totally ruin Wolverine's backstory. It introduced a needless sibling plot, whereby Creed and Logan where brothers, and it nowhere near lived up to the duo's famous rivalry from the X-Men comics.

Be that as it may, Schreiber was charismatic, sinister and imposing as Sabretooth. If there had been a better script to work with, fans could've had the perfect interpretation of the character.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.