5
A Paralyzed Mutant -- X2
Via Joblo.com
Like all X-Men movies and comics, X2: X-Men United is about what a bunch of assholes able-bodied humans can be to our differently abled mutant peers. And no character bears the brunt of our assholery more than Jason Stryker. His father is the movie's mutant-despising villain Col. William Stryker, who sends Jason to Professor X's school because he thinks it's one of those gay-to-straight conversion camps for curing people of their superpowers. When he learns that Professor X is teaching Jason to embrace his power (creating controlled hallucinations in people's minds), he blames himself for doing a terrible job researching the school and learns to love his son for what he is. Or that's what he would do if he wasn't the worst father in the world. In reality, he yanks Jason out of his self-actualizing environment, lobotomizes him and uses his son's brain as the joystick in his quest to destroy everyone who has the nerve to be disgustingly abled like him.
![5 Movies That Accidentally Killed Innocent Characters]()
"Well, I might be biased, but I think that's the best Christmas card photo we've ever taken."
And that's before we even get to the fact that Jason's in a wheelchair, which is what the X-Men universe does when someone with telekinetic powers needs to seem more sympathetic.
OK, so Jason doesn't exactly pull off "sympathetic" so much as "Donnie Wahlberg's character in The Sixth Sense, as played by Crispin Glover." But you'd probably look a little washed out, too, if your Dad was using your brain to kill an entire race of people just because they remind him of you. Jason is a character who is built to be pitied, not hated. He's no more responsible for his actions than Master Chief is responsible for having worse aim when you're drunk.
As the climax closes in, Jason's dad is using his brain to trick Professor X into killing all the world's mutants. The X-Men figure out what's going on just in time, and Nightcrawler teleports to Professor X's side to find him sitting across from Jason in the belly of a crumbling dam.
![5 Movies That Accidentally Killed Innocent Characters]()
"Thank goodness for the Protagonists With Disabilities Act, eh?"
Unfortunately for Jason, the dam is about to disintegrate and kill everyone in its general vicinity, he's in a wheelchair and he's spent the last hour helping his dad screw with the only people who could save him. Fortunately for Jason, there's a clear precedent for this sort of scenario that says you always take pity on the pathetic bad guy who's being taken advantage of. If you've seen The Goonies take pity on Sloth or The Karate Kid take mercy on Johnny Lawrence, you know that Nightcrawler's next move should be to lift Jason out of his wheelchair and tell him "It's not your fault" while a bear hug teleports them both to safety.
877 Comments