Marvel’s Aaron Stanford Reflects on Iconic Pyro Scene in X2: X-Men United

Marvel star Aaron Stanford talked to ComicBook about his iconic Pyro scene from X-2: X-Men United. The Phase Zero podcast sat down with the Deadpool & Wolverine actor to talk about his journey through the Fox Marvel Universe. Longtime fans will remember the moment in X-2 when Pyro took on an entire precinct’s worth of police officers to help the mutants escape. It’s one of the big, effects heavy flourishes that that first movie trilogy is really known for. Stanford told us that he had quite a tightrope to walk in delivering his lines before setting some of those cars ablaze. Check out what he had to say about the experience down below.

“No, I never thought about it in that sense. I never thought about it as being like, ‘This will be in an iconic moment,’” Stanford told us. “I just tried to look, I just try to do the best job you can. And X-2, it was really important for them for everything to be grounded and for everything to feel real. That’s what they were looking for in this, in this comic book film. They really wanted to take a different angle on this movie and really sort of hit people where they live, you know? So, they wanted the characters to feel real. With that line, what I was looking for was a way to make it not feel like an  Arnold Schwarzenegger one-liner.”

“I wanted it to. And,  I remember one of the writers,  Mike Dougherty who wrote that line, after I said it he came up and was like, ‘ I love that, because you delivered the line like a kid who just found his dad’s gun.’  You know? He feels the power of it,” the actor added. “But, he’s a little afraid of it too… He clearly wants to be the bad mutant that y’all heard about. But, it’s a bunch of adult, grown, armed cops in front of them. He’s never done anything like this before. So, it’s scary, but he puts up the bravado.”

Continuing The Work From X-2

Later in our conversation, Stanford talked more about his time as Pyro in X-Men 2. When the first trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine dropped online, The actor was one of the first familiar faces that fans pointed out as a returning member of the Fox Universe. Immediately, questions began to swirl about whether or not this version of Pyro was the same one from those movies that everyone seems to love. Stanford would tell us that he played this variant as though it was the same one from X-2. In fact, there is reason to believe that his character would be all too happy to sign up for Cassandra Nova’s weird protection racket down in The Void.

“I just took it as a continuation but again, with an adjustment for tone. Basically what I did was reach back and think this was the Pyro from X-Men 2,” Stanford told ComicBook’s Phase Zero podcast. “The idea behind that character was that he was a young, disaffected, and outcast kid who becomes radicalized. He becomes a radicalized terrorist and we see that journey. I took that interesting, complete portrait and then adjusted it for the Deadpool universe and the given circumstances of that world.”

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