X2: X-Men United

Soon you will all mutate into readers of my review. But first, a song. STUCK ON YOU-This is the first movie with a Lionel Richie title that I’ve actually wanted to see. But it would have been a LOT more interesting with Woody Allen and Jim Carrey in the leads. As it is, Greg Kinnear and Matt Damon still look pretty funny as Siamese twins and the Farrellys haven’t missed yet as long as they’re directing. When they’re only writing or