The Moose Hole - Review of X2: X-Men United

[MickeyMoose15]

Released May 2nd, 2003

Director: Bryan Singer

Starring: Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Famke Janssen, James Marsden, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Anne Paquin, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Bruce Davidson, Alan Cumming, Kelly Hu, Aaron Stanford, Katie Stuart, Shawn Ashmore, Brian Cox, Peter Wingfield, Alfred E. Humphries, Jill Teed, James Kirk, Ty Olsson, Kea Wong, Shauna Kain

Premise: Mutants continue their struggle against a society that fears and distrusts them. Their cause becomes even more desperate following an incredible attack by an as yet undetermined assailant possessing extraordinary abilities. The shocking attack renews the political and public outcry for a Mutant Registration Act and an anti-mutant movement now led by William Stryker, a wealthy former Army commander who is rumored to have experimented on mutants. Stryker's mutant "work" is somehow tied to Logan's mysterious and forgotten past. As Wolverine searches for clues to his origin, Stryker puts into motion his anti-mutant program - launching an attack on Xavier's mansion. Magneto, newly escaped from his plastic prison, proposes a partnership with the X-Men to combat their common and formidable enemy: Stryker. With the fates of Xavier, mankind - and mutant kind - in their hands, the X-Men face their most dangerous mission ever.

The beginning of the summer season always seems to open with a bang. In years past, the first major blockbuster film of the summer didn't open until Memorial Day weekend but times have changed. The first weekend of May has become the starting point now and Spider-Man solidified that with its $114.5 million opening weekend last year. This year presents another comic-book adaptation, X2: X-Men United, a sequel to the 2000 hit, X-Men. Comic book adaptations seem to be the huge rage now with past films like Spider-Man, X-Men, and Daredevil being such box office successes. But X2 is presented with a slight problem. X-Men did have a big opening weekend but started to really slow down after that with some movie-goers being disappointed. Obviously the marketing of the film will prevent X2 from being a failure at the box office but will the sequel disappoint fans like its predecessor or will an evolution occur in the movie-going experience?

The story picks up where the last film left off with Magneto in jail and Professor Xavier and his X-Men fighting to protect both human and mutant kind. This time around, though, the war between mutants and the rest of humanity seems growing closer as moves made by certain people have created conflicts that will become bigger as time goes on. Due to recent events including the attempted assassination of the president by a mutant, William Stryker has sent a crew to invade Professor Xavier's School for the Gifted. But he isn't after the children. He has bigger plans involving all mutants on the planet. Now the X-Men must join up with Magneto and his group to fight for a more peaceful world. The story for X2: X-Men United was very well done but there are many elements that the normal movie-goer would not understand but a big fan of the comic-book series would. But those elements are to be expected with most comic-book adaptations like X2. This was also a problem with Daredevil, which was released in February.

The cast was fabulous once again and much of the returning cast seems to be more comfortable with their rules then they were in the first film. Hugh Jackman is Wolverine. Plain and simple. Jackman proves that the role was meant for him and does it magnificently. Patrick Stewart is great once again as Professor Charles Xavier, the head of the School for the Gifted. He isn't included in as many scenes as last time but still plays an essential part in the film. Ian McKellen sends chills up backs as Magneto. He plays him so well that you would actually believe he is that character much like he did with the role of Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings series. Out of the new members of the cast, Alan Cummings is the shining light playing the role of Nightcrawler. Cummings presents much emotion to a character that you would expect to be placed in a film for special effect purposes rather then character development.

Overall, X2: X-Men United is a huge leap from the somewhat disappointing original. Close to perfection, there are some things to pick at. There were some members of the cast that seemed to be pointlessly placed in the film. Among those would be Kelly Hu as Lady Deathstrike. Her character was almost pointless outside of the fight at the end with Logan. The role of Cyclops seemed to be pointless as well in this film as he was not scene almost at all except at the very beginning and at the end. There were a lot of action sequences but maybe a little too much. Eliminating one or two of the sequences would have been fine. They weren't bad, there just seemed to be too much thrown at the audience in two hours. And the ending, though magnificently done, will confuse many movie-goers not familiar with the comic-book or cartoon series. But maybe a better explanation will be shown in X-Men 3. The summer begins with a bang and if others films turn out like X2, we are in for one Hell of a summer.

