The Apotheosis of Bad Allegory

Rating: 3/10 (28 February 2019)

I've re-watched X2. I have examined it, I have pondered it and, to be honest, my opinions on it really haven't changed very much. It's one thing to aim for the lowest bar possible and just not really try in terms of thematic material and subtext. X2 doesn't do that. Instead, X2 seeks to adapt the God Loves, Man Kills storyline of the X-Men comics and use a superhero movie as an allegory for the Civil Rights movement. The issue is that Bryan Singer lacks the effort to handle this subject with any level of moral responsibility or care, resulting in one of the worst Civil Rights allegories I've ever seen in a fantasy or Sci-Fi work.
The depiction of William Stryker is an absolute joke in this film. Singer wanted to have things both ways; he wanted the "fire & brimstone" extremist of the comics, but he didn't want Conservative audience members to be offended at the depiction of a religious extremist gone off the deep end. Instead, we get a super powerful U.S Army colonel so cartoonishly bigoted that real bigots can watch him and go "Thank God, I'm not that guy." The fact that nobody in the U.S Government could see this person for the frothing-at-the-mouth, xenophobic mad man he is shows a massive lack of care from Singer at making this an allegory for any real world issues.
I suppose I should almost be grateful for the Saturday morning cartoon character bigotry present in William Stryker, because when the film tries to be subtle, it's a million times worse. The dialogue for Iceman's parents couldn't be more on the nose if it tried ("Have you ever tried...Not being a mutant?"), showing a massive lack of respect for the audience's intelligence in terms of how it delivers its social commentary. Don't even get me started on how they eventually try to have Bobby turned in to the authorities, presumably to be killed. That's how human/mutant relations are pretty much framed the whole movie; a battle between others. Good and evil, black and white. In real life, almost every Civil Rights movement has had allies from the opposing side. I'm not saying the film should have swung hard the other way and portrayed allies to the X-Men as "human saviors" (This would have been just as problematic), but to portray oppressed minorities as completely and utterly alone in their suffrage like this movie tries to do is just wrong.
The final nail in the coffin, however, has to be Xavier's scene with the President. Instead of appealing to the President's empathy, reminding him of the untold suffering that those working under him (Particularly Stryker) have wrought upon their fellow man for surface level differences, Xavier's reasoning on why the President shouldn't condone the actions of a former underling who literally tried to commit genocide completely boils down to fear. By Xavier's logic, slaughtering millions of oppressed minorities isn't wrong because it's unethical to hurt innocent men, women and children, it's not wrong because we're all sentient people with thoughts and hopes and dreams and loved ones. It's wrong because if we do allow it, the radical members of those oppressed minorities will rise up and hurt us in return. This line of thinking does have precedent; it's how terrorists rationalize their viewpoints to their targets and victims. While it's definitely accidental, X2 kinda-sorta ends up saying that Civil Rights activists and violent terrorists share the same rhetoric and that peaceful relations between privileged majorities and oppressed minorities is ultimately impossible. The best we can hope for is an uneasy truce. This message isn't just terrifying to contemplate, it's straight up dangerous. It may, in fact, be the worst possible take for a film about Civil Rights.
I'm not trying to make this review political. I am judging it from the perspective of social commentary because that is what Singer so clearly wants me to do. And from that stance, I think this movie is stupid, I think this movie is insensitive and I think its main message, if taken seriously, would ultimately do much more harm than good. If you have such little faith in a Civil Rights issue that you think the only way to convince people of the righteousness of your cause is to frame the argument on how the issue would directly affect them, you shouldn't be making a film about that issue.