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X2: X-Men United
That sounds like homo talk!
2005
Review: July 21, 2009
Director: Bryan Singer
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Famke Janssen, Brian Cox, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Halle Berry
Sure!
THE SETUP:
The good mutants and the bad mutants have to band together to stop a human who wants to kill all mutants.
DISCUSSION:
So my friend wanted to see Wolverine and I went along, only to discover when it was over that: he really liked it! He also really liked X-Men 3, the only other X-Men movie he had seen. He really likes X-Men! So I took it upon myself to inform him that if he likes X-Men, he might be interested in knowing that there are GOOD X-Men movies, in addition to the shit sludge he had already seen. So I rented this and plunked him down to watch it, especially given as so much of it follows directly on what we saw in Wolverine. In fact, this movie pretty much made Wolverine superfluous long before it came out, but whatever. Anyway, it was not long into this one before he was laughing to himself, saying “I’m sorry, but I REALLY like these movies!”
So we begin with this infiltration of the oval office by Nightcrawler, who looks like a blue devil and can teleport. You can tell in an instant that this film has some direction smarts going on, mostly in this scene by the way Singer at first keeps the teleportations offscreen, gradually introduces then and quick views of the character more, and finally gets to a nice, slow-motion attack that lets you see what’s happening and gives you a good view of the rather beautiful ink-like teleportation effect. The assassination attempt fails, but it’s gonna make mutants look really bad.
We then re-introduce our characters on a mutant trip to a Natural History museum. Pyro is being a dick and can’t resist showing his power to the puny humans. Jean Grey [FFAABBUULLOOUUSS Famke Janssen] is having trouble controlling the awesome power of her mind! Scott [snore] is concerned. Then they find out about the President’s assassination and repair back to their school. There Professor X [Patrick Stewart, really so good in this role] thinks old enemy Magneto can’t be behind it, because there’s a danger the President might institute martial law and lock all mutants up, which even Magneto doesn’t want. Prof X does a little time in Cerebro, his brain-wave magnifier, pointing out how he can identify all the humans in the world, and also identify all the mutants in the world, and even kill all of either one of them with his mind. Golly, I wonder if this will come up somewhere else in the story? But truth be told, the movie does a good, mostly seamless job of laying out exposition and establishing the characters and their powers for those new to the series. Anyway, Prof X sends Jean and Storm [Halle Berry, yawn] out to Boston in the jet [where do they park it?] to find the mutant who tried to kill the president.
SPOILERS > > >
So Professor X and boring old Scott go to see Magneto in his fuckin’ sweet plastic prison, where he finds out that Stryker has been putting Magneto under mind control and gotten the location of his school! But he can’t warn anyone, because he gets gassed and taken prisoner! Storm and Jean Grey take in Nightcrawler, the assassin, and it’s revealed that he did the assassination under Stryker’s mind control. Then the school gets raided! Wolverine holds most of them off, but a bunch get captured. He escapes with Pyro and Iceman and Rogue, and they hide out in Iceman’s parent’s house. His folks come home, and he comes out to them as a mutant, which has obvious gay overtones. His mother asks what he’s going to do about “the mutant problem,” and later asks “Have you tried NOT being a mutant?” This film got a lot of praise for including this line, a common question when gays are coming out to their parents, but I must mention that Buffy got there first, when she came out as the slayer to her mom at the end of Season Two. Anyway, this is not the first mention of some gay-sounding issue in this film… the entire mutant issue is held up as a gay parable, with people who are different, but not by choice, and what should society do about them, assimilate them? Separate them? Treat them with respect and dignity? Treat them like freaks? And the mutants are pretty bitter about the situation, too, due to the treatment they’ve received from the humans. It’s all a giant totally gay metaphor!
Anyway, so they take off, but are soon pursued by fighter jets which Storm tries to fight off with multiple tornadoes [hey, she’s gotta do SOMETHING]. It’s a little funny to see fighter gets flying through tornadoes without the slightest problems. Anyway, they shoot two missiles, which Jean uses her super-but-totally-out-of-control powers to destroy. Then they’re about to crash, but they don’t—because of Magneto! He spills the secret that Stryker has built his own Cerebro and is planning to kill all the mutants. Now they’ve gotta work together!
So they go in to rescue, blah, blah, Wolverine finds where his metal skeleton was created, Scott tries to kill Jean [Oh yeah—Scott’s in this movie?? Actually when he showed up again I could NOT for the life of me remember when Stryker had taken him prisoner]. Magneto gets in to stop Professor X from killing all the mutants, then makes a few rearrangements and starts him killing all the humans. They rescue him, obviously, and all the humans live, but Jean gives her life in order to hold off the exploding dam just long enough for the crew to get away. The last image shows the lake, and you can see something spreading its wings under the water.
< < < SPOILERS END
When I first saw this movie I asked this fan at work what the whole last bit was about and he explained the whole deal about Jean Grey transforming into Dark Phoenix and how she’s got incredible mental powers but is unhinged, and I was like HELL YEAH GIVE ME SOME OF THAT. Cuz I love me some Famke and I love me some Jean Grey and if she’s going to be the supervillain of the next installment I am ON Fandango right now. Then not only was the third film handed to Brett Ratner, not, to be polite, the most optimal director, and the Jean Grey story reduced to a tiny thread, and that thread rendered in about the least satisfying way possible. Ugh, WHAT a disappointment.
As far as this one, it ain’t The Winter’s Tale, but it’s a good argument that action movies don’t necessarily have to be stupid. The whole conflict between the two factions of mutants and the humans is credible, and the movie finds interesting ways of playing that out so that even the mindless action and special effects sequences seem to be ABOUT something. This particular episode offers some great, operatic heroes and villains stuff, especially with Magneto’s super-cool prison and his uber-cool prison escape. It has a good shape, a good tie-in to the previous film, all of the characters get to advance a little bit, and a few ideas with resonance to the real world. Plus a fairly good story. It’s the high point the series set itself up to fall from.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
Sure! If you like relatively intelligent superhero movies.
