Bring on X3!

Rating: Null/10 (5 May 2003)

**Mild Spoilers**
I must confess that I have never seen an X-Man comic, and only ever saw one episode of the cartoon series. I guess this makes it easier for me to watch, as I don't find myself comparing the action to what the 'actual' characters are likely to do and so on.
Disclaimer aside, I thought this was a good film. I really want to convince myself that it was great, but I cannot, and here's why...
Now I loved X-Men (even though I felt it played to the fans too much by not fleshing-out character's back stories, aside from Wolverine), so I had very high hopes for the sequel.
Set not too long after the escapades on Liberty Island, the gang are settling back into normal mutant life, aside from Wolvie, who has gone off to discover the secrets to his past. After an attack on the President by Nightcrawler gives General Stryker authority to storm Xavier's school, we get to the films first major set-piece (not too many more afterwards, either), the fight in the school. We see a glimpse of Iron Man (great effect), and the film signals it's intent to be darker, with Wolvie indescrimantley killing the soldiers.
An alliance with Magneto is forged (who escapes with quite some ingenuity - better not take those multi-vitamins any more!), and the gang reach their destination, Alkani (sp?) Lake. Here we, the viewer, is taken in 3 different directions here, and so the last 30 minutes of the film is heavy on plot. Still the gang save the day, and all go home happy.
Now, comparisons against the first film are natural, and I felt that the sequel suffered from too little action. It was a longer film, taken up with a lot more dialogue.
Again, characters other than Wolverine suffer from little on screen action (a cause for Mrs Berry to not sign for a third film), with poor old Cyclops robbed of his woman, and still we know nothing of him. Storm, incidentally, was given more screen-time, but like the others, under utilized.
Enough loose-ends are left for another outing (ignoring the end sequence), with Ice Man and Pyro surely meeting in combat, Nightcrawler and Storm possibly romantically involved, and (shown only with visual clues) with Bobby knowing that however close to Rogue he gets, he will always (rightly or wrongly) be judged against Wolvie, maybe building resentment?
In conclusion then, sure, there are some good sequences-Nightcrawler's intro, Pyro's fun and the jet-flight, but I guess I preferred the first film (with the whole last 25 minutes or so being pretty action packed, along with a tighter focus).
Still, this will be successful, spawn a third movie and will (hopefully) expand upon the core characters more.
7 out of 10