mr. president, are you all right?

Rating: Null/10 (22 April 2003)

warning: possible spoilers, though none are related to the story
if it's true that mr. singer worked for months on the X2-script (one can barely call it that) with first-strike-offenders mr. harris and mr. dougherty, then i fear hollywood is in bigger-better-more creative trouble than ever. not one aspect of x2 betrays even the slightest dramatic intelligence, an acutely lethal disease which the first film, despite its lack of personality, at least managed to pretend it didn't have. xavier's opening words do seem to suggest otherwise, with its ominous comment on the failure of the human species to establish a level of interhuman peaceful coexistence. thus the story begins, announced by cast & director as of a somewhat political nature, with the humans-versus-mutants-war possibly reflecting all micro-forms of intolerance we all have witnessed. but where the first film crudely succeeded in conveying the fear of a human society for alien, freakish elements through the character of senator kelly, this supposed 'non-sequel' makes the clash of normal against abnormal a 'personal' one, thereby robbing the story of its inherent drive. the ridiculous character of stryker has a stupid, little score to settle with xavier and that's basically it. though it's being released quasi-simultaneously all over the globe, this 'american' film loses all narrative universality thanks to a stunningly short-sighted, ethnocentric bias: 'mr. president, are you all right?' was probably the only relevant question the three writers could come up with. all of this may have worked in the comic, intended for domestic use, but in these globalized times and on the big screen it could have gained impact by at least showing some other parts of the world. but no, let's not forget: america (well, north america) equals the world. all other humans-and mutants for that matter-on earth are invisble, reduced to tiny little lights on cerebro's screen. this nearly fatal crux of x2 results in absolute sudden death when the young generation-x is given ample screen time to make a complete fool of themselves. 'will anyone send these horrible freaks of evolution back to school?' is an understandably natural reaction of any normal human forced to sit out their scenes (which, admittedly, the little x-s screw up x-traordinarily well). possibly the strongest element of the first film, the 'compl-x' psyche of wolverine, his mystery and his attraction to dr. jean, is first left to freeze on a snowy road, then to thaw and rot in a stinking blaze of inaptly constructed cgi-kaboom. in addition, his relationship to rogue has been stabbed to death by a script that tries to shift focus towards the new generation. once it discovers (in a mutant ability to self-reflect)that there's nothing there but the big x of x-tremely idiotic characters (and bad actors, though this it could not have known!), it quickly and incoherently wanders off and wonders why it all went wrong. poor mr. jackman. knowing that x-men easily granted him the victory in a frightening hairdo contest, and gave him slight advantage in his rivalry with cyclops, x2 turns him into a helpless wretch, taking defeat after defeat (whilst saving the world?). indeed: mrs. berry sports a hairdo that should cross the limits of tolerance jon bon jovi considerably heightened in the late eighties. moreover, storm probably depleted all her rainy acting skills at last year's oscars, because here she's uncannily awful, spouting lines with the despair of a warm breeze lost in the ice age. but the most hair-raising pieces of silly acting are delivered by mr. alan cumming, whose german sounds as if he's just invented the language. his nightcrawler is a moronic creation, though the opening sequence-the only spectacular highlight in this disaster-left us somewhat optimistic. and what about magneto, who was supposed to grow closer to xavier, in a film that-or so mr. singer made us believe-would show that they aren't the black-and-white-characters the first film made us believe? well, to be honest, i forgot, having at that stage of the smaller-worse-less-adventure directed all my attention to the wonderful mystique, the sole enigma in this brainless horror of a film. mystique, myth, mystery is exactly what mr. singer's (hardly) cinematic knee-fall to stupidity has too little of. today, my fellow earthlings, the idea of another installment in the x-franchise seems a terrorist threat to western civilization and its god-fearing...(x-rated bit). suddenly, from all corners of america-equals-the-world, the deafening cry: 'mr. president, are you all right?'