X2 Gonna Give It To Ya

May 5, 2003

I’m not sure how I got convinced that standing 2 hours out in the rain for X2 was a good idea, but considering I had to battle every other nerd for a spot on Friday night in Westwood, I guess I didn’t have too much of a choice. Luckily, there was a double digit party with me to keep me occupied in line. I’m not about to say X2 was worth a 2 hour wait in line, but as I left the theater, I certainly wasn’t bitching and whining about my miserable condition, which was a good thing.

X2 is pretty much everything X-Men was, taken to the next level (for better or worse). With all the setup taken care of in the first movie, X2 gets to let the returning characters run free, pretty much from the start. The increased budget seemed entirely for the special effects, as almost every scene has someone using wacky mutant powers. Which is a good thing.

Hugh Jackman is essentially the main character, finally getting to cut loose with the Wolverine character a little bit. Credit to Jackman for remaining charismatic and cool with the single worst haircut in movie history. Alan Cumming’s Nightcrawler has a great introduction and some tidy character development throughout. Rogue isn’t given much to do, but setting up Iceman and Pyro as competitors and opposites parallels nicely with Magneto and Xavier’s relationship. Once again, Ian McKellen is so effortlessly regal in his portrayal of Magneto it makes everyone else look bad. He only has a three or four key scenes, but he just exudes the right amount of menace. Halle Berry’s Storm is duller than dirt, Oscar or no. The laughable wig doesn’t help (actually, there’s a lot of bad hair in this flick). In general, everyone has their own featured scene, and as a collection of bits, the movie’s really enjoyable.

Really, the main problem is that there are just too many characters and plots going on simultaneously, and nobody gets enough screen time, and there’s no big climax to the movie. You just end up bouncing back and forth between stories, with the bare minimum of a real plot. I didn’t have much of a problem, having read X-Men religiously all the way up until high school, but there’s a lot that needs to be filled in here to be considered a real movie.

In particular, the love triangle between Jean Grey, Cyclops and Wolverine is given so little time that none of it really makes sense. This is exacerbated by James Marsden’s complete lack of screen presence, to the point where nobody understands why Jean even gives Cyclops the time of day. Jean’s increasing power potential throughout the movie isn’t really explained either (I know what it is, but anyone that hasn’t read the comics or watched the cartoons probably won’t).

The last hour of the film just seems to go on and on, with seemingly nine endings (one for each character), and yet it constantly restarts. It’s a frustrating way to finish off what’s a fairly decent movie. Still, the film remains satisfying overall, especially to anyone that dug on the first movie or the comics. I think everyone I was with liked it, and most of them only had the first film as reference.

Posted in Moving Pictures