We got some spoilers a'comin! Watch yer back!
X2 - 2003 Directed by Bryan Singer Written by Michael Dougherty and Daniel P. Harris (and a whole bunch of uncredited guys)
A strange dark skinned, teleporting mutant attacks the White House and almost succeeds in killing the President. In response to this, the President OKs a raid on Xavier's School for the Gifted led by Gen. William Stryker. Most of the mutants are able to escape, but Stryker's knowledge (gained from the still-imprisoned Magneto) about Professor X and the mansion allow him capture both the Professor and Cyclops and take control of Cerebro. It is up to the rest of the team to find Stryker's secret base and stop his plan of using the Professor's powers to destroy all mutants everywhere.
*ahem*
CRAZY EXPLODEY GOODNESS! WOLVERINE KILLS A FUCKLOAD OF PEOPLE! GO SEE THIS NOW!
Isn't that all that really needs to be said? But since I'm an XP whore, I'll say more.
Most of the character development in the film is reserved for the troubled relationships between the couples of Wolvie & Jean Grey and Rogue & Iceman. There are some pretty good comments about trying to date someone who you can't have physical contact with, but I would have liked to have seen the psychological aspects of this explored a little more. This has gotta suck for the Iceman :-). Poor Iceman also has to come out of the closet to his family about his mutant powers. There is a little bit done with Pyro, as he acts as an Anakin Skywalker-type character who feels that using restraint is only letting his powers go to waste. This is good, as the actor in the role is better than Hayden Christensen was in Episode II and the character does not come off as a total whiny bitch. Speaking of whiny bitches, does anybody like Cyclops? He's barely in the movie to begin with and when is around all he does is cry and mope.
The rest of the characters essentially exist to stand around and use the powers and look cool when needed, not that this is a bad thing.
The first two major action sequences (Nightcrawler's attack on the White House and the raid on the school) fucking rock! Wolverine going berserk on various special forces agents as Colossus leads the way and helps the children escape is easily the best part of the movie. The rest are well-done, but unable to hold up to the high standards set up by the first two, although Wolverine's final battle with Deathstrike is suitably visceral, with the two of them simply cutting and stabbing the hell out of each other. Overall, the film really manages to deliver on its promises of big spectacle, but I can't help with think The Matrix Reloaded is going to kick its ass in two weeks.
There is one flashback shot of Wolverine standing in the hallway of the Weapon-X project, screaming in terror as blood streams down his hands from popping out his claws for the first time. That was some cool-ass freaky-deaky shit.
All of the characters perform very well in their respective roles (no "Do you know what happens to a frog when it gets struck by lightning?" line readings here), but that might be due to the fact that Halle Berry only has about 15 minutes of screen time. Ian McKellen seems take special delight in Magneto, giving him equal parts gravitas and dry, dark humor. He is also responsible for two of my favorite moments in the movie, when Magneto sucks out the iron-enriched blood of a prison guard and uses the resulting metal to make his escape, and when he simultaneously pulls the pins on all of Strykers men's grenades in order to clear out a room. Hugh Jackman also yet again steals the show as Logan.
This film is better than the first movie in every way. My main qualms with the original X-Men were that it felt very much like it was done on the cheap, and that the score (something I usually never notice) was so bad that it managed to detract from the movie. Both of these are remedied, the bigger budget giving this movie a much grander scale and frequent Bryan Singer collaborator John Ottman being brought in to do a proper score.
It's obvious by the ending of this movie that the X-Men 3 will deal with the Phoenix Saga. I hope it gets made and they do it up big time by adding Sentinels.
If this movie doesn't break $100 million in its opening weekend, I will punch myself. Ack! Turns out I was wrong, only $85.5 mil. Thwack!
Patrick Stewart ... Professor Charles Xavier Hugh Jackman ...... Logan/Wolverine Ian McKellen ...... Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto Halle Berry ....... Ororo Munroe/Storm Famke Janssen ..... Dr. Jean Grey James Marsden ..... Scott Summers/Cyclops Rebecca Romijn-Stamos .... Mystique/Raven Darkholme Brian Cox ......... Gen. William Stryker Alan Cumming ...... Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler Bruce Davison ..... Senator Robert Kelly Anna Paquin ....... Marie D'Ancanto/Rogue Shawn Ashmore ..... Bobby Drake/Iceman Kelly Hu .......... Yuriko Oyama/Lady Deathstrike Aaron Stanford .... John Allerdyce/Pyro Daniel Cudmore .... Piotr Rasputin/Colossus
I would like to start off my review by defending the actor who played Cyclops in the movie. Cyclops is a whiny character in the comic books too.
As an avid reader of the comic books will tell you, the mutant powers in X-Men have always been a subtle to not so subtle metaphor for homosexuality - see Randofu's writeup in this nodeshell. In the movie, this is ratcheted up a few notches. For example, when Bobby tells his parents about his...er...abilities, his mother asks him if he could try not being a mutant - the writer is trying to make the point that homosexuality is less a choice than it is an expression of one's self, blah blah blah. Also, Commander Stryker is angry at Xavier because he couldn't "cure" his son of being a mutant, to which Charles answers that being a mutant is not a disease, blah blah blah.
But enough of that; here's where I attempt to cover what the noder above did not. As the person above me said, this movie is better than the original in every way - though of course it does not go beyond being a silly action flick; this is the x-men after all (you were expecting perhaps Citizen Kane?) Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler is an added treat due to his superb performance, not to mention the fact that Nightcrawler's teleport ability is soooo cool looking - much better than it looked in the comic books. Patrick Stewart is still alive and kicking in this movie, proving once again he has what it takes - with each new X-Men movie I am more and more convinced that Stewart really is Xavier.
My three problems with the movie: the actor who plays Bobby's mutant hating brother shows up later in the movie as one of the mutant children the X-Men are trying to rescue - huh? (correct me if I am wrong, I didn't watch the credits) Also, for some reason the ship the X-Men use has no countermeasures on board; this is done so that the writers can throw in more mutant effects, but it's a cheap trick. Now this is being really picky, but in the ending scene Jean Grey says that evolution normally takes thousands of years - try millions - and states that occassionally evolution takes a leap forward - no it does not, unless everyone on the earth was exposed to massive amounts of radiation and somehow survived. If you want to make the X-Men story sound realistic, fine. But don't lie in order to do that.
Finally I have to give props for the ending scene - well done.
On the subject of the Pheonix Saga: I would have to say the next movie will have to deal with this. The reasons for this are as follows:
So what does this all mean to you? If you liked the original, you'll love the sequel. If you didn't like the original, you may or may not like/love the sequel.
On the subject of Punctuated Equilibrium as a reason for sudden evolution -this is not a very valid explanation of what happens in the X-Men. For one thing, people are not very likely to sleep with someone because they are a mutant, and there is no evidence that Mutants survive longer; in fact given their hunted status they would be expected to live shorter lives. Secondly, in the X-Men movie it is not the offspring of mutants who are talked about as having incredible powers. It is the offspring of non-mutants, which suggests incredible amounts of mutation on the earth for no particular reason. That said, it was a great movie and I pardon their gross innaccuracies.
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