The Moose Hole - Review of X2: X-Men United

Rating: 9/10 (3 May 2003)

The beginning of the summer season always seems to open with a bang. In years past, the first major blockbuster film of the summer didn't open until Memorial Day weekend but times have changed. The first weekend of May has become the starting point now and Spider-Man solidified that with its $114.5 million opening weekend last year. This year presents another comic-book adaptation, X2: X-Men United, a sequel to the 2000 hit, X-Men. Comic book adaptations seem to be the huge rage now with past films like Spider-Man, X-Men, and Daredevil being such box office successes. But X2 is presented with a slight problem. X-Men did have a big opening weekend but started to really slow down after that with some movie-goers being disappointed. Obviously the marketing of the film will prevent X2 from being a failure at the box office but will the sequel disappoint fans like its predecessor or will an evolution occur in the movie-going experience?
The story picks up where the last film left off with Magneto in jail and Professor Xavier and his X-Men fighting to protect both human and mutant kind. This time around, though, the war between mutants and the rest of humanity seems growing closer as moves made by certain people have created conflicts that will become bigger as time goes on. Due to recent events including the attempted assassination of the president by a mutant, William Stryker has sent a crew to invade Professor Xavier's School for the Gifted. But he isn't after the children. He has bigger plans involving all mutants on the planet. Now the X-Men must join up with Magneto and his group to fight for a more peaceful world. The story for X2: X-Men United was very well done but there are many elements that the normal movie-goer would not understand but a big fan of the comic-book series would. But those elements are to be expected with most comic-book adaptations like X2. This was also a problem with Daredevil, which was released in February.
The cast was fabulous once again and much of the returning cast seems to be more comfortable with their rules then they were in the first film. Hugh Jackman is Wolverine. Plain and simple. Jackman proves that the role was meant for him and does it magnificently. Patrick Stewart is great once again as Professor Charles Xavier, the head of the School for the Gifted. He isn't included in as many scenes as last time but still plays an essential part in the film. Ian McKellen sends chills up backs as Magneto. He plays him so well that you would actually believe he is that character much like he did with the role of Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings series. Out of the new members of the cast, Alan Cummings is the shining light playing the role of Nightcrawler. Cummings presents much emotion to a character that you would expect to be placed in a film for special effect purposes rather then character development.
Overall, X2: X-Men United is a huge leap from the somewhat disappointing original. Close to perfection, there are some things to pick at. There were some members of the cast that seemed to be pointlessly placed in the film. Among those would be Kelly Hu as Lady Deathstrike. Her character was almost pointless outside of the fight at the end with Logan. The role of Cyclops seemed to be pointless as well in this film as he was not scene almost at all except at the very beginning and at the end. There were a lot of action sequences but maybe a little too much. Eliminating one or two of the sequences would have been fine. They weren't bad, there just seemed to be too much thrown at the audience in two hours. And the ending, though magnificently done, will confuse many movie-goers not familiar with the comic-book or cartoon series. But maybe a better explanation will be shown in X-Men 3. The summer begins with a bang and if others films turn out like X2, we are in for one Hell of a summer.
My Rating: ****1/2 out of 5