X-Men: 7 Best & 7 Worst Casting Decisions In The Franchise So Far

7. Danny Huston - William Stryker (X-Men Origins: Wolverine)

Danny Huston is by no means a terrible actor - he has proved otherwise in other projects - but he is just miscast as Stryker, and it doesn't help that he is utterly undermined by the ominous shadow of Bryan Cox's superior, definitive version of the character from X2. Huston's Stryker is too obviously slimey, and too serpentine, and when he is faced with the threat of impending violence from his creations, he crumples like a pantomime villain, instead of facing it down as X2's older, wiser Stryker does during the attack on Xavier's school. Huston doesn't feel like a military man in Origins - more a cynical corporate stooge, who should have a bigger bad to answer to, and there's not enough of the mad scientist about him to fully sell the version of the character they were clearly going for. Fundamentally, there isn't enough of a distinction between Stryker when he's pretending to be good and when he's dropped the facade entirely to really sell both sides of the character, and only part of that can be blamed on the script problems.