In the late 1990’s Joel Schumacher seemed to be trying desperately to destroy Comic Book movies. His Batman Forever and Batman and Robin were the worst type of summer blockbusters with hokey performances and visual excess that satisfied none of the fans of the characters’ source material. In 2000, a director who was virtually untested in the action department tried to bring the genre back. Even though Bryan Singer had never done a film remotely close to this style of film making, his X-Men was a tremendous success that rejuvenated the genre and began a trend where directors with their own unique style were being brought to franchises, such as Robert Rodriguez on Sin City and Christopher Nolan on Batman Begins.
With the phenomenal success of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man solidifying the position of superheroes as viable box office powerhouses again, Singer sought to bring his X-Men back to the screen. Would he be able to follow-up his already successful first entry into the series, or would X2 become just another spandex-clad flop? Fans shouldn’t have worried. With his cast of heroes retuning, the second X outclassed its forerunner and became maybe the best representation of Marvel’s heroes ever.
X2: X-Men United Starring Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellan, Alan Cumming, Patrick Stewart, Famke Janssen, and Brian Cox. Directed by Bryan Singer.
When Bryan Singer’s original X-Men hit theaters, it was not without its detractors. It was a nice start to the series, but the film didn’t have a ton of action and there was so much time devoted to Wolverine that many other characters were lost in the shuffle. In its defense Hugh Jackman was awesome enough to carry most of the screen time and the cast’s chemistry was good enough even if plot elements (such as Magneto’s ultimate plan) were kind of weak.
With the sequel, Singer pumped up the action, let a few other characters take some spotlight, and introduced a whopper of a villain. Comparatively speaking, X2 is similar in franchise terms to Aliens or The Road Warrior. While the first entry in their series was quite memorable or even classic, the second entry allowed for more action and exploration into those universes.
Right off the bat, Singer gives audiences moments they have been asking for. First of all is the awesome introduction to Nightcrawler, one of the perennial favorites of the X-Men Comic Book continuity. A being able to teleport, his power is quite formidable and often in this film, breathtaking to watch. Here he tries to assassinate the President, with the Secret Service able to do little to stop him. It’s a testament to Singer that he’s able to make this sequence work. Quite often a film with a lot of CGI in a fight scene will look too cartoonish. Those who suffered through Ultraviolet or watched the opening fight in front of the lights in Blade 2 know what I’m talking about. Instead this fight, even though Nightcrawler is disappearing and reappearing at will, has weight to it. The fight seems brutal, not just an exercise.
Inevitably, we catch up with our favorites from the previous film. Magneto is still in his plastic prison, things at Xavier’s School for the Gifted are going well, Mystique (Rebecca Romijn) is still posing as Senator Kelly, and Logan AKA: Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) travels to the arctic north to learn more about his past. I have to mention here that while he looks fine in most of the picture, Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine hair here in the beginning looks ridiculous and unnatural. I know that his hair looks similarly bad at the end of the film, but according to imdb.com that was a pickup shot that had to be done during the filming of Van Helsing in which Jackman had already grown really long hair, pushing his Wolverine wig up. I’m assuming this was also a pickup, but it wasn’t mentioned. Now the nitpicking will cease.
Things pick up with the introduction of Brian Cox’s William Stryker. Cox may not be a man of huge stature, but his commanding presence cannot be ignored. As Stryker, Cox chews up all the scenery around him and spits it out. He dwarfs all others on screen, by using his voice to catapult himself into the frontrunner for audience’s attention. This is really amazing as Stryker as a character has no power, other than his imposing persuasion.
Stryker’s ultimate plan is to get rid of Mutant-kind by eliminating them with their own technology. Stryker targets the machine Cerebro.
On the website MarvelDirectory.com Cerebro is described as:
A machine designed by Professor Charles Xavier for the purpose of locating mutant human beings possessing superhuman abilities. Cerebro does so by detecting the unusual waves of psionic energy (“brain waves”) which superhumanly powerful mutants emit for reasons and through processes which remain unknown. The computer system in Cerebro can roughly measure the amount of superhuman power possessed by the mutant, determine the mutants geographical location, and even specify the identity of the mutants if given sufficient data.