My Rating: ****1/2 out of 5

[tabuno]

I really hated this boring movie until the ending. Been there, done that with outlandish, unbelieveable plots - but the ending was dazzling, powerful, and solid. So like "Identity" how does the ending, as with figure skating competitions make the performance. How important to the overall judgment does the ending impact the entire movie. Apparently, quite a bit. In the instance of "Identity" it was a downer (for most people that is) and for "X-2," I would imagine a great upper.

The assassination attempt on the President, the raid on Xavier's Mansion, the capture of Xavier were all so ridiculously, incredulous that they defy even movie audience standards. Even Nightcrawler admitted to not being able to or willing to teletransport into a place he hasn't seen.

Nevertheless, I agree that the ending was a well put together and projected a powerful image and statement that is particularly relevant to our day and age and turbulent times. As such, this movie apparently ekes by on its merit as an overall good movie, save for most of it.

[MickeyMoose15]

What? The Nightcrawler sequence was the best action sequence in the film. It really got me pumped. I was also happy with Nightcrawler after the sequence. I thought he was going to be a character where "this is just a special effects character and we don't get a sh*t about character development" but he wasn't. They really focus on his character development then gradually go back to using him for special effects purposes which was very rare today.

[tabuno]

While I was enjoying the opening sequence, I was just cringing in my seat pondering how it was that the President of the United States could be so easily attacked and esnared. I just found myself defensely repulsed by how ridiculously easy it all was and that the President barely survived (apparently out of deliberate intention). The scene was exciting and if I had been to a sci fi movie that had some other plot or assassination of some other personality I probably wouldn't have become so defensive.

But I just shiver that the President wouldn't have something much more in the way of defenses. It just seemed all to easy and unbelieveable to allow me to enjoy it and the imponderable, implausibility continued for most of the movie until the ending. By this time, the President would have had to accept the mutants existed and that various countermeasure were required - but there was none encountered, absolutely none.

[Johann]

I agree with Tabuno on the implausibility of some of the scenes.
I wasn't blown away by this sequel-as so many seem to have been- but it was a great action film. It is just as good as the first, and they have a serious franchise on their hands. Perhaps my view is skewered by the fact that I saw X-men after Anger Management, which had me thinking about scenes from that while Prof X was playing chess with Maggie..

[Ilker81x]

I haven't yet seen "X-2: X-Men United," except that everybody I know who has seen it says it was incredibly good. I'll take their word for it until I see it. But regarding the question about endings, I think the ending of a film has three possible ways to go: 1) It can be a really good ending, ending everything and tieing everything up into a neat package (even if it leads into a sequel). 2) It can really screw up the rest of the movie, being either unsatisfying or just a complete negation of everything we'd already seen in the movie. 3) It can be just another scene...not good, nor bad, just...there, providing closure.

An excellent example is the film "Blade Runner." Depending on what kind of person you are, most people (again, most people I know) seem to think that "Blade Runner" was a wonderful film except for the ending. It may have been severely flawed, but it was one of the most influential films of all-time, and one of the most visually stunning, ruined only by a tacked-on happy ending that just seemed too "happy" to be real. What made it worse was that it didn't contribute anything to the point of the film...that last line, "I didn't know how long we had together...who does?" That point was already made by Edward James Olmos. Why repeat it? A decade later, director Ridley Scott gave us his cut which totally eliminated that bogus happy ending and left it where it should've ended, with the same point being made, giving closure (literally with the elevator doors closing and fading to black), and keeping things in the same tone as the rest of the film. That was my main problem was that we have this urban industrial concrete jungle being the primary setting in the film...and then all of a sudden, driving into a wilderness that is supposedly not supposed to exist in this world?

But again, it depends on who you are. My father thought the original ending was very good, and it gave him a good feeling about the film's message. When he saw the director's cut, he still loved the movie, but hated that it seemed a little more cynical. So how important is the ending? Who can say? Like everything else in the movie, it's open to interpretation and personal opinion. The ending for "The Hunt for Red October" is rather...mundane, not really satisfying, this little exchange between Alec Baldwin and Sean Connery...not that it's bad, just...unnecessary. But at the same time, if the film ended where Richard Jordan says, "You've lost another submarine?" it would've been slightly humorous, but also lacking in a sense of closure. But that's how I view it.

