Gyrich (Matthew Sharp) appears as Senator Kelly's aide/bodyguard in the first X-Men; well, it turns out that the real Gyrich "has been dead for some time", according to Magneto - so that Mystique could pose as him to get close to mutantkind's biggest nemesis at the time. For old-school Marvel Comics fans, the character was familiar from the source material where he has been a constant antagonist to the likes of both the X-Men and the Avengers. Often acting as a government liaison who wants nothing more than to get all up in their sh*t, it's a shame that Gyrich was killed off (without even really seeing the 'real' him) so soon into that X-Men franchise, as he could've been a great sidebar antagonist as the series went on. This goes back to my earlier point where, around the time X-Men was created, a sequel was by no means guaranteed - and thus minor characters like Gyrich could be killed off whilst simultaneously showing fans, hey! Look who we put in the movie! It's an element of understandable short-sightedness, but in the end, it's not like the X-Men have a lack of suitable villains to pull from when creating new films for the franchise. Those of you out there who miss having Henry Gyrich in your lives could be in luck - rumours are that Martin Freeman's as-yet-unnamed character in Captain America: Civil War is the G-Man himself.
Cinephile since 1993, aged 4, when he saw his very first film in the cinema - Jurassic Park - which is also evidence of damn fine parenting. World champion at Six Degrees of Separation. Lender of DVDs to cheap mates. Connoisseur of Marvel Comics and its Cinematic Universe.
