Faithful enough to satisfy X fans, entertaining for all

Rating: 10/10 (2 May 2003)

Having grown up with the X-Men comics and Fox's animated TV show in the 90s, it's extremely difficult to stay objective when judging such an accurate adaptation to the big screen. However, I can certainly provide a perspective that is shared by a great number of people, considering X-Men is the best-selling comic books of all time.
While the first movie was mostly an introduction to the two opposing ideologies of 'Professor X' Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Erik 'Magneto' Lehnsherr (Sir Ian McKellen), X2 shifts into a full force 3-way conflict: Magneto leads those who believe that mutants (who represent all minority groups) are inherently superior and should replace 'normal' humans. Xavier believes in the peaceful co-existence between humans and mutants. If Magneto were equated to Malcolm X, Xavier would be the Martin Luther King of the 'mutant crisis' in Marvel's X-Men universe. He runs a school for the protection of young mutants, which fronts as an institute for the gifted. General William Stryker (Brian Cox) holds a radical anti-mutant ideology, and believes they should all be wiped off the earth. To achieve his goals, he manipulates the US president into authorizing a raid on Xavier's school.
While the X-Men lore in the comics was created by Marvel's Stan Lee as an analogy of the 1960's civil rights movement, Bryan Singer's adaptations to the silver screen modernizes it in a way that both remains extremely faithful to the source material, as well as relating the stories to more recent conflicts in the real world.
Those who are unfamiliar with the X-Men comics are often surprised to find the kind of substance that are in the storylines, which stand in sharp contrast to the simple black-and-white 'hero vs villain' stories of other comic books. There's something in them for everyone: romance, tragedy, action, and conflicting political ideologies. Thankfully, the same can be said about this movie, as Bryan Singer set out to bring all of the above to life. Most importantly, Singer has always taken it seriously, to the relief of every long-time fan of Marvel's X universe.
For X fans, the film is packed full of small references and inside jokes, but Singer manages to do this in a way that never detracts from the flow of the main story, and he keeps it very accessible even to those who have never read the comics or seen the old 1990's animated TV series.
Needless to say, the acting is top-notch. Hugh Jackman reprises his role as everyone's favorite Canadian mutant, 'Wolverine', now seemingly far more comfortable in the character. Oscar winners Halle Berry and Anna Paquin return as Storm and Rogue respectively. In my opinion, Halle Berry does a far better job depicting Storm's character in this sequel than she did in the first film, partly due to having a little more screen-time. Newcomer Alan Cumming does an amazing job portraying the much-beloved Nightcrawler, who becomes surprisingly centered in this story. Shawn Ashmore also does a great job as Iceman, who was one of the original X-Men in the '60s, and essentially takes the place of Remy 'Gambit' LeBeau, at least for the time being, as Rogue's love interest.
While the first X-Men movie was a decent introduction into the X universe, X2 feels like the main event: a story that can both be enjoyed as a stand-alone film as well as a part of the much larger plotlines of the comic books in the era when it was written by Chris Claremont (who, by the way, is the writer of this film's official novelization.)
The action is in the calibre of such classics as the Indiana Jones and Star Wars films. Effects feel more polished than those of the first film, now that the production budget has almost doubled. It also stays true to the comics' style of fights, including the often violent battles involving Wolverine -- an element surprisingly kept in the film.
The dramatic and often complex relationships between the characters is included so faithfully that it should even satisfy the segment of X-Men fans who followed the Rogue and Gambit romance storylines in the comics, despite the absence of Gambit in these films (with the exception of his name, Remy LeBeau, which does appear briefly on a computer screen in the film as an inside reference for X fans.)
The ending, while still still holding dramatic significance to those who are unfamiliar with the comics, will serve as a hint to X fans, making it fairly obvious which of the classic X-Men comicbook storylines will be brought to life in X3.
There's no greater challenge than the one film-makers face when adapting stories with such large established fan bases to film. Often times, a balance must be struck between accessibility as a stand-alone movie and satisfaction of the fans. In my opinion, Singer has very successfully done that with X2 even more so than in the first film.
X2 definitely deserves to be the center of a trilogy, or hopefully even a longer series of movies, considering the amount of source material that could still potentially be adapted to screen in the future.
X fans will not be disappointed.