X2: X Men United (2003) Review

Time: 134 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence
Cast:
Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier/Professor X
Hugh Jackman as Logan/Wolverine
Ian McKellen as Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto
Halle Berry as Ororo Munroe/Storm
Famke Janssen as Dr. Jean Grey
James Marsden as Scott Summers/Cyclops
Rebecca Romijn as Raven Darkholme/Mystique
Brian Cox as Col. William Stryker
Alan Cumming as Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler
Bruce Davison as Sen. Robert Kelly
Shawn Ashmore as Bobby Drake/Iceman
Aaron Stanford as John Allerdyce/Pyro
Kelly Hu as Yuriko Oyama/Lady Deathstrike
Anna Paquin as Marie/Rogue
Director: Bryan Singer

After the events on Liberty Island, everyone at Xavier’s (Patrick Stewart) School for Gifted Youngsters is settling in. Magneto (Ian McKellen) is locked up in a plastic cell, Rogue (Anna Paquin) and Bobby Drake (Shawn Ashmore) have finally gotten together, and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) has set off to find his origins. But it won’t stay quiet for long. After a mutant attack on the President, everyone starts to fear any type of mutant. William Stryker (Brian Cox), who plans to stop all mutants, takes over the school, causing Wolverine and his team of mutants to go into hiding. Stryker has managed to capture Xavier and will use him to create another version of Cerebro. Wolverine and the team must now team up with their enemy, Magneto, to stop Stryker before it’s too late.

X Men was a pretty good movie and was one of the movies that brought back the superhero genre. Director Bryan Singer returns to deliver an even better X Men movie. With more characters, more development of the characters and a plot which isn’t just a rehash of the original, X Men 2 proves to be even better than the original. It’s still not the best X Men movie but it is the best of the original trilogy.

I really liked the aspect of the X Men teaming up with Magneto, it would be so easy just to have them as enemies for the sequel but this time around it gives us something different. I also liked the pacing better here, while I did like the previous X Men, after watching it again I noticed that the pacing was a little slower, now that the characters are (mostly) established I think Singer could afford to have a faster pace. This also meant that more of the characters could be developed (at least a little bit). Once of the main criticisms of the first film was that aside from some characters (such as Wolverine, Rogue and Magneto) most of the characters were underdeveloped. Although I can’t call all of them fully developed (Especially Cyclops and Mystique) the film at least showed more aspects of them.

All the actors from the previous movie return and once again are good in their roles, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan, and the rest of the cast are really good but Hugh Jackman as usual steals the show as Wolverine, it’s hard imagining anyone else in his role. Brian Cox I thought did a pretty good job as the main villain, who has a lot of history with Wolverine. Alan Cumming Nightcrawler was a nice addition to the X Men, I’m actually surprised that he didn’t return for the sequel. As I said before, more of the characters are given more depth and I started to like them more, with the exception of Cyclops who doesn’t show up a lot in the movie.

The action scenes once again are well filmed and there are much more of them as there is much more going on in the story. Highlights of the film for me were the opening scenes with Nightcrawler and the fight scenes between Wolverine and Lady Deathstrike at the end of the movie. The soundtrack again was really good and added to the movie.

X Men 2 is for me a better movie than the original X Men. That film was a good set up to the X Men, while X Men 2 was a great X Men movie. It’s still not the best X Men movie but it’s the best X Men film of the original trilogy. It has the best action scenes, it has the best story and it used the characters the best. It’s not a perfect movie, looking back at it not all of the characters are fully developed but it is an improvement over the first film.

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X-Men (2000)

Time: 104 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence
Cast:
Hugh Jackman as Logan/Wolverine
Patrick Stewart as Professor Charles Xavier
Ian McKellen as Eric Lensherr/Magneto
Famke Janssen as Jean Grey
James Marsden as Scott Summers/Cyclops
Halle Berry as Ororo Munroe/Storm
Anna Paquin as Rogue/Marie
Tyler Mane as Sabretooth
Ray Park as Toad
Rebecca Romijn as Mystique
Bruce Davison as Senator Kelly
Director: Bryan Singer

Unique power-possessing mutants live in a world where their kind is hated by humans. Two mutants emerge: Logan (Hugh Jackman), a powerful and aggressive mutant with no past, no memories, and a girl, Rogue (Anna Paquin). Their quests for identities eventually land them in the sights of the fellow mutants and former friends, Erik Lehnsherr, a.k.a. Magneto (Ian McKellan), and Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart). Xavier wants a peaceful means of stopping the hatred toward mutants, while Magneto seeks to even things out with a machine that would speed up the mutation process in all humans. Xavier brings together a special group of mutants called “X-Men” to stop him.

Superhero movies were very successful (and are still successful today) but in the 90s, superhero movies have started going down the drain, with movies like Batman and Robin, The Phantom and many others failing miserably. In the early 2000s though, some superhero movies started to become good and helped bring the genre back to praise. X-Men is one of these movies that helped the superhero genre do this and although I wouldn’t put it among my top 10 best superhero movies, it is still a decent movie on its own.

Unlike some of the other comic book movies at the time, X-Men manages to be grounded in reality; the only parts that you have to really suspend your disbelief are that all these mutations could lead to super powers. The story is quite simple but it is effective. I do feel that apart from some characters like Wolverine, Rouge and Magneto, there weren’t a lot of characters that had a lot of personality or depth; this is particular with the villains (with the exception of Magneto).

The standout performance in this movie is Hugh Jackman; he manages to bring out so much of his character. Patrick Stewart is also well cast as the wise Professor X and makes his lines convincing. Anna Paquin plays Rogue, a mutant who can’t touch a human being without harming them and she is quite good in the role; I know that a lot of people don’t share the same opinion as I have heard that she’s not like how she is in the comics. Ian McKellen was really good as Magneto, he’s one of those villain characters you can understand why they do what they are doing; he seemed human. Apart from these actors, the others do pretty well in their roles with what they got, however like I said, a lot of these characters don’t have much personality traits, especially the villains. Mystique was great in her fighting and transformation scenes, Sabretooth was a brute that didn’t really say anything and Toad, I still wonder why he was chosen as one of Magneto’s henchmen, he seemed the wrong choice. They looked good on screen and in action scenes but I can’t think of any personality trait that these characters showed; their personalities are set to ‘Villain Henchmen’ mode.

The special effects were pretty good and were well used to show the abilities of the mutants. The action was also well filmed, particularly with the fight scenes, which the film had quite a lot of. The soundtrack by John Ottman was pretty good, if not as memorable as some other scores for other superhero movies.

X-Men isn’t the best superhero movie ever made but it is an enjoyable movie to watch. In any case, it deserves recognition for being some of the movies that brought back the superhero movies in the early 2000s. Bryan Singer successfully brought the X-Men to the big screen the best way possible. It is worth checking out if you haven’t seen it already.