X2

Release Date: May 2, 2003

Watch Date: September 19 – September 23, 2023

“After an anti-mutant ‘black ops’ specialist abducts Xavier, imprisons his students and steals Cerebro, the fugitive X-Men and newcomer Night Crawler join forces with Magneto to rescue their brethren and forestall a holocaust.”

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    This is one of those rare times where the sequel is better than the orignal.

    The scenery is still dark and grey, and it’s still trying to be extremely dramatic. Those are just features of the X-Men films, I think, and you have to be willing to buy in to that in order to be a fan of these movies and maybe I just like brighter and more colourful films? I think drama can occur naturally in superhero movies, just look at later Marvel films, but I think when it’s forced it’s very obvious.

    What this movie does better is within the characters themselves. Now I’m not saying that the characters are more well developed or fleshed out, they’re not. None of them are. The cast is just too big, and unlike the Avengers where the ensemble cast had each had their own films previously to flesh them out, we’re just thrown into the X-Men world with characters that have one or two personality traits and expected to feel for them. If you’re a fan of the comics you’ll get more out of it, but, what about all those people who just want to watch a superhero movie? I digress, because while the characters aren’t explicitly written in a way that makes them in anyway superior to the previous film, they are acted in a much better way. These actors have either spent more time in the skin of these characters, learning about them, and interacting with the fans in a way that has taught them about their superhero personas, or they’ve just become better actors in the intervening years but everything feels a lot less wooden and forced. Characters affection for one another seems much more genuine and real, and while everyone is still a bit of a cardboard cutout, they’re definitely trying to put more emotion and history into the performances than they did in the previous film where it was clearly just people reciting lines that had been written for them.

    The problem is, despite the improvement in characters, this film is still pretty boring, and so there’s not a lot to talk about. The plot is a lot more insidious, and therefore feels like more of a real threat, but at the same time Stryker is kind of a boring villain – again I think he’s probably a lot more intimidating if you know his comic history – and his mutant accomplice is…not at all intimidating. I think Magneto does a fantastic job of toeing the line between being part of the problem and part of the solution and he once again is my favorite character in that while I could never agree with his methods, I definitely see how the torture and pain that has been inflicted on him has warped his mind and affects his decisions. He’s a sympathetic bad guy, and I don’t think we get a lot of those in modern media. In a franchise full of black and white, he insists on being grey, and that’s a talent.

    Mostly my favorite part of this film is Akali Lake. None of the stuff that happens at Akali Lake, I should clarify, but just that the dam is from my hometown. I love the scenery. I love seeing my literal home projected up on the big screen. I love the landscape of where I’m from, and I think everyone else should love it too. You can also tour the dam and see props from the movie. It is…not that interesting. It’s a dam. But I mean, if you’re big on X-Men you probably could do it? I did it once, at a very young age and I have no desire to ever do so again.

    They clearly set this film up for a sequel, and since it’s twenty years in the future allow me to spoil for you that there will absolutely be a sequel, and I don’t think I liked it very much, but we only have six more days until spooky season so I’m pretty sure that’s going to be a problem for future Doc and present Doc can rest easy knowing that she is off the hook for any more X-Men movies for at least a little while.