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FILM: X-MEN 2
BY DAVID BLUMENSTEIN
& JACOB ZHIVOV
April 28, 2003
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DAVID BLUMENSTEIN
Another day, another comic book movie. Luckily, this
one's better than "Daredevil", which, I've decided, was
let down by the mask Affleck wore which made him look like he was
cross-eyed. If you're gonna wear a mask, make it a full one or don't
bother.
Anyway, this film is the second one based on the characters
and stories found in Marvel's flagship comic book title "The
X-Men" (the first issue of which came out in 1963), about a powerful
telepath, Professor Charles Xavier, who gathers other genetic mutants
to his School For Gifted Youngsters and teaches them to use their
powers for the betterment of the world. Unfortunately, the general
public regards them as dangerous freaks, and the X-Men spend as much
of their time fighting for their right to not be government-registered,
bar-coded and experimented on with pointy things as they do fighting
bad guys.
It kind of makes sense that people would be afraid of
them -- they have some wacky powers. Cyclops can fire mega-destructo
lasers from his eyes. Nightcrawler can teleport around. And Xavier
himself has such mental power as to be able to kill everyone on Earth
with his brain. Which brings us to "X2".
I'm not sure why they insist on calling the film "X2"
(even in the opening titles!), but it's one of the few things that
annoys me about the film. Another main thing is that the BAMF noises
that Nightcrawler makes when he teleports in the comics sound more
like SWWF noises here.
And for some reason, they got rid of Storm's African
accent this time around. Okay, it wasn't that great of an accent on
Halle Berry's part, but one of the nice things about the X-Men comics
is that they have team members from all over the world, and this is
not really reflected in the movies. Everybody's just American. Why,
just look at this quick chart:
COMICS STORM: African
MOVIE STORM: African, then American
COMICS WOLVERINE: Canadian
MOVIE WOLVERINE: American
(ACTOR WOLVERINE: Australian)
COMICS COLOSSUS: Russian
MOVIE COLOSSUS: American
COMICS SIRYN: Irish
MOVIE SIRYN: Dunno, actually
At least Nightcrawler's still German.
Obviously these are pretty piddling problems. This film
is definitely an improvement on its predecessor, X-Men (1999), which,
as director Bryan Singer puts it, "was almost like a preview for
X2" (there he goes calling it X2 again). Thing is, you really should
have seen the first movie if you want to "get" what's going
on, although they do insert lots of bits of helpful catch-up dialogue
throughout.
This film felt like a real X-Men story, by virtue of there
being more X-Men, more fighting and more "team spirit". My
favourite bits, as a comic geek, were the bits where you see the young
X-Men manifesting their powers ("Fuck -- it's Siryn!").
There's a lot of action, there's more actual character
stuff, there's some witty gags that come off, and Wolverine kills many
more people. I don't think there's anything to top the opening scene
of the first movie (where a young Magneto manifests his powers as his
parents are led away to their deaths by Nazi troops) in terms of pure
gravity, but still all this good stuff, and very few awkward moments.
JACOB ZHIVOV
I love the X-Men and was glad when the first movie was
not a complete raping of the comic book. This film started the craze
of comic film adaptations that we are now seeing, so we were all very
excited when the X2 preview came in, because they could only improve
on what already has been put into play plus one of my favourite characters,
Nightcrawler, was appearing. I was all ready for BAMFing goodness.
The film finally takes us to the core of the X-Men comics, the good
mutants fight as a team to stop some crazed army man from doing bad.
The last film lacked this action as it was focused more on the characters
but this film lets loose with some berserker Wolverine action and some
very excellent X-Jet flying.
Much like the comics, the film uses humour to defuse some of the more
intense moments and mixes nicely with the major themes of tolerance
and acceptance of those who are different from us, which was why Stan
Lee started this comic series in the first place.
A sequel that may be better than the original.
X-Men: *****
X-MEN 2 (X2)
Stars: Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Anna Paquin, Ian
McKellen, Famke Janssen, James Marsden, Alan Cumming, Kelly Hu, Brian
Cox
Release Date: April 30, 2003
Rated: M
Running Time: 120 minutes
Showing: Fucking everywhere
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