"You picked the wrong house, Bub"

Rating: 10/10 (4 May 2003)

"X-Men" is responsible for reviving the once dead Super-hero genre of movies. Since then, we've seen Spider-Man and Daredevil protecting the streets of New York while accomplishing box-office success. But 'X-Men', to me, is still the best Super-hero movie since Batman. So it will be rather difficult to achieve the same kind of success with a sequel, right? This is the first 'part 2' sequel from the super-hero genre since Batman Returns. So it's sort of testing the waters, on Hero staying power. 'X2' continues right where the first left off. Wolverine arrives back from his trek in Canada,at Xavier's school for mutants. Magneto is still in a plastic prison for his attack on Liberty Island. And all is right for the mutant world. But not for long. A mutant named 'Nightcrawler', attacks the president by infiltrating the white house with his teleportation powers. Which causes civil unrest in the country. Gen. William Stryker finds out about Professer X's mutant academy, and uses the attack on the president as a means to invade it. Here groups of mutants are seperated, but they find out about Styker's plan to destroy every mutant on the planet using Professer X, and a secret weapon. This situation calls for the X-Men and Magneto's (you may have guessed, he escaped) Brotherhood to unite to save the mutant population. While not exactly better than the first, it is better than most original movies. It starts off wonderfully, like the first movie never ended. The production design was consistant with the first movie, unlike the Batman franchise. And the action was superb and top-notch. My only problems are some characters dont get as much screen time as they should, Cyclops for example is only in the movie for about 20 minutes. But he does make the best of it. And the character 'Lady Deathstryke' should have been more developed. She hardly spoke at all. But the biggest problem (while still small) is the movie is a bit anti-climactic. It does have a climax, but a bit toned down for the X-men. Just a bit. Other than that, its an exciting story with a very brave ending. Everyone gave a good preformance. Most notably, Hugh Jackman (Wolverine), Alan Cumming (Nightcrawler) and Aaron Stanford (Pyro). The movie progressed the X-Men storyline very well (unlike the Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers. I can't wait to see whats in store for us X-fans, in X3
RATING: ***out of****