X2: X-Men United

Gee, is it summer blockbuster season already?  As summer (at least as “summer” is defined by the motion picture industry) starts earlier and earlier each year, Memorial Day weekend is no longer the start of the summer movie season; it’s almost a month into it.  It seems like it was just yesterday we were in the midst of Oscar season, and here we are gearing up for another four months’ worth of sequels, prequels and other such eye candy.  Don’t you just love it? 

Leading off the summer this year is X2: X-Men United, the sequel to 2000’s moderately successful adaptation of the Marvel Comics title featuring mutants with superhuman abilities attempting to live among a population that regards them with fear and suspicion.  While this film wasn’t awaited with quite the wide-spread anticipation of the next Star Wars film, per se, those of us who used to spend their Friday afternoons in comic shops eagerly awaiting the arrival of that weeks’ shipment were looking somewhat forward to this particular film.  Fellow geeks and nerds, it is my pleasure to say that this one is even better than the first one.

In this film, we return to the upstate New York school run by Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), a telepath who strives to find a way for mutants to live harmoniously amongst mankind.  Among his staff are several spectacularly powered mutants who aid him in teaching young mutant children how to handle and live with their abilities.  Unfortunately, there are other mutants with a different line of thought, that mutants are the next step in human evolution and therefore superior to “normal” Man.  The leader of this philosophy is Magneto (Sir Ian McKellen), the Master of Magnetism, a former friend and associate of Xavier’s. 

It seems there is a plot, orchestrated by military scientist William Stryker (Brian Cox, better known to me as the first Hannibal Lecter) to locate and exterminate all mutants on the face of the Earth.  Stryker’s paramilitary goons invade Xavier’s school, meeting super-powered resistance and failing to capture most of the children, but succeeding in their true purpose there.  Meanwhile, Magneto, imprisoned in a plastic jail cell at the end of the first film, is busted out by his closest associate, the shape-shifter Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos).  After Professor Xavier is captured by Stryker and forced to become part of the mutant-hunt, Magneto and Mystique become allies of convenience with the X-Men.  Alliances are formed and broken, conspiracies are formulated and discovered, and Matrix-like kung fu battles are won and lost.  In the end, mutant-kind lives happily ever after, sort of.

X2 moves along at a more jaunty pace than the original, most likely due to there being very little need for character development or set-up.  While this might would be a flaw in an ordinary film, I don’t believe that to be much of a problem here since, as with most franchise-type films, the audience is quite familiar with such details, anyway.  Non-nerds in the audience shouldn’t be too lost, though, as director Bryan Singer lets the action tell most of the story, and there are enough new characters introduced in this film to make things fresh.  The story sprinkles in fan favorite Wolverine’s search for his origins, the introduction of the teleporting mutant Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming) and the apparent death of one of the original X-Men, all of which make this film new enough that it doesn’t become strictly a continuance of the first film.  While X-Men and X2 don’t follow the exact chronology of the comics, the elements these films contain are, for the most part, present in the stories we all know and love, and are placed logically in the structure of the movies.  The details may not be precise, but the spirit of the material is correct, and that makes creative license more forgivable. 

Singer returns to make the follow-up to his original film, and delivers yet another example of how comics-related material can indeed translate well to film when a filmmaker takes the subject matter seriously (“serious” being a relative term when dealing with comic books, I admit).  This trend is one for which poor nerds such as myself have been screaming for years upon years, and we are finally being rewarded for our patience.  Singer, Batman’s Tim Burton and Spider-Man’s Sam Raimi have proven that there are ways to bring such fantastic fantasy ideas to life and maintain some dramatic integrity. 

The actors are also deserving of praise, as none of them take their parts over the top.  Hugh Jackman as Wolverine may be what the younger kids are coming to see, but McKellen stating to one young mutant that he is a “God among insects” with the chill of Brando’s Colonel Kurtz is what us grown-ups appreciate.  Certainly, there are parallels to be drawn with the plight of mutants to other minorities (Cumming and McKellen, both being gay, have stated such ideals are what drew them to this material), but thankfully, such weighty issues are barely noticeable and X2 can be appreciated and enjoyed for what it is: a good example of Summer Blockbuster American filmmaking.

Larry Smoak
May 3, 2003

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