X-men Month - Mini Review: X-men 2 (X2: X-men United)

We rejoin the action in X-men month

X-men was both critically and commercially successful so a sequel was inevitable, but it took its sweet ass time getting to us, it was May 2003 before the sequel aired. The script underwent various rewrites (and I’m taking my info from Wikipedia so make of it what you will) cutting out minor characters (Angel and Beast were supposed to appear) and giving Storm more screen time after Halle Berry’s success in Monster’s Ball, which won her an academy award, can we retroactively take that back after Catwoman?

  

Relax! I’m kidding. Released in May 2003 on a $110 million budget it managed to score around $410m, another tidy profit for Fox and enough that they continue the franchise in a third movie which I’ll cover later this week. It met with positive reviews with a 86% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and an average 7.5/10 on IMDb, both improvements over the first one. But let’s take a look for ourselves.

X-men 2 largely focuses on one of my critiques of the first movie, the lack of a human villain or really any action from the human side. This movie starts by introducing William Stryker, a man with a particular hatred for mutants, particularly if they’re not under his control. He manages to capture mutant Nightcrawler and send him to attack the Whitehouse.

This unprovoked attack forces the President to authorise a strike on the Xavier institute, thanks to intel provided by magneto using the same mind control drug he used on Nightcrawler. The students are gone, the X-men are divided and Stryker plans to force Charles to use Cerebro to kill every mutant on the planet.

I give you this much plot since the majority of character arcs reform around Stryker. He has a son, who is providing the mind control agent and is the one trying to force Xavier to use Cerebro (kinda) who was taken to Xavier before but there was nothing he could do. Stryker also happens to have some history with Wolverine, as one of the people who gave him his metal skeleton and claws (question, if you have a metal skeleton, what impact is in an ordinary bullet going to have?)

Beyond that, by forcing the students out we have our 3 young students, Rogue and Iceman are a little more developed in this one and we also have Pyro, who defects to Magneto as the story goes on. Magneto certainly has a way with words.

In addition we get a subplot with Jean’s powers growing, perhaps beyond her control. This is foreshadowing to the Phoenix story we’re going to get in the next film, but that’s not a discussion for this review, having said that it was a very good idea to build this slowly, and you could even argue that having to use Cerebro in the first movie is what started this build up (Scott said it’d been happening since Ellis Island)

We also get a minor subplot about Iceman’s family all being scared of him being a mutant, with his own brother calling the police (kid, you have powerful and dangerous people here who have not displayed malicious intent towards you, why try and ignite conflict by calling the police, especially without telling them the truth) Iceman’s family are slightly different in Wolverine and the X-men but I’ll get to that later.

I’ll give it this, this story is very good at juggling a pretty large roster of characters, giving everyone a time in the spotlight and playing out all these character arcs without them feeling rushed. Even Mystique gets another big role.

Wolverine is still the primary focus of the movie, if anything Scott is the one who gets the short stick in these movies, and that’ll continue into the next one. But back to Wolverine, the movie follows him for the most part with him being the one left with the young children as Stryker launches his attack. I’m glad they didn’t go for any disapproving father routine with him and Iceman, I feared they might go down that road, which would be wrong considering Rogue is not related to him.

Magneto is excellent in this movie, after his escape from prison he delights in playing the X-men to suit his own needs and what he actually does in the movie (whilst I doubt it was actually possible) is legitimately cunning and scary as opposed to the bullsh*t he was planning in the last movie.

Nightcrawler is well introduced and handled in the script, we see all the things we like about the guy, his faith and abilities are handled as well as to be expected and like everyone else he gets his moments in the spotlight (and I’m not counting him under mind control)

I have little to critique on this one personally, I suppose it seems a bit of a stretch, even with cerebro that Charles could kill all mutants, and definitely not all humans. Also, I’m not sure how Stryker controls adamantium without himself being a mutant. Also, X23 is wasted in this.

But overall this a very good movie and even a marked improvement on the first one

Rating 90/100

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Images/clips used in this review are from X-men 2 (X-men United) and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use