X2

So, there are a couple of things I should get out before I start this review. First off, you might have noticed that I haven't been posting a lot this month. That is because I have been on military training for the past 3 weeks and haven't had a lot of time to both watch movies as well as write about them. I can tell you that there is a good chance that this sporadic posting might be a thing for the next month or two. These are the realities of having a real person job and not getting paid to write these reviews. I am going to do my best to keep watching films and writing reviews where I can, but I wanted my readers to know that if the number of reviews I put out goes down, there is a reason for it.

I write this review with a little bit of hesitancy because I have not re-watched the first X-men and I don't really like reviewing movies out of order. The way that I rationalize this is that the X-men franchise has a problem with consistency in their timeline. At the end of the day, while I like this movie, I'm not totally sure how it connects with the larger timeline if it does at all. The good part about this is that it gives me the opportunity to look at this movie on it's own merits as a solo film. And on it's own, this movie does a pretty good job.

X2 begins with a really cool action scene where a mutant by the name of Nightcrawler (played by Alan Cumming infiltrates the White House and tries to assassinate the President in the middle of a politically charged time where mutants and human relations are not that great. The attempt is unsuccessful, barely, but it underlines the foreshadowing and set up this film does really well that there is a war coming and it's going to be messy.

The movie then goes to Charles Xavier (played by Patrick Stewart) and his school for gifted youngsters and informs the audience how things have been going since the last film. Their nemesis Magneto (played by Ian McKellen) is locked in a metal-less prison for the crimes he committed in the first movie. Wolverine (played by Hugh Jackman) has returned from an abandoned research facility that he believed to have the answers about his mysterious past. Rogue (played by Anna Pacquin) is adjusting nicely to the school and she has a boyfriend in Bobby Drake, or Iceman (played by Shawn Ashmore).

In response to the assassination attempt on the life of the President, the US government authorizes the operations of a mysterious Colonel William Stryker (played by Brian Cox). Styrker has a mysterious relationship with mutants like Charles Xavier and he definitely has a connection with Wolverine. He has a thing against mutants and kidnaps Charles and Cyclops (played by James Marsden) and the X-men must hide from him and discover the true nature of his plot against mutants.

The first thing I wanna mention with this movie is that it was concise and deliberate of who to focus on and who not to focus on. X-men films have always been movies with a large cast. But they also have a tendency to have shameless cameos of random mutants just to show off their power. This was not the case in X2. The cast of this film seemed like it had a purpose each character needed to be there outside of Wolverine. Jean Grey (played by Famke Janssen) was there to find her husband and allowed the movie to further explore the forbidden attraction between her and Wolverine. Rogue was actually a bit of a badass in this movie and wasn't just there to be the little girl who needed to be saved. Even Magneto and Mystique were essential to the plot and it made the team up that happens later in the film make sense. Now I think Magneto has been overused in later films such as Days of Future Past where he didn't really need to be in the film because it was so obvious he was going to remind us all he's the bad guy by the end of the film, but in X2 it just seemed nature for Magneto to be there and for them to have an uneasy alliance form in order to stop William Stryker's plot.

There are supporting characters like Nightcrawler, Storm (played by Halle Berry) and Cyclops who take a backseat in this film and don't have a huge role, but their interactions are pretty limited and I never thought any of them were wasting my time.

Then you've got William Stryker.

Now having never seen this movie before, I never saw Brian Cox's Stryker. The only exposure I had of Stryker was that of Danny Houston from Origins: Wolverine and Josh Helmen in the new films. From those films, I definitely knew who William Stryker was but I guess I never knew exactly how much of an appeal he had until I saw this film.

Brian Cox gives actually one of the best military villain performances I have seen in a long time. He's actually the epitome of the non-mutant threat that the X-men would more than likely face and he does it so very well. And yet there is a personal aspect about his character that is really tragic and really compelling.

And because he's so compelling and the story brings him in on such a personal level, the entire film is actually very small if you think about it. I mean his overarching plot is pretty large in scale but the execution and the entire plot of the movie maintain it in a very small capacity. The story is personal and closely knit, making for less grandiose action, but for better performances and a better story.

 I heard it a lot prior to watching this film and not that I've seen it, I one hundred percent agree. X2 is probably one of the most underrated superhero films, especially prior to the creation of the MCU.

The movie is so personal and centered on building up and developing these characters that I understand now why people were so disappointed by what was supposed to be the final chapter in a trilogy that had two really great installments before Last Stand.

One minor critique with the film having seen all three now and having watched Last Stand before this one, it does do a lot of set up. There's a lot of things that this movie is doing to point towards the final chapter. But here's the thing, it's done in a way that it doesn't take away from the movie as a standalone film. The fact I was able to watch this film and enjoy it on it's own merits as opposed to the other Marvel films where a good portion of the viewing experience is based on your knowledge of the characters and the requirement of watching previous films in the franchise. X2 was definitely a sequel, but it wasn't trying to be the next installment in the X-men franchise, it was continuing the story set up in the first X-men movie.

Another surprising thing about X2 was how well it showed off the X-men's powers. I feel like we live in a world where super powers are not anything new and we need something huge and epic to show off super powers. X2 came out in 2003, CGI wasn't what it is today, and yet I still was amazed at the way they displayed people's powers in this film. Again, I feel like everything was pointing back towards the story and everything served the purpose of the plot, not the spectacle.

X2 isn't my favorite superhero movie of all time because in all honest, while I enjoy the personal and small scale of the story, I felt like it was a little bit forgettable and that's why it's a little bit more of a hidden gem these days. However, it is a strong film. I think it's probably one of the best, if not the best X-men film and it's because it's building off what the original movie gave, pointing towards a sequel but not relying on the hype of that movie to propel this one, and it's its own condensed story that is great to watch on it's own. You don't need to marathon the X-men movies to watch this one, you can watch it on it's own and it will still be a strong film.

X2 is a different breed of movie from a different time. It has the feel and quality of the superhero movies of today, and yet it feels more like a movie as opposed to a comic book movie. You look at movies like X-men Apocalypse and you look at the way this franchise has changed. Now I think this movie benefits from utilizing the themes and ideas that came out of the X-men comic books before they became over used.

X-men has always been used as a metaphor for anybody disenfranchised or in the minority. There's a scene in the film where Bobby actually "comes out" to his family as a mutant and it's actually done really well.

These are themes that have been used over and over again since this movie came out and having never watched this one until now, I guess I watched the lesser tellings of those themes. Again, because this is so personal, because this is told in such a three act story telling way, I really enjoyed it a lot more than any of the other movies and their attempts to tell the story of the X-men.

Again, I don't think this is my favorite superhero movie of all time because I've seen movies tell personal stories and be more epic than this movie was. But this was the first time I had ever watched X2 and it already goes pretty high on my list of superhero films.

But what did you think? Where does X2 rank against the other X-men films? Where does it rank in all the superhero movies of all time? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. I mentioned the exposition of mutant's powers earlier. I was thinking about posting the opening scene with Nightcrawler but this shows off the raw power of Magneto that I think we've gotten from Michael Fassbender but I hadn't really seen from Ian Mckellen until now. Enjoy!