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Movie: X2 Director: Bryan Singer Actors: Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Patrick Stewart, Famke Janssen, Ian McKellen |
They've changed the "X2" title right before the release to "X2: X-men United", in case people were wondering if "X2" is another "xXx" or "X-file" movie, yeah right...people knew exactly that X marked the (Jean Grey-) spot and the audience invaded the theatres, making the sequel a giant box office hit. Is X2 better than the first? Oh yeah! Why? I let you know in a sec.
The Story in a nutshell:
The movie basically starts where the first one left off. Wolverine is trying to find some answers about his origins. Charles Xavier is running his school for the gifted youngsters. His evil friend Magneto is still captured in the plastic prison. But there's a new kid on the block, William Stryker. A military genius who supports the new law of registering all mutants (and kill them). Stryker finds himself above the law and managed to capture Charles Xavier in order to use him for his war against the mutants. X-men must unite with mutant friend and foe to stop the war.
I will not give away the whole plot, spoiling all the details of the great action sequences you'll get to see but I'll tell you this, the movie has one of the greatest opening scenes you've ever seen. The intro involves Nightcrawler who teleports the hell out of you and doing some martial arts moves that makes Jackie Chan looks like David Carradine in Kung Fu. The scene is shot in slow mo a la Matrix and supported by the great score of John Ottman. After this the movie's getting better and better. Okay, you know I love superhero movies but besides that, the movie stands on its own even for the people who are not familiar with the comic.
Hugh Jackman jumps off the screen as Wolverine. He makes the character a bit more aggressive like in the comic and fortunately plays a major part in the sequel as for Storm (Halle Barry) and Jean Grey (Famke Janssen). We see them a bit more than in the previous movie.
Casting Alan Cumming for Nightcrawler was a dead on good choice. He brings the comic book character to life and gives it heart. The rest if the cast provides solid work with Ian McKellen (Magneto) and Patrick Stewart (Picard..ehh Xavier) delivering great performances as usual. Brian Cox does great work as the evil William Stryker who holds the secret to Wolverine. I also want to say that I'm very proud of the Dutch ladies Rebecca Romijn-Stamos (Mystique) and Famke Janssen (Jean Grey), "goed gedaan, meiden"!
For the comic geeks among us, well, I went nuts when I saw Colussus (Daniel Cudmore), this scene is so utterly cool when he changes into the metal beast. I really hope we'll see more of Piotr in X3 (he already signed for the third part).
The downside is that a movie that involves a lot of different characters is difficult to explore each and every one of them. Singer knows how to pull it off and somehow managed to get the audience care for every single character and keeps the balance right.
There's also one major improvement on X2 and that is the music score. Michael Kamen did the previous score, I really like him, especially his work with Metallica, but he really did some lousy score on X-men 1. Bryan Singer's usual composer and editor John Ottman was working on his own project and wasn't able to join the first X-men movie but now he's back and did a wonderful job with X2.
Bryan Singer once again delivers a great action packed superhero movie but also managed to keep the story intense and realistic. He masterfully handles all the issues of being a mutant, not being accepted by society for being different, trying to cope with dangerous powers. Let's hope we see more of the mutants and Bryan in X3.
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Written by Reggy 10/05/03
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