Well, I finally got back to blogging about superheroes, and to keep up with my random trek through X-Men, I decided to watch the best X-Men movie yesterday. I really forgot how much I loved this one, and I still do consider it one of the best superhero movies ever made.
X2 came out in 2003. It later took the subtitle X-Men United, but it's official title is X2, which is what everyone (including myself) calls it. It was directed by Bryan Singer, and starred Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman and Ian McKellen. It picks up right where X-Men ended and brings back all the same main characters. Like my other reviews, I start with a score of 5 out of 10 and add and take away points during the movie.
The movie immediately jumps to a 6 thanks to one of the coolest superhero moments ever. Simply put: Nightcrawler + Mozart = Super cool. It was such an awesome way to open the movie. Every X-Men fan had been dying to see a live Nightcrawler, and they finally got it with him beating up the White House security staff to the tune of Mozart's Requiem. It truly was his finest hour. Unfortunately, it was the only cool thing he did all movie, and he has yet to appear in another movie. Sigh ...
One thing I like about X2 is how it directly ties in to the first movie. We ended X-Men with Wolverine heading to Alkali Lake, so we start this movie with him arriving there and looking around. We also find out that after their fight with Magneto on the Statue of Liberty, Jean Grey's powers have not only become harder to control, but also more powerful. I think this makes sense. Magneto's machine somehow broke through some of the barrier's Xavier put in Jean's mind.
One scene that used to bug me was Xavier freezing everybody in the food court. Now I don't mind it anymore. If he's supposed to be powerful enough to be able to kill 6 billion people by concentrating too much, then it makes sense for him to be able to freeze 50 people for a minute. I also really liked his line there: "The next time you feel like showing off, don't."
Strangely enough, I found myself rooting for Mystique, even though I really didn't like her at all in the first one. But they improved her so much here, I'm actually going to raise the score to a 7. It was fun rooting for the bad guys here, and I liked some of the subtleties with her powers, like how she got Lady Deathstrike's palm print by shaking her hand, and how she got Stryker's voice by just talking to him. There's also a nice scene with her and Nightcrawler later on, where she explains that she shouldn't have to hide her true form, which is played up in First Class. So yeah, they made Mystique interesting and understandable — a big upgrade from the first movie.
I always love the scenes in the mansion with the little mutant kids casually using their powers to change the TV channels by blinking or to frost a soda glass by blowing on it. All of the X-Men movies needed more scenes like this. I think it's the little uses of their powers that add depth to the film more than the big uses.
Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen were amazing in the first movie. If at all possible, they were even better in this one. After we've sufficiently calmed down from Nightcrawler's spree in the White House, the film picks up again when Xavier visits Magneto and they're gassed. Magneto delivers two awesome lines here: "War has begun." and "You should have killed me when you had the chance!" The score goes up to an 8 right here because we feel like the world is collapsing.
And it really is collapsing with the cool invasion of the school. Yeah, Wolverine's keen senses are a little slow, but he makes up for it by brutally stabbing a guy through the chest and into the fridge. I also like the little girl Siryn screaming to wake everybody up and it was nice to see Kitty Pryde running away (even if she didn't do anything else). It was wonderful, yet painful to see Colossus for only two seconds. He offers to come help Wolverine, but he stupidly refuses it. Come on! It's the mighty Colossus! You need him! I also really didn't understand why Pyro went with Iceman to find Rogue. What does he care? Does he like to just look at the girl he can't touch?
But this is an awesome scene and it just gets better when Colonel William Stryker comes into play. When he's played by Brian Cox, he is one of my favorite villains. He's smart, conniving, manipulative, and ever so slightly sympathetic, but never to the point where we stop hating him. He's also not just a Washington lobbyist or scientist, but he is a soldier, out there leading his men on the front line. This scene easily pushes the movie to a 9.
I'm actually going to bump the score up to a 10, thanks to one of my all-time favorite scenes — Magneto's escape. It was so brutal and awesome to see him pull the iron out of the guard and then destroy his prison and kill the other guards with just three small iron balls. So, so cool!
Now, sadly, is where I start to drop points off. I really wasn't a big fan of the scene at Bobby Drake's house. One, how did his family not know he was a mutant? Wouldn't they have seen him accidentally freeze something? Wouldn't he have at least once frozen the toilet water before he learned to control his powers? Two, why was his brother so mad? What it just that Bobby was a mutant or he didn't like seeing other people wear his clothes, or he was jealous of Bobby getting to go to a fancy private school, or what? It really doesn't make any sense for him to call the police on his brother and his friends.
