Streaming Wars: Before “Succession,” Brian Cox Terrorized the X-Men in “X2″

HOLLYWOOD PICK:

Whatever fate befalls media titan Logan Roy (Brian Cox) on HBO’s Succession, the show is slated to end with its current season. So if you’re addicted to Cox’s velvety villainy, it’s time to find other fixes—and, luckily for us, the marvelously charismatic Scotsman has been working since the ‘60s.

You could always revisit his turn as Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter (which predates Silence of the Lambs) or his performance as Rushmore’s Dr. Nelson Guggenheim (whose description of Jason Schwartzman’s Max Fischer—”he’s one of the worst students we’ve g-aaaaaaah-t”—is classic Cox).

That said, I’m particularly partial to his soul-chilling performance as Col. William Stryker in X2 (2003). In a decade when Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2) and Jason Lee (The Incredibles) brought humane gravitas to comic-book villains, Cox’s Stryker is a sadistic precursor to Heath Ledger’s thoroughly monstrous Joker in The Dark Knight.

While Stryker was a reverend (!?) in the graphic novel X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills, X2 reimagines him as a military scientist plotting a mutant genocide—with the help of his own mutant son, Jason (Michael Reid MacKay), a brainwashed psychic.

“Allow me to introduce Mutant 143,” Stryker says as the skeletal Jason is wheeled into a dungeon tinged with sickly green light. There’s not a trace of empathy in Cox’s voice as Stryker refers to his child as a numeral; each syllable radiates pure rage and disgust.

What’s interesting about an unambiguously cruel man? Not much, unless you’re Cox. He understands that pure menace can be a symphony of staccatos, crescendos and grace notes, seducing moviegoers even as it repulses them.

Just listen as Stryker confronts Wolverine (Hugh Jackman): “Don’t shoot him!” he roars to his troops, before smugly adding, “Not yet.” While some of Cox’s Royal Shakespeare Company peers might have bellowed the entire line, Cox quietly adds “not yet” as if gingerly placing a maraschino cherry atop a decadent sundae.

The best part of that scene is when Wolverine and Stryker are separated by a wall of ice, then extend their silhouetted hands toward each other, like a pair of doomed lovers. Sure, the look of perverse attraction in Jackman’s eyes could be a trick of the light, but there’s no denying that when Cox embodies evil, he’s irresistible. Disney+.