Opinion

X2

Dir: Bryan Singer
Starring: Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellern, Hugh Jackman, Famke Janssen, et al

"The time has come for those who are different to stand united"

An assassination attempt is made on the President of the United States by a blue-skinned teleporting mutant called Nightcrawler. Wolverine is on a quest to discover the origins of his adamantium skeleton. Something very bad is happening to Magneto, locked in his plastic prison. A US Army officer with a dark secret in his past is looking for excuses to exterminate mutants. Life around the X-Mansion has rarely been so frenetic.

At the time of the first X-Men film's release, a commonly-offered view was that it made a great introduction to the characters and set-up for a series. Singer demonstrates the validity of this view by launching straight into the second film without recapping the first, and trusting his audience to keep up. This is a major benefit to the film, which speeds along at a fair old clip as a consequence, not weighed down by unnecessary exposition.

Plot-wise, the film draws heavily on themes from the source comics without going too closely into retread territory (there are some remarkable similarities with a story in Ultimate X-Men do occur when thinking back after the end of the film, and the parallels with the classic story God Loves, Man Kills go far further than just having a villain with the same name). General Stryker is a great villain, being a fallible, angry human, rather than an 'evil mutant', and his wider role in the X-Men universe (a hidden history with one of the characters, some other stuff I won't spoil) give him some weight too. In this world, he hasn't just appeared out of nowhere to be this film's badguy.

Tonally, the film is also darker and more mature. The parallel with The Empire Strikes Back as the middle film of a trilogy has been drawn (by the filmmakers as much as by anyone), and it's a reasonable touchstone. Structurally, it's quite different, but it does take some of the characters and their situation into far more emotionally complex territory than the first film.

The cast of characters this time round contains most of those from the first film and an impressively-expanded additional roster. The performers involved do themselves credit by treating seriously what might have been played as (literally) two-dimensional, and Jackman once again illustrates that no one else on earth could possibly have delivered such an accurate Wolverine. Those members of the team given short-shrift in the last film have expanded roles here, and while characterisation isn't the primary focus, most of them do at least get decent action scenes. In light of this cast expansion, it seems that Singer's confidence level between the first and second films has gone through the roof. The direction here, even in big action scenes with many characters is extremely assured, and sits well ahead of that in the first installment, which for an action film occasionally looked rather static.

As a cinematic experience, X2 is a serious winner - action, humour, characters with 'real' motivations rather than plot devices, and a clear understanding of how to tell a solid cinema story with a beginning, middle and end which nevertheless lays the groundwork for the next installment all come together into an immensely satisfying whole.

As a comic-based cinematic experience, it wins even more. I've been an X-Men fan for a long time, and the realisation of that world and its characters begun so well last time just gets better here. Nightcrawler's teleportation, for instance, is traditionally accompanied by a distinctive "Bamf" sound, which Singer gets *exactly* right. In fact, considering Nightcrawler was always going to be one of the toughest characters to realise (blue skin, pointed ears, three-fingered and -toed, prehensile tail), I can't imagine anyone thought it possible that he could be recreated for film so brilliantly. The change of 'Colossus' from flesh to living armour likewise provides a fanboy shiver. And the hints (SPOILER WARNING) about Jean Grey's future involvement with The Phoenix offers a tantalising hint of what's to come in X3. In fact, at the very end, I thought the filmmakers were going to go all the way... you'll see what I mean.

X-Men set a new standard for comicbook films, which last year's Spider-Man matched in some ways and exceeded in others. X2 just pushed the bar higher again. The Hulk has some pretty significant targets to beat.

Highly Recommended