And then the cops show up and it gets even lamer. The cop is 10 feet away from Wolverine and shouts at him to drop his knives. Can't he see they're actually blades sticking out of his hands? But then Wolverine stupidly decides to not retract his claws, but instead says he can't drop them and tries to show the cop what he means. Then the cop shoots him in the head! Why?! Why didn't he shoot him in the arm or leg? Just because you think a guy is holding six knives does not give you an excuse to kill him so quickly. He had no idea Wolverine would survive that shot. That cop needs to be court marshaled or whatever they call it. Terrible. All these complaints drop the score to a 9.
We then get a lackluster scene of the X-Men getting chased in their jet. From inside the plane, Storm can create about 20 tornadoes to take out the other jets, but she can't summon one bolt of lightning to get rid of the last missile? Instead she just sits there and screams at Jean.
Speaking of Jean, I now see why my dad hates her so much. She really does nothing in this movie. I think Famke Janssen did a poor job of playing her and I think the character was poorly written. Why do you keep kissing Wolverine and leading him if Cyclops is your boyfriend? Maybe she forgot about Cyclops, which makes sense because he's only in this movie about 10 seconds longer than Colossus was. But seriously, that love triangle was forced too much. I would have been fine if it was just Wolverine hitting on Jean, but having her continue to deny him. But it wasn't just one-sided. Maybe you could say it was the Phoenix starting to come out of her, which led to these strange moments of flirting with Wolverine, but I still think it's kind of dumb. For the character of Jean Grey, the score drops to an 8.
One of the strangest parts of the movie takes place in their camp when Mystique comes into Wolverine's tent disguised as Jean and starts making out with him. Why did she do that? Did the producers just feel they needed a sex scene? It was lame, but not lame enough to drop a full point, mainly because some nice fight scenes quickly came up afterward.
Lady Deathstrike was put in this movie to be good foil for Wolverine. He finally had someone he could slash and stab all day and also be slashed and stabbed by all day. It was a nice fight scene, but not nice enough to give a point back to the score, mostly because the aforementioned random sex scene.
The ending of this movie was very strange and very dumb. I'll start with the X-Men on the outside of Cerebro, trying to figure out how to stop Xavier from killing all the humans in the world. For some reason, they think it's best to have Nightcrawler teleport Storm in there instead of Jean Grey, who is a telepath and experienced with using Cerebro. No, no, we don't need you, Jean. It'll be a lot easier if Storm just goes in and makes it really cold.
I think they did this because they wanted to follow up on Storm's earlier conversation with Nightcrawler about pity and faith. But that scene in itself was lame because Storm came off as an angry, human-hating mutant who should team up with Magneto. So because that scene failed, this scene also failed when Storm said she believes in Nightcrawler.
So they teleport in and they only see Jason Stryker disguised as a little girl. Now I like Jason in here, he's really creepy and tragic, and I understand why he would be a little girl to trick Xavier, but I don't know why he was a little girl for Storm and Nightcrawler. Did he really expect them to say, "What a minute, there's just a little girl here. Nightcrawler, you took us to the wrong room!" Very weird. Also, why did making it cold stop him? I guess a psychic battle between him and Jean would have been too abstract to show.
Then we get to the worst scene in the whole movie. They can't start the jet and dam is breaking, so Jean decides to leave the jet to turn it on and stop the water, while preventing everybody from leaving the jet, somehow stopping Nightcrawler from teleporting, and taking over Xavier's mind to say goodbye. Why couldn't she do any of these things from inside the jet? They could have had it work that way and still have her go into Phoenix mode, I think. Also, why didn't they have Iceman try to stop the water? That would've been a cool visual effect and it would have added something to a character that they spent so much time building up.
Here's how I think it should have happened. Bobby sees the water coming, runs out to stop the water, but collapses because it's too much, Nightcrawler saves him, and then Jean runs out to stop the water and lift the plane and turn into Phoenix. It's not the best fix, I know, but it would have been a whole lot better than having her stand out there for 10 minutes while Wolverine yelled at everyone else to do something and having everyone say Jean was stopping them. Ugh ... We're now at a 7.
I also didn't like the final scene with the president. Why did they need thunder and lightning in the background? Isn't that just a bit over the top? Why did they let Nightcrawler in the room? Wouldn't the president fail to agree to anything they say when he sees the same mutant who attempted to assassinate him with them? Oh well, these last few complaints aren't big enough to lower to score anymore. It is still the best X-Men movie ever made and probably the main reason they keep making X-Men movies.
Final score: 7 out of 10
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