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"Mature Content Warning!" |
| “ | Maria, we do NOT dress them up for Halloween. We do not call them 'babies' or kiss boo-boos. Don't think of them as children. Think of them as things. With patents and copyrights. ¿Comprende? | „ |
| ~ Zander Rice scolding a nurse for rightfully treating the Mutant children as people. |
| “ | My goal was not to end mutant kind, but to control it. I realized, we needn't stop perfecting what we eat and drink, but we could use that as part of us to perfect ourselves. To distribute gene therapy discreetly through everything, from sweet drinks to breakfast cereals. And it worked. Random mutancy went through the way of polio. | „ |
| ~ Dr. Rice explaining his plans to Wolverine, just before meeting his demise. |
Dr. Zander Rice is the main antagonist of the 2017 film Logan and the overarching antagonist of its 2020 spin-off film The New Mutants.
He is the head of Essex Corp and the leader the Reavers as well as the employer of Donald Pierce. In his characterisation, he is the mastermind behind Project Alkali-Transigen - in which he surgically engineered the near extinction of the mutant race while also raising mutant kids to serve as soldiers. After some of Transigen's nurses help some of the children escape, Rice sends Pierce to go after Wolverine, who is trying to take X-23, one of Rice's "experiments", to the Eden. He is based on the same character from the Marvel Comics' Innocence Lost.
He was portrayed by Richard E. Grant, who also played the Great Intelligence in Doctor Who and The Man With a Beard but No Hair in A Series of Unfortunate Events.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
In General[]
- While Wolverine killed his father, who was a scientist in William Stryker's Weapon X program, unlike in the comics, he really doesn't seem to care at all, treating the mention of his father's death as an afterthought and it does not serve as a motive for any of his crimes.
- Although he does call Donald a friend, he doesn't really care about him as the very first scene has him scold Donald for failing in capturing Laura.
- He along with Donald Pierce’s deaths are played for satisfaction, not for sympathy.
In the Past, Deadpool 2 and The New Mutants[]
- Created genetically-engineered food products that eradicated the mutant X-gene.
- He had the Reavers, led by his second-in-command Donald Pierce, hunt down and butcher any survivors for their raw material.
- He owned an orphanage where young mutants would be mistreated and abused, one of them being the Mutant Re-education Center, whose Headmaster directed by torturing the children (and possibly sexually abusing them) in some sort of conversion therapy for their mutations (as depicted in Deadpool 2), and this was all enabled by Rice through his company.
- Although it was the Headmaster's abuse that pushed the young mutant Russell Collins into becoming a villain who would murder Cable's family in an alternate future, Dr. Rice's oversight of the orphanage and its staff makes him indirectly responsible for Russell's downfall and murderous rampage, as well as Cable becoming a vengeful assassin as a result of losing his family to said rampage; consequently, the blood of Cable's family would also be on Rice's hand.
- Even if he knew, it is likely possible Rice wouldn't care about the Headmaster's cruelty towards the children considering the fact he only saw them as test subjects.
- Although it was the Headmaster's abuse that pushed the young mutant Russell Collins into becoming a villain who would murder Cable's family in an alternate future, Dr. Rice's oversight of the orphanage and its staff makes him indirectly responsible for Russell's downfall and murderous rampage, as well as Cable becoming a vengeful assassin as a result of losing his family to said rampage; consequently, the blood of Cable's family would also be on Rice's hand.
- He abducted teenaged normal mutants to the Milbury Hospital, where Dr. Cecilia Reyes isolated them from the real world and moulded them before sending them to the Essex headquarters to be tortured under Rice's supervision.
- He had several Mexican girls kidnapped and forcibly impregnated with mutant embryos for the X-23 project, before killing them after they gave birth.
- He conducts horrible experiments on Laura and the other X-23 kids to mold them into child soldiers, telling Transigen's nurses to treat them as “things with patents and copyrights” rather than actual people. The treatment those kids experience is so bad that one jumps off the roof and kills himself just to escape.
- He orders the Reavers to euthanize the remaining kids because they failed to make good soldiers, replacing them with X-24, a clone of Wolverine. Even though Laura and some other children managed to escape Transigen alive with the help of some nurses, others were not so lucky.
Logan[]
- He sends Donald Pierce and the Reavers to track down the surviving children, including Laura which leads to Donald finding Logan, kicking off the events of the film.
- When he personally tries to interrogate Caliban whether Charles Xavier has alzheimer's, he mockingly and sadistically states how one of the world's most intelligent beings has become a vegetable.
- He unleashes X-24 onto a farm, causing the deaths of Professor X, the Munson family and a gang of cowboys who tried to bully the family (which the gang deserved). He also ordered X-24 to kidnap Laura which would've succeeded if Logan didn't intervene in time to rescue her.
- He tries to capture all the children in Eden, and has them hostage threatens to have them killed when he first meets Logan personally for the first time.
- He delusionally calls his plans to eradicate all mutants as "less brutal than it sounds" when Donald tries to tell Logan to watch what he says before he continues on to monologue about his plans before being fatally shot by Logan.
Deadpool & Wolverine[]
- His actions indirectly lead to the death of Wolverine, which lead to Paradox, a rogue Time Variance Authority agent, to start the events of the film, threatening to destroy this universe with a Multiverse destroying machine called the Time Ripper, which indirectly leads to Cassandra Nova almost destroying the Multiverse if it weren't for Deadpool and an alternate variant of Wolverine destroying the Time Ripper and killing Cassandra.
Trivia[]
- Dr. Zander Rice, along with Donald Pierce, was one of the final two X-Men film series villains to be Pure Evil.
External Links[]
- Dr. Zander Rice on the Villains Wiki
- Dr. Zander Rice on the Hate Sink Wiki
- Dr. Zander Rice on the X-Men Movies Wiki
[]
 Movies Pure Evils
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