With the imminent release of X-Men: The Last Stand, the latest in the highly successful series of comic book adaptations, Cinemas Online looks at the expanded X family, and looks at just a few of the characters which could still be used in future movies.

With at least 24 named mutants, both heroes and villains, listed on www.imdb.com, this movie has the highest count of the trilogy. However, the comics have listed many, many more characters through the various series, and it is these that we are looking at today.

We will be providing links to each characters page at the inimitable Wikipedia, however, beware that following these links may reveal storylines that could be used in future movies...

Real Name : Remy LeBeau
Powers : Can convert the potential energy of any object into explosive kinetic energy by touching it.
First Appearance : Uncanny X-Men #266 (August 1990)

One of the more popular characters not yet used in the movies, Remy LeBeau was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and was abandoned at birth due to his burning red eyes. The child was kidnapped by members of the New Orleans Thieves Guild who referred to the child as "le diable blanc" ("the white devil") and believed he was prophesied to unite the warring Thieves and Assassins Guilds. Soon after, Remy was placed in the care of a gang of street thieves who raised the child and taught him the ways of thievery. After living as an orphan on the streets, Remy attempted to pick the pocket of Jean-Luc LeBeau, then patriarch of the Thieves Guild. Jean-Luc took the boy off the streets and adopted him into his own family. In an attempt to reconcile the Thieves and Assassins Guilds, Remy married Bella Donna Boudreaux, daughter of the head Assassin. Unfortunately, he was challenged by her brother Julien to a duel after the wedding. In the duel, Gambit killed Julien, and he was exiled from the city and his relationship with Bella. After wandering the world for a time, Gambit joined up with the X-Men after rescuing Storm and fought alongside them, all the while discovering disturbing facts about his lost past.

Gambit can charge inanimate objects with kinetic energy giving them explosive power. One of his trademark tricks is to hurl playing cards at an opponent, charging each card and turning it into a deadly projectile. His other tricks have included charging a wad of chewing gum when he was otherwise entirely tied up and charging the floor of an entire room, causing it to explode with great force.

He often wields an adamantium (the same fictional metal Wolverine's claws are made from) telescopic staff and has enhanced agility and stamina. On several occasions he has shown an ability to charm people through mild hypnosis and seems able to scramble attempts at mind reading and psychic attacks because of the charged potential energy always in his body. This charming ability may not be a result of hypnosis but appears to have the potential to be an empathy-based power. It has been mentioned that it becomes less effective to people who are aware of this ability.

Gambit's Wikipedia page

Chances of movie appearance - 8/10
This is a character that could carry his own spin-off movie, using his childhood and discovery of his powers as a basis. In this case you would not even need any of the current actors to sign up, making the movie even easier to set up.

Real Name : Emma Grace Frost
Powers : Telepathy, ability to turn to diamond while retaining mobility.
First Appearance : Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980)

Another major character not yet utilised in the films, possibly due to the inpracticality of the costume and the fact that 2 telepaths are already being featured, Emma Frost first appeared as the White Queen of the Hellfire Club, a group of superhumans who dressed in 18th century clothing and plotted world domination. Frost and the Club's agents captured several members of the X-Men. Frost engaged the Phoenix (Jean Grey) in a psychic battle, which she lost badly, but from which she recovered.

During her time with the Hellfire Club, Frost also ran the Massachusetts Academy, a school for mutants which served as a counterpoint to that of X-Men founder Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Frost's trainees became the supervillain team the Hellions and fought Xavier's young students the New Mutants.

Later, after being left in a coma, Frost was nursed by the X-Men and, after returning to health, became a teacher at Professor Xavier's newly reopened school. Emma began to have a sexual telepathic relationship with the X-Man Cyclops who had become distant from his wife Jean Grey. Emma claimed that her intentions were to help him with his failing marriage. Upon discovering the affair, an enraged (and far more powerful) Jean Grey, who had recently began manifesting her Phoenix powers again, confronted Emma and unleashed the full might of the Phoenix Force on her, which tore through her mind's defenses and forced her to face the self-denials of her past. Having their own minds manipulated is extremely traumatizing for telepaths, much more so than for a non-psi. The experience was particularly hard for a telepath as powerful and skilled as Emma, and it left her humiliated and emotionally shattered.