Got that? OK, well basically this machine amplifies Charles Xavier’s (Patrick Stewart) own telepathic abilities, allowing him to find any mutant, or human in this film, on Earth. Apparently the machine can also be used to harm the person it is trying to find if Xavier concentrates hard enough. Knowing this Stryker sets out to find and destroy all mutants.
For muscle, Stryker employs one Miss Yuriko Oyama, or how fans from Marvel know her, Deathstrike. Played here by Kelly Hu, Deathstrike is a silent, menacing killer, who hides great power underneath her diminutive frame. Now, of all the characters in the film, she may be the most underwritten and farthest from continuity. On the other hand, there are so many characters from Marvel’s history that fitting them all in is nigh impossible. What Singer has done is fit Deathstrike so that she is his own version of Darth Maul or Go Go from Kill Bill. Simply put, she is a physical villain that is able to match Wolverine blow for blow while looking cool, and she is actually cooler because she doesn’t speak. On those terms, she succeeds swimmingly as a character.
All of the chemistry from the first X installment returns nicely in this sequel, as does the angst between the triangle of lovers Wolverine, Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), and Cyclops (James Marsden). It’s a testament to Singer and the actors that this subplot works even though ages in the performers range quite distinctly. Janssen is especially good, projecting an earthy quality that makes her quite desirable even though normally she tends to play characters who are on the crazy side. Sadly, Marsden, who is pretty good as Cyclops and is quite genuine in both his love for Jean and his rivalry of Logan, is grossly underused in this film as well.
The lid blows off the film when Stryker’s troops descend upon Xavier’s mansion. Any fans not happy with the first offering of action should have been sated here, as the director gives Wolverine tons of soldiers to hunt. This is Wolverine engaged in a full-on killing spree, with his claws tearing into chests, feet, and anything that gets in his way. Also fun to watch is Daniel Cudmore’s Colossus, who gets to show off his power for the first time as he is able to turn his skin into metal, which allows him to possess gargantuan strength and makes him impervious to most weapons. With Wolverine in “Berserker Mode” and Colossus throwing soldiers through walls, Singer makes this a sequence to cheer through, and really doesn’t let up with the tension.
There is a snowball effect throughout the last half of the film as the tension keeps building and building. Magneto escapes his prison with the help of Mystique. Wolverine, with a small band of mutants, barely escapes a showdown with an army of police officers. They meet up with Jean Grey and Storm (Halle Berry) who have just recruited Nightcrawler to their cause. Then after barely surviving a dogfight with fighter jets, the X-Men must team up with Magneto and Mystique to battle Stryker’s forces in an underground lair, which may have been the place where Wolverine was conceived. All this is orchestrated to near perfection, as the film never seems to be rushed, yet all these plot elements are handled with complete clarity for a proper climax.
Singer even takes time for small moments. Shawn Ashmore’s Bobby Drake AKA: Iceman has some moments filled with tension and uncomfortable laughter as he admits to his parents that he is a mutant. The scene is constructed as if Bobby were coming out of the proverbial closet, which gives the sequence some real weight. Storm and Nightcrawler share a scene of tenderness as do Wolverine and Jean. Mystique even gets in on the act by trying to seduce Logan in a very effective sequence.
The climactic storming of Stryker’s base is filled with thrills, laughs, and tons of action. The final showdown with Wolverine and Deathstrike is the type of fight I wish Christopher Nolan would have included in Batman Begins. On top of this stirring brawl are clever uses for various mutant powers from magnetism to shape shifting. A dam, ready to drown all of our heroes, provides just the right amount of turmoil as the film culminates in one mutant making the ultimate sacrifice to save the others, Wrath of Khan-style.
After all the action and effects in both X-Men films, the real reason they work is because of the chemistry between their actors and the themes of intolerance that have always driven the stories of these characters. X2 ends with a call for peace from the X-Men to the President of the United States as he plans for war with mutants. Driving this home in 2003 was that this call for peace happened as America was about to enter a real war. In the end, the biggest achievement that Singer was able to accomplish with these films was to remain true to the spirit of these characters and the X-Men stories as a whole. Hopefully, this will continue on in this series as well as Singer’s further efforts with his new ventures.
