AKA: Wolverine Kicks Some Ass

Rating: Null/10 (22 April 2004)

Picking up where the first one left off, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) returns to the mansion after his search for answers into his past have proven fruitless and just as he shows up, everyone's running off in different directions following a mutant assassination attempt of the president. Professor X (Patrick Stewart) goes to the imprisoned Magneto (Ian McKellan) for answers and gets gassed and captured along with Cyclops (James Marsden). Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) and Storm (Halle Berry) track down the would be mutant assassin, who turns out to be Night Crawler (Alan Cumming), who claims that he has no memory of what he was doing there or why. While watching the mansion, Wolverine and the students (Yes, the school actually does have students) are attacked by a bunch of commandos working for a mysterious mutant hater named William Stryker (Brian Cox). Some of the students escape - thanks to man of steel Colossus (Daniel Cudmore) - and some of them are captured, Wolverine kills some of them and escapes with a still wimpy Rogue (a still miscast Anna Paquin), her in movie only boyfriend Bobby Drake/Ice Man (Shawn Ashmore), and John/Pyro to be (Aaron Stanford, replacing whoever that was who was playing him in the first movie) to Bob's house, where his family finally learns he's a mutant and his little brother rats them out to the cops. Well, Magento escapes thanks to Mystique (Rebecca R-Stamos) and a reluctant alliance is formed between the X-Men and Magento to rescue Professor X from Styker, who's trying to use him to kill all the mutants on Earth and is then switched by Magneto to kill all the humans.

Faster, more action, more special effects, and more humor, this is all in all an improvement over the first. However, the climax in which Jean Grey apparently sacrifices herself by using her telekinetic powers to hold back the water spilling out of the dam so as not to bury the X-jet and is herself engulfed by the waters and apparently destroyed, simply doesn't ring true. I mean, Storm and Ice Man were RIGHT THERE, why didn't they just get out and freeze the damn water? Oh right, because that would make sense, would be too easy and the writers were too lazy to think of a more convincing way for Jean to bite the dust. Of course, we all know that Jean will be back in an adaptation of the Phoenix saga...
I would have liked to have seen less Night Crawler (despite Alan Cumming's snappy performance) and more Colossus, and there is still too much focus on Wolverine, but all in all, it's not a bad film. Watered down maybe, but not bad.
Trivia note: in the comic books, Mystique is Night-Crawler's mother, but this is not mentioned in the film.