Mixed feelings, from "Woaw" to "Ouch"...

Rating: 7/10 (7 May 2003)

**SOME SPOILERS***
*and forgive my horrible English, thanks :-)*
It all depends on the point of view I choose.
-------- If I choose to consider X2 as an action movie, then I may say it's indeed one of the very best action movies ever made. Maybe it's the best one I've seen so far (before you wonder, I'll mention that I'm 42, that I go to the movies at least 10-15 times a year since I'm 19, and that my collection counts about 950 films on VHS or DVD). I was really impressed. The pace is perfect, the tension very high, the action scenes are stunning, and this is such a more intelligent movie than most of the commercial action crappy flicks Hollywood feeds us with! The script is rich, with 2 main plots and no less than 4 sub-plots (!)- (maybe more, I'll have to see the movie again to make it out..)... This has never been done yet (that I know). Congratulations to Bryan Singer as a director/writer, and to John Ottman as an editor. GREAT work.
-------- If I choose to look at it as an X-men story (I used to read the comics when I was a teenager..), then I start to have second thoughts. Some characters are perfect (Magneto, Xavier, Wolverine), some are only adequate (Jean Grey, Rogue), and some are plain weak (Storm, Cyclops). I hoped that this problem, which was already present in the first movie, would be worked on. Well the Wolverine character has been improved, great job. For Mystique also, in the first movie she was presented just as a jaw-dropping fighter with some intelligence, in X2 she is a real person, thanks for that. But Storm and Cyclops are still second-hand characters, with no past, no inner feelings, just sympathetic people with (impressive) mutant powers. Too bad. The Storm character deserves much more than that! (Oh, but maybe it's the best that even such a good director as Bryan Singer may expect from Hale Berry... the most over-rated actress of all times. To me, she's plain dumb in every film I've seen her in.) Don't get me wrong: I'm NOT comparing the original characters to the ones in the movie. This would be nuts. I'm comparing the *dramatic strength* of each character in the comics and in the movie. In this matter, I still prefer the stories written by Chris Claremont in the 70's. Well, I have to admit that the amount of work necessary to run such a movie with so many storylines and characters could probably not be achieved without some sacrifices...
-------- X2 is definitely an important movie, as was the original comic series, for its message of tolerance. In this, the best line of the film is probably the Mystique/Nightcrawler dialogue about "normality". Thanks for that.
-------- Now if I consider X2 with my cinephile eye... ouch! As I already mentioned, it's probably gonna be my favorite action movies. But there are too many things in this movie that I can't cope with.
About the plot, why on earth is Xavier still under Jason's control when the electronic device has been taken off his head. Why doesn't Bobby try to freeze the water to help Jean. And the list goes on... OK, this is a comic-book movie, but I don't like this "deal with it" feeling. Not in such an ambitious movie.
But my main concern with X2 is somewhere else: Xavier, at one point, is about to kill the entire human race. Well all we see, to visually enhance this highly dramatic situation, are the struggling of Striker and then of the President of the USA. The rest... only small pictures on the big Cerebro "mental screen". Ouch! This is one of the most shocking demonstrations of ethnocentrism I've seen in Hollywood movies. Does any human being exist outside the USA? The struggling of the entire human race packed into the single picture of the President of the USA? Ouch, man. This is heavy. I thought we were not watching a Barbret Schroeder movie, but a Bryan Singer movie! What has happened?
Last thing I dislike in this movie, is the "blockbuster" LOTR/Starwars influence, mainly in the music. I'm tired of the trendy "Carmina Burana" syndrome for action sequences (Nightcrawler opening scene), and I'm tired of the useless "off" sound effects (I mean sounds that have nothing to do with what is actually happening), that prevents me to enjoy the "in" sound effects (Nightcrawler's "bamf"..). Oh, well, I guess the insane budget of X2 couldn't be obtained without some sacrifices to the producers' views. Oh, and sorry for that, but to my sense John Ottman is a terrific editor, but he's a poor music writer. From an artistic point of view, of course, I'm not saying he's writing crap, but the dramatic effect of his melodic lines is shallow. Unlike many of you guys, I prefer the Michael Kamen score from the first movie. The musical piece you hear when Wolverine offers a passed-out Rogue his ability to heal brings an emotional climax that is nowhere to be found in X2.
Overall, I'm disappointed as a cinephile, because I'm expecting more, from an artistic point of view, from Bryan Singer. And X2 could have been a better movie with some different choices.
-------- Nevertheless, if one may forgive the ethnocentrism of the Cerebro/Xavier sequence, X2 is definitely one of the most brilliant and clever commercial movies ever made, and one of the most entertaining movies I've seen. To my sense, it's superior to all the recent blockbusters (LOTR, Gladiator, Starwars...) and to all of the comic-book movies (well "Spiderman" is not bad either, I agree) in terms of artistic approach, dramatic cohesion and above all in terms of mastering the pace, which is a difficult art that most of the "commercial" filmmakers can't cope with anymore. Or maybe they simply don't try...? Bryan Singer proves with X2 that he is a terrific director, and one of the very few artistic directors (another being Spike Jonze with the mindblowing "Being John Malkovich) that may be able to have a positive influence on the blockbuster-targeted movie industry during the next years. But, deep inside, I'd really like him to make a more independent movie soon... please?
*Substance 6/10 (would have been higher without the ethnocentrism problem)
*Technical 9/10
*Artistic 7/10
*Entertainment 10/10
**Overall 8.5/10 (which is the highest note I ever gave to a commercial-targeted movie since "Back to the Future")