The evolution of Bryan Singer along with the mutants!

Rating: 8/10 (5 May 2005)

***1/2 out of ****
This time, Bryan Singer has proved that he is much more talented directing a sequel for the X-Men series. The first one was alright, but the second movie is superb. You don't get to know many more characters (at least from the comic books), only the Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming), whose make-up make him much more different and strange than in GoldenEye, where he plays the hacker Boris. But you get to know more characters who help in the plot analysis like William Striker (Brian Cox) and others. What really makes X2 a much more fun movie than its prequel is not just the action sequences which are not only great, they are much greater than the almost none action from X-Men (2000), but also the plot, which is told in a very better way and the script too.
The movie begins much more ambitious than the first one, showing us scenes of attacks like the attack of the Nightcrawler in the white house, the incident in the shopping center and the assault from the Striker's squad in Xavier's teaching school. And not only the film-making of the movie is much greater, but the cast improved a lot their performance, specially Halle Berry, who gets a bigger role as Storm. Rebecca Mijoln-Stamos is much greater as Mystique also, and as sometimes it happens in some movies (like Star Wars - Episode II : Attack Of The Clones [2002], where Anthony Daniels not only plays 3PO but plays some guy in the bar in the beginning of the movie without 3PO's costume), Stamos also plays Grace, the girl who seduces the guard who later gets killed by Magneto by absorbing from his body metal pieces which got inside his body because of Grace's shot in his back. This is really interesting because it shows us that not only the actor or actress can play a better role, but at the same time, can play multiple roles, one with a fantasy costume and another without it. There are also other new actors like Kelly Hu and Aaron Stanford who plays Pyro. There's also bigger participation in the movie by Bobby (Shawn Ashmore). The rest of the cast including Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, James Marsden, Famke Janssen, Anna Paquin and others are still here for our happiness.
In X2, Striker manages to find a way to control mutants in order to make them do what he wants like when Magneto tells him everything about Xavier's mansion so he can find where Cerebro is. Actually Striker's goal is to make his own Cerebro. After Nightcrawler joins the party, they go to the underground base where Striker is trying to recreate the Cerebro. That leads to more action sequences and more plot analysis. There's also something that goes wrong with Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) at the end of the movie, but this I prefer not to spoil.
Overall, X2 is a great sequel and not only I'm looking forward to watch it again, I'm also looking forward for X3. If Singer keeps his job of directing the movies and as the mutants usually do, keep evolving, X3 will surely rock!