X2 (2003)
Directed by Bryan Singer
Produced by Lauren Shuler Donner and Ralph Winter
Screenplay by Michael Dougherty, Dan Harris, and David Hayter
Story by David Hayter, Bryan Singer, and Zak Penn
Box office $407.7 million
You can learn most of what you need to know about the differences between this film and the first one by comparing their opening scenes. Whereas X-Men began with a powerful but utterly grounded scene, comic book powers used sparingly as an accent mark to the inherent drama, X2, released after Sam Rami's Spider-Man had smashed box offices with a film that brought comics to Hollywood instead of Hollywood to comics, opens with the biggest, most impressive display of comic book powers yet depicted on the screen at the time, the plot and characterization secondary to this indulgent showcase of Nightcrawler unhindered. The film that follows spends its first hour a lot more comfortable in its skin than its predecessor, showcasing powers and conflicts with less concern for staying grounded and accessible to a mainstream audience. In fact, as the box office returns suggest, A LOT of people went to see this film who hadn't seen the first one, and these folks were looking for comic book heroes.
Singer's directing matures as well and shows a greater mastery of cinematography, some subtle but very artistic choices made throughout that first hour. Additionally, new characters are introduced who quickly prove endearing in the forms of Nightcrawler, Pyro, and even Iceman (who, though featured in the first film, was a bit character then). And Ian McKellan's Magneto manages to shine brighter than ever before.
But then...something goes wrong. The last hour of the film almost gets lost within itself, so rigidly clinging to a plot full of holes, conveniences, and a boring villain set in a boring setting, that the artistry and characterization fall to the wayside in favor of just trudging through to a damn climax and resolution. It's tedious and hard to watch, almost an entirely separate film. Sure, we end strong, Jean's death managing to be incredibly moving even in spite of the sacrifice making no sense and Jean and Cyclops being the characters with whom we were least invested, but for roughly an hour prior to that moment, the film lost itself somewhere.
I think you can chalk this up to two factors:
1. As bold an indulgence as this film felt after Singer's first fearfully grounded film, it still doesn't fully take the leap. The X-Men take most of the film before even getting into their unimpressive black leather costumes, for example, and that has me thinking that the only reason this film settled on someone as boring as Stryker as its arch-nemesis was because Singer wanted to do a government conspiracy film but didn't have confidence that he could sell a general audience on giant sentinels. Crazed fat dude with a Southern accent would have to suffice instead. Oh, and Lady Deathstrike.
Which leads me to the second factor...
2. Underused women. Far be it from me to claim this film is in any way purposefully sexist. In fact, it goes out of its way to show us female police officers and fighter pilots in several scenes. And yet, with a comic franchise best known for its ahead-of-its-time focus on powerful and complex female characters, the female characters of this film are never given space to breathe. Pyro can get multiple solo scenes to develop his character, but two films in, Rogue is still never given a moment to explore her thoughts and feelings in isolation without some dude sharing the scene and upstaging her. Applying the criteria of the
Bechdel Test, we are never once given a scene only starring one or more women in which the topic of conversation isn't a man. Imagine how much more compelling these characters might have become if Rogue and Jean had been given a scene to discuss mutually fearing their powers the way Bobby and Logan are given a scene to drink soda in the kitchen and discuss precious little.
And thus, the real weakness of the film is that the female characters never shine. The script was supposed to provide compelling character arcs for both Rogue and Jean, but, short of Jean's supposed death at the close, these characters never manage to do or feel anything impressive on the screen. Storm, at least, gets to drop a few lines about faith and disillusionment, but they are said to Nightcrawler, who the film is far more interested in exploring as a character. And this becomes the most problematic when we get to that final hour with Stryker. He isn't supposed to be the interesting villain. He's the mastermind with keys to Logan's past, but the big bad villain of this film is set up to be Lady Deathstrike, and she proves to be a complete and total non-entity, even mind-controlled from her first moment on screen to the second of her death so that she doesn't have any possible chance of ever providing characterization.
We are given SO MANY women on screen in this film. Singer really makes an effort, and he never attempts to overtly sexualize them either (he's even tame with Mystique this time around), but yet he will not give them time on screen to become their own characters. They are never given a chance to grow and entice us. Thus, we get bored when we should be intrigued by Jean's struggle to choose between Scott and Logan, Rogue's struggle over whether or not she can trust herself to love Bobby, Storm's struggle with faith versus disillusionment, and Lady Deathstrike's struggle for self-determination. In lieu of all this, we get reaction shots of Anna Paquin freaking out a whole lot and Famke Janssen looking mildly sad and intense.
I know the issue of cameos came up in discussing the last film, and this one certainly lets them fly, but I feel even more upon this rewatching that it's done tastefully, each of these characters regularly reappearing throughout the film to give a firm sense that we have met the full student body of Xavier's School rather than what we got in the last film -- three or four familiar faces amidst a sea of anonymous bodies.
So X2 remains an extremely mixed film for me, neither as great as I thought it was when I first saw it in theaters nor as bad as I decided it was upon repeated viewings. It does so much right, but the little it does wrong sure catches up with it in that final hour.
Minor Details:
- This film clearly had a new hair/makeup person who revamped most of the looks for this film, but they made Wolverine too damn pretty. His hair is supposed to naturally take on the Wolverine shape, yet, in many scenes (though not in the poster above) his hair has been cleanly cut into that shape like he just stepped out of an X-salon.
Continuity issues:
- Wolverine's flashbacks to the Weapon X program provide several specific shots that don't at all match what we'll be shown in X-Men Apocalypse. Granted, that film took place in an altered reality, but would that really explain the change in where Wolverine was kept before he escaped or what his reaction was to drawing his claws for the first time? Pity, as they recreated the hallways of Stryker's facility to a T.
- Kitty Pryde is played by the second of three actors across the first three films, and this one appears (and is described as being) significantly younger than her counterparts in the other two films for some reason.
Adaptation issues:
- C'mon Singer. This should have been a sentinels film!
Cameo X-Men appearances:
- Hank McCoy (actor will change in the third film)
- Jubilee
- Colossus
- Syren
- Kitty Pryde
- Leech(?)
- The New Mutants, possibly including Danielle Moonstar, Sam Guthrie, and Roberto DaCosta (impossible to be certain)
- COUNTLESS X-related characters listed in Stryker's computer file, including (but not limited to) Xi'an Coy, Gambit, and Omega Red.
Grade: B (first half deserves an A+, second half deserves a C-)