All-in-all, endings are as important as any other scene, but because it's an ending there's this sense that it's slightly more important...I think it depends on the film, the point of the film, and the viewer's interpretation of the ending. I doubt I've made much sense here, but...it's what I think.

[fuzzy_nolan]

'It just seemed all too easy and unbelieveable to allow me to enjoy it and the imponderable, implausibility continued for most of the movie until the ending'.

This is a movie based on a comic book, made for the express purpose of making geeks cream their respective pants the world over and you guys are surprised at its implausibility?

I guess you would have been outraged if the film was made the way some of the aforementioned geeks wanted (would have been about 12 hours long for a start). The film is based in the real world, with all its logics and rules, in a way that the comic never was.

[tabuno]

Filmmakers walk a fine line between fantasy and reality. Of course X-2 is based on a comic book, yet beneath it all there remains some basis of reality, the physical laws that mutants are able to suspend because of their nature, yet when it comes to the President of the United States, some elements of reality must remain in place in order for the movie to retain a consistency to the real world or else the fundmental part of the movie that makes sense begins to crumble.

The attack on the President would have been much more compelling if the Presidential security could have been heightened with some element consistent with the comic book nature of the movie (like Air Force One where Harrison Ford has the opportunity to escape in an escape pod). By now, technology has attempted to create laser based beams, how about some crude force field, special re-enforced security walls where it would be more difficult but not impossible to penetrate. But the whole idea of the vulnerability of the President is so awfully unbelievable, the audience is left more insulted and put down than excited and challenged.

The attack on the mansion was so ill-coordinated - special ops - we've seen so many spy movies that the audience is sophisicated enough to know a real intelligence operations when they see one and this one wasn't close. And the security of the mutant mansion was so terrible as to much Xavier look like some pitiful fool. Regardless of comic books, an element of consistent reality is required in the movie or else it comes across as some simple script writer trying to manipulate the plot just for the sake of suspense and action without consideration for basic logical consistency. It's the simple way out, the cheap, easy way out.

[Ilker81x]

I have to agree that some consistent level of reality must be maintained in the movie. Movies...move. That's the difference between comics and movies, the people, the places, everything moves, so it does give the implication of some kind of physical reality. Even though because it's a movie (especially in the genre of fantasy/sci-fi), there does exist a suspension of disbelief, just to sit back and say, "It's impossible in real life, but it's a movie." Relax and enjoy the fact that for awhile it seemed like the impossible was possible. Having read quite a few comics, including a few issues of "X-Men," while this same feeling does not exist in comics because of the static and 2-D nature of the characters, the artists and the writers still do attempt to give a touch of reality to what they're creating. Sure it's a comic, so they can get away with anything from an asteroidal collision to an army of soldiers being conquered by a single man. It's a comic, run wild with it. Same with movies...and yet because comic artists and writers want you to actually care about the characters, to actually like and appreciate the story you're reading, they have to establish a certain context everybody can understand...reality. It's not as established in comics as it is in movies, but it is there. I think even in the comic, they would know to make the President realistically well-protected. I think they would know that intelligence ops would be more sophisticated, and that the X-Mansion has a more considerable level of security. In fact, because comics don't have the same budgetary concerns that films do (well, they do...but they're different...money is determined by colors, number of pages, inking, etc...movies have to worry about actors, props, lighting, stuff that generally costs a little more money, right?)...because comics don't have these same concerns, they can even go to ridiculous lengths. In the comics, the President would probably be so well protected, he couldn't catch a cold if he wanted to, what with force fields that can also stop airbourne viruses. Again, I've not seen "X-2," but I will say that since it seems to be primarily an action movie...one does tend to just give up on reality. "Hard-Boiled" and "The Killer" are two of the greatest action movies ever made...you think people in a real gunfight would do the kinds of flips and jumps they did? Or even better, the fact that they BARELY ever reloaded. It's an action movie...let go of reality for a bit, at least that's what they're asking us to do...

[Johann]

Anyone notice how Halle Berry's accent (west african?) was different than in the first film? It slightly annoyed me.

-and I must say that Hugh Jackman is the only man in the cosmos who can get away with that hairstyle...:)