Fun to the Xth level. (With DVD details)

Rating: 8/10 (18 July 2008)

My Take: Better than the original and the best in the series.
Bryan Singer's big-budget sequel X2 (X-MEN UNITED) learns from the past to create a better, more streamlined comic book adventure that has a sharper script with just the same wallops of action and special effects. I enjoyed the original X-MEN film, but not for most parts as I should. While it had no further problem with visuals and action, the film is fatally flawed by weak writing. X2 is much better, continuing the legacy started by the first, and offering much more to it as well. The characters, not just Rouge (Anna Paquin), the evil Magneto (Ian McKellen) and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), are taken into much deeper characteristics. The love-triangle subplot between Wolverine, Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) and Cyclops (James Marsden), which were given much irregular treatment in the original, is given much better treatment here. The characters have so much more to do, and the plot is more complex, even if it isn't even borderline clever.
During the great opening sequences (after an elaborate narration about mutants), a mutant poses an attack on the President of the United States, nearly killing him. The ever-benevolent X-men of Professor Xavier's (Patrick Stewart) Mutant Academy believes Magneto could be behind it, but Xavier believes otherwise. Meanwhile, an obsessed scientist (Brian Cox) sees a chance to finally start a war against the mutant race, once he frames them as a threat to mankind. The X-men now must aid help from their own adversary Magneto (McKellen) and his sultry shape-shifting accomplice Mystique (Rebecca Romijn) to prevent a war that could destroy the world... and either race. The mutant gang also get a little help from a new batch of "gifted" beings including a self-transporting "Incredible Nightcrawler" (Alan Cumming), freeze-powered Iceman (Shawn Ashmore) and fire-powered Pyro (Aaron Stanford).
X2 is not free from its flaws, and while I never really gotten myself in the X-MEN fad, X2 is an agreeably enough thrill-machine on its own. Leave your brain to dry and let the pure 'X' quality flow right through you.
Rating: **** out of 5.
The DVD:
A real treat on the big-screen, X2 will be much of the same delight on DVD. I suggest you get a hold of the 2-disc widescreen edition which features the film in a 2:40:1 Anamorphic widescreen format. The picture is not only clean, it rivals (if not outdoes) the quality featured on the big-screen. The sound is presented in a crisp Dolby Digital sound that's bound to blow you away, and don't you think it's safe to turn it down a little. If you're interested in the film's backstage drama, the DVD has a basket-load of special features, including an Audio-commentary with the director (Singer), cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel, and another with the writers and producers. Disc 2 offers more, including a a making-of documentary called "The Second Uncanny Issue of X-Men", as well as a series of informative featurettes and Multi-angle screen study of the famous Nightcrawler Attack prologue. Included as well, is an in-depth look on fight scene rehearsals. Finally, there's 11 deleted scenes and theatrical trailers. With English, Spanish and French subtitles/spoken languages.