After the success of Bryan Singer’s X-Men, the sequel became inevitable. But what we got not only continued the story but took it to the next level. Because we both love it so much, Citizen-Bot and Swank-motron are going to both offer our thoughts here.
Citizen-Bot: This remains not only my favorite X-Men movie, but one of my favorite superhero movies of all time. It’s in the same pantheon as The Avengers and Spider-Man 2. Having set up their sandbox and characters, they waste no time in playing with them to maximum potential. Of course, I love the fact that three of my favorite characters were featured. Even more than the first film, this was Wolverine’s story, and he gets a lot of opportunity for character growth, especially being put in charge of taking care of a bunch of kids for half the movie.
And then there’s Nightcrawler and Colossus. The opening scene shows what a BAMF (pun fully intended) Kurt Wagner can be, and then the rest of the film he gets to be lovable, funny, and tortured. And when Colossus armors up for the first time during that assault on the school? Still one of my favorite moments of any movie of the franchise. That, and the Wolvie berserker rage that happens during the same sequence.
Swank-Mo-Tron: I don’t think people give enough credit to the X-Men franchise for kicking off this modern era of cinematic super-heroes. And X2 is, perhaps, the best of what Singer had to offer. The first film was clunky in places, but juggled the personalities of the team so that it truly felt like a team picture, but X2 raised the ante on all of that and gave us something truly special. Yes, it might have been a little Wolverine heavy, but would argue that there are many action sequences in the genre that are capably put together as the invasion of the X-Mansion by William Stryker.
And Stryker! Is there a villain my fun to watch than Brian Cox as Stryker? Every line of his is a winner. And he’s played with such a wonderful menace. Who could forget his speech about what his son did to his wife?
This movie, to me, is perfection, both as a film and a monument to some of my favorite superheroes. They’re all given a chance to shine and we see hints and promises of what we are still waiting to see… Colossus and the Phoenix. And it’s for this reason, that this movie was so good, that we no longer acknowledge the existence of the Ratner-directed followup.
Citizen-Bot: Brian Cox as Stryker.The first X-Men film suffered a little bit from having a weak villain. (Because, as I said previously, Magneto isn’t actually the villain– Senator Kelly is) But with him turned into jelly by Act II, all we have is Magneto using the Statue of Liberty to turn the world’s leaders into mutants so they’d no longer be feared. Yeah, it’s what has to be stopped, but he’s doing it for good reasons.
Swank-Mo-Tron: And can we talk about how stunning the opening assassination sequence is? Because it’s stunning.
Citizen-Bot: Like I said– BAMF. But, yeah, how that’s shot– the quick-moving tracking sequence. It’s so kinetic, and even though it’s fast-moving, you can still very easily follow what’s going on. There’s a lot of sequences like that in this film: Magneto’s escape from his plastic prison, Mystique breaking into Stryker’s base, the military assault on the school, the jet fight where (again, Nightcrawler) we have Rogue getting sucked out and then teleporting in and out of the jet. All of these are amazing action sequences. In most great action films you get one or two of these. In this case, we get all of them.
But then there are the small moments as well. We get to see Rogue and Bobby trying to figure out their relationship (and Colossus doing a doodle of what that looks like!). We get to see the entire Drake family and them trying to deal with Bobby being gay, I mean, errr. . .a mutant. And we get John/Pyro get to be an awesome foil for Bobby in a lot of ways. It’s really smart and also true to a lot of comics continuity– foils both in terms of powers and personality.
And then. . . that ending. That final bit with Jean Grey trying to push back the water. I’ll admit. I cried a little.
This is not only my favorite of the X-Men movies, but I think it’s Bryan Singer’s best work as a director as well.
The only complaint I have is that the ending set up so much that was left unrealized.
But Proletaria-tron didn’t think so. He liked X3, and he’ll review that for us next.