The claws are out as X2 reshuffles the X-Men to focus on Jackman.

While X-Men delivered an adequate if vaguely unsatisfying introduction to the world the marvel’s mutants, X2, X2: X-Men United, or just plain old X-Men 2 nails it. Released in 2003, this follow-up takes everything that worked in the original and cranks it up a few notches. Bryan Singer returns to direct, and this time, there’s more action, more character development, and a plot with all the intrigue and agility of Nightcrawler’s attack on the White House.

When a brazen mutant attack on the White House comes within a split second of killing the President, Colonel William Stryker (Brian Cox) seizes the opportunity to use it to get authorisation for his masterplan to wipe out mutants once and for all. But as Striker carefully orchestrates his conspiracy, Magneto (Ian McKellen) plots his countermove from a plastic prison. For the X-men themselves, different challenges await as Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) delves into his past and Jean Grey confronts her future as she wrestles with the aftereffects of her use of Cerebro.

What makes X2 such a satisfying sequel is how it embraces the darker, more complex themes of its source material. Mutant rights and the tension between humans and mutants take centre stage, but rather than feel like a rerun of the first movie’s slightly dry legislative quagmire, X2 escalates it. Enter Stryker, played with steely menace by Brian Cox, who gives the X-Men—and audiences—a clear-cut villain you love to hate and, crucially, a veteran thespian who can go toe to toe with the likes of McKellen and Patrick Stewart. Stryker’s personal vendetta against mutants and the wider ramifications of his scheme give the movie a sharper line between good and evil than Magneto’s misguided but ultimately not entirely unjustified machinations in the first movie.

Global genocide might seem somewhat heavy fare for a comic book movie but X2 manages to balance the sheer horror of its concept with great character work, terrific action sequences and a deftness of touch which ensures the stakes never overwhelm the story but are likewise never forgotten. This isn’t the abstract conceptual devastation that would be wrought by Thanos years later in Avengers: Infinity War, this was systematic, deliberate extermination where your friends and family could be eradicated simply for who they were. It’s a much more direct and potent expression of the X-men’s comic origins than the first movie dared to make.

X2 also makes good on Patrick Stewart’s last line of X-Men, when he mentions feeling “a great swell of pity for the poor soul who comes to that school looking for trouble” as Stryker’s assault on Xavier’s School For The Gifted provides a great showcase for the student’s ability to defend themselves and for Singer to direct an action sequence centred on Hugh Jackman’s adamantium-clawed Wolverine that’s brutal but entirely bloodless.

There’s no doubt that one of the big lessons taken from X-Men was that, however much the source material was an ensemble piece, the movies were inevitably going to become the Wolverine show. He’s the Michael Jackson to the X-Men’s Jackson 5 and given there was no point resisting it, X2 leans right into it. Logan’s past links directly to Stryker’s plot and Hugh Jackman relishes the opportunity to dive deeper into his character grounding the wider stakes in something intensely personal. There’s a bit more to do for Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) this time too as Singer carefully lays some foreshadowing that at the time got fans hopes sky-high only for the next movie to dash them in the cruellest way.

Of course, the increased focus on Wolverine means, yet again, the other cast members must take a step or two back. Halle Berry’s Storm at least seems slightly less baffled this time around yet still has far less to do than her character – and her powers – would have you expect. But most short-changed of all is poor old James Marsden’s Cyclops. If you’re one of the many who objects to the way the character is treated in X-Men: The Last Stand, you may want to take your ruby-tinted glasses off and take a good long look at X2 again. Marsden is pretty much absent for the entire movie, appearing briefly at the beginning and then again during the finale for a total screen time amounting to less than 10% of the entire film. It’s not quite fair to lay all the blame for Cyclops’, Storm’s and Rogue’s sidelining at Jackman’s door though. Ultimately, the film needed room to introduce some new characters as well as build up some of last round’s supporting cast.

Anna Paquin’s Rogue, having been so central to the plot of the first movie, is reduced to the role of girlfriend as the movies start to build up the character of Ice Man (Shawn Ashmore) while the introduction of Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming) not only kicks the whole plot into action but also bolsters the X-Men ranks with a fantastically nuanced and sympathetic performance of one of the comic’s most compelling characters. On the villainous side, we get to see the gradual fall of Pyro (Aaron Stanford) as he’s radicalised by Stryker’s actions and seduced by Magneto’s rhetoric while Stryker himself has a beautiful and deadly mutant sidekick of his own in Lady Deathstrike (Kelly Hu), although reigning over all of the supporting characters is Rebecca Romijn’s fantastic Mystique.

Overall, though, X2 is a triumph of comic book storytelling on the big screen, delivering action, entertainment and moral and emotional stakes in equal measure. It’s a textbook example of how to do a superhero sequel right, and it remains one of the high-water marks for the genre and certainly the highwater mark for the X-Men movies even decades later. With a script that respected the source material and both the fans and the casual viewer, and a cast firing on all cylinders (regardless of the treatment of their characters), X2 leaves you wanting more—not just for the X-Men, but for what superhero films can be at their best.

x2 review
Score 8/10


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