X2: X-Men United was released in 2003 three years after the first X film with Bryan Singer returning to his role as director. The rest of the cast makes a return as well except for the boring Toad and Sabretooth who both got the ax. In their place we get Nightcrawler (awesome), Pyro, Lady Deathstrike, and the father and son duo William and Jason Stryker. Just like the first movie in the series this one gets a home run. It’s all in the title, good and evil must fight together to defeat an even greater evil… a human! Albeit a powerful human employing the help of the mutants he wishes to destroy.
-Begin spoilers
There are lots of things to like about this movie. You get to see where Wolverine got his claws, Mystique as Grace (Rebecca Romijn sans makeup), the X-Mansion attacked, lots of Nightcrawler, plus the beginning of Jean’s… problems. The first scene starts out with Nightcrawler’s (forced) attempted attack on the president. Even the secret service men can’t protect the president against a mutant like Nightcrawler. All they can do is run around with their guns pointed saying ignorant things to each other like “Multiple subjects.” Nightcrawler runs towards a guard only to disappear and reappear right in front of the guard to kick him in the chest. The secret service men huddle around the president with nothing left to do but hear the gunshots get closer. Then he fights a room full of men singlehandedly and moves so fast all we see are flashes and puffs of blue brimstone. Needless to say it’s a great opening scene.
Magneto is locked up in his plastic prison which only serves to make him seem more formidable. But even Magneto can’t resist Stryker’s “powers of persuasion” and after giving away information about Xavier’s school and Cerebro, he tells Professor X “You should have killed me when you had the chance!!!” Just when you thought the drama had reached a fever pitch, think again. Next the mansion is raided military style but not before a girl with a sonic scream named Siryn wakes up the rest of the sleeping mutants. Now it’s a race to escape the mansion! Colossus has a very small cameo role whose most notable part is where two of Stryker’s men blast him with their guns, to which he responds by looking down at his chest where they fired, and then tossing them both through a wall. It’s awesome, but for some reason they gave him an american accent. That’s big budget movies for you.
Getting to see Rebecca Romijn as herself is ironic and funny. She seduces a guard just so she can pump his ass full of iron. This enables Magneto to escape his prison through some pretty brutal means. His captors feebly attempt to retract the walkway to his cell but, it’s Magneto. The dude can levitate; with the return of the use of his powers nothing the humans can do will stop him. We’re also treated to a snarky quip by Magneto, “Mr. Laurio never trust a beautiful woman, especially one who’s interested in you.” Pyro gets his own scene blasting up Bobby’s (Iceman’s) front yard. He says “You know about all those dangerous mutants you hear about on the news? I’m the worst one.” I’m not so sure about that… but the scene is pretty cool. Following the escape from the cops the X-Jet gets two missiles fired on it and Jean almost saves the day with her increasing powers but falters and the back of the jet is blown open and Rogue gets sucked out! Talk about drama. Nightcrawler saves Rogue and Magneto – of all people – saves the X-Men from crashing!
Now it’s time to stop Stryker, and Mystique easily tackles a room full of military men to gain access to their control room. Wolverine has a fight scene with Deathstrike and it’s awesome. It’s pretty much like having to fight yourself, and that’s always cool to see. Magneto and Mystique make it to the second Cerebro and use a simple yet effective (genius) tactic to gain access, Magneto simply pulls the pins from the soldiers’ grenades. It’s suspensful enough that the lives of all mutants hang in the balance but then, instead of saving the day Mystique impersonates Stryker and orders his son to target all the humans!
-End spoilers
With some new baddies and the twist of forcing the X-Men to join forces with Magneto, this movie is pumped full of action and drama. If you liked the first film chances are you’ll like this one too. And if you didn’t, well, maybe you’ll like the little birdie that’s coming up on both of my hands.
The Movie Lady
themovielady@comicattack.net
This movie was great. Non stop action and Nightcrawler looked bad ass. Too bad he had to split the scene after this one…
The opening sequence with Nightcrawler was perfect! I loved that fact that a lot of this movie was based off of God Loves Man Kills which is one of my fav X-Men stories. I was also more impressed with the Wolverine vs Lady Deathstrike fight than I was with the Sabretooth fight in the first movie.
This is the best movie in the franchise but the whole thing about Nightcrawler not being in the 3rd because of events in the video game that came out after this movie is just stupid.
I thought Nightcrawler wasn’t in the third because of disagreements between Cumming and the director?
What was also mentioned was that because events in the game took place right after the movie and Nightcrawler went to hell then he couldn’t be used in the 3rd movie. That was also part of the argument used as well.
LOL @ “little birdie” 🙂
I read that Cumming didn’t want to sit through the daily/lengthy make-up process again, so he opted out.
Can’t say I blame him.
great post with the liberal use of the word “pump”.
BOO! HISS HISS! I must be alone in not liking this franchise 🙂
This one made Bobby into a Pu$$y 🙁
I did like this movie but I’ll never understand why it had to be a military thing instead of religion. I guess that would have been too “dangerous”. lol
I don’t agree with everyone callin’ Bobby a punk in this one hell he was a kid with very little field experience so he’s not about to go all out and start kickin’ ass all over the place. Actually he’s one of the closest to his comic counterpart as it took FOREVER for Bobby to realize what he really could do.
Dude, there is no way the movie Iceman could be considered as one of the “closest” to the comic book counterpart.
The personality is TOTALLY different in the film where he’s a smooth ladies man and the ingenue. But in the comic he has a god-awful love life and was the jokester/prankster. He was so not either of those things in the film.
Now power level, ok I can see the relation there. But even then…what did he do in X3 when he finally iced up? Headbutted Pyro. Woo.
I was working at an electronics store when this movie was released on DVD, and I played the Nightcrawler scene on about every surround sound system available at the time…It never got old.
X2 was the last X-Men movie that I actually enjoyed. This franchise is long overdue for a reboot. My ideal X-men movie has yet to be made.
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