She did not remain in such a state for long. Following Jean Grey's apparent death, Cyclops and Emma became lovers, despite the criticism from their teammates. The two took over the school after Professor Xavier stepped down. Frost became co-headmaster with Cyclops and advisor to the new Hellions.

Emma Frost's Wikipedia page

Chances of movie appearance - 6/10
The Hellfire Club storyline could make the basis of a interesting X-Men 4, and Emma Frost would make an interesting character (if only for the costume). However, as mentioned earlier, there are only so many telepaths you could feature - the variety in mutant powers is one of the factors that make the X-movies so appealing...

Real Name : Alex Summers
Powers : Absorbs cosmic energy emanating it as waves of plasma in the form of a blast or discharge.
Immunity to Cyclops' optic blasts.
First Appearance : Uncanny X-Men #54 (March, 1969)

Alexander Summers is the second of the three sons of Christopher Summers, a United States Air Force Major and test pilot and his wife Katherine Anne. When Alex was a boy growing up in Anchorage, Alaska, United States, his father took the family for a flight in their airplane. It came under attack by an alien spaceship. As the plane caught fire and was crashing, his parents fastened Alex and his older brother, Scott (later known as Cyclops), into a parachute and pushed them off the plane in hopes that they would survive.

The Summers boys were put in an orphanage and Alex was soon adopted though his brother Scott remained there for much of his childhood. Alex was raised by the Blandings; a family whose son, Todd, died in a car accident. They tried to make Alex fit into the image of their son and he tried to do as best he could. When the boy responsible for Todd's death kidnapped Alex and his foster sister, Haley, Alex manifested his powers for the first time incinerating the boy.

Havok is a mutant possessing the power to absorb ambient cosmic energy, process it and emanate it from his body as waves of plasma in the form of a blast or discharge, with a tell-tale concentric circle pattern. These waves will emanate from his body in all directions unless he purposefully tries to channel them in a single direction, usually along the length of his arms. This results in control over an extremely powerful sort of destructive force. He is immune to the adverse effects of most forms of radiation and heat. At times, he is not entirely able to control this ability which sometimes makes him a danger to those around him unless he wears a special containment suit to assist him. Havok is immune to his own powers and to those of his brother Scott.

Despite past accounts, the energy that Havok releases is not truly a concussive force. When Havok strikes an object with the waves of intensity of hot plasma, the sudden vast jump in temperature will often cause objects to shatter, explode or disintegrate and an observer might therefore wrongly think that the object had been struck by a concussive force. Should Havok direct his energy at the lowest level, he can project it towards a human being and his target will suffer a severe headache but will not burn up. He can absorb cosmic energies from his environment (such as starlight, x-rays, and gamma radiation) and store them within his body cells, metabolising the energy in order to generate plasma wave discharges that super-heat and disintegrate objects or create concussion bursts by violently displacing air molecules in his path.

Havok's Wikipedia page

Chances of movie appearance - 7/10
Cyclops is well established in the movies now, and bringing in his brother could stir things up, especially as he is immune to Cyclops eye-blasts. Rewrite his back story slightly, make him an enemy and you could have a Cyclops spin off movie in the making...

Real Name : Japeth
Powers : Slugs (digestive system); psychometric abilities.
First Appearance : Uncanny X-Men #345 (June, 1997)

One of the stranger X-Men characters, Maggott first appeared as a mysterious mutant, searching out the X-Men’s adversary Magneto for an unknown reason. His search led to Antarctica where Magneto was holding the X-Men captive. Maggott then joined up with the team and returned with them to their Westchester, New York headquarters.

At first, he kept his past to himself, but Maggott eventually revealed his origin to Wolverine. Maggott had been born a sickly child in Apartheid-era South Africa and was named Japeth. He was always very ill and could not digest solid food. Feeling himself to be a burden on his family, he ran away from home, hoping to die, but was found by Magneto who released the slugs from his body and revealed to Japeth his mutant power which turned his skin blue. Maggott’s digestive system took the form of two large slugs, nicknamed Eany and Meany, which could eat through practically any substance. After feeding, the slugs reentered Maggott through his abdomen and passed their nourishment unto Maggott making him super strong. When the slugs re-enter his body, it causes Maggott severe pain; as a result, he later sought Magneto again for help in easing the pain. Shortly afterwards, the X-Man Beast suggested Maggott transfer to the junior team Generation X, but his tenure there lasted only one issue and afterwards he fell out of sight.

Maggott's Wikipedia page

Chances of movie appearance - 4/10
Really, do you want to see 2 large slugs entering somebody's stomach on the big screen? Yeah, me too! But will most normal people?

Real Name : Laura Kinney
Powers : Regenerative healing factor; Adamantium laced retractable claws; Superhumanly acute senses, Heightened strength, stamina, agility, and reflexes
First Appearance : X-Men: Evolution episode #40

Those powers sound familiar? Wolverine discovered that a Dr. Deborah Risman had created a female clone of him. The clone possessed two retractable claws in each hand (instead of three like Wolverine) and one similarly retractable claw in each foot (something Wolverine lacks). The clone was identified only by the codename X-23 - the first success after 22 failures.

Denied the life of a normal child, X-23 was lonely. She had almost no companions and had been under observation her entire life. She had to spend most of her time training to hone her skills.

Angry, X-23 decided to get revenge on Wolverine. She invaded the X-Men's mansion looking for him, and when she ran into the other X-Men was able to defeat them with little trouble. When Wolverine confronted her he felt sorry for the girl, so instead of turning her over to S.H.I.E.L.D. like Nick Fury wanted, he let her go.

Since she is a female clone created from Wolverine's genetic material, X-23's mutant powers are quite similar to his. Noted differences are the number of hand claws (she has two to Wolverine's three) and X-23's foot claws (which he lacks entirely). These claws were forcibly and prematurely extracted, sharpened and coated with adamantium. She escaped before the procedure to fuse her entire skeleton with adamantium was performed. She possesses an increased Healing Factor.

X-23 received intensive training in ranged weapons, explosives and charges, and both armed and unarmed martial arts. Her creators also developed a trigger scent, which, when placed on a target, caused X-23 to immediately and brutally kill that target (and pretty much anyone else in the vicinity).

X-23's Wikipedia page

Chances of movie appearance - 7/10
There is a Wolverine spin off movie in the works, looking into his creation as part of Weapon X. Whether there is a place for X-23 in this movie remains to be seen, but Wolverine 2?

Real Name : Paige Elisabeth Guthrie
Powers : Can shed her skin into a different composition, shape, or size beneath.
First Appearance : X-Force #32 (1993)

The sister of the X-Man Cannonball, Paige Guthrie was born to a large Kentucky coal miner's family. As a teenager, she discovered her inborn mutant ability to shed her skin, metamorphosing into a different composition beneath. She has used this power to turn her body into stone, glass and an acid-like substance, among other materials. She can also use her power to heal herself by shedding a damaged form in favour of an intact one. She normally cannot change the shape of her form, only its composition, although an issue of X-Force, written before her powers had been fully defined, depicted her transforming into a bird.

Paige was invited to join Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, also known as the Massachusetts Academy, at the age of 17. Here, she was given the codename "Husk". Promising herself that she would become even better than her brother, who was now a member of the X-Men, Paige dedicated herself to study and exercise. Unlike many of the other members of the newly formed Generation X, Paige likes being a mutant, seeing it as a gift which made her special, and constantly strives to improve control of her powers. Her goal to one day lead the X-Men led to her frequently annoying the others with her constant enthusiasm and also caused her to act rashly several times in an attempt to prove her leadership skills.

Husk's Wikipedia page

Chances of movie appearance - 6/10
Well, 2 mutants by the name of Guthrie were listed in Stryker's computer files in X2 - so there is always a chance

OK - so we have established that there are some characters that could, feasibly, fit into the X-Universe as featured in the movies. But, with so many characters in the comics, which ones just wouldn't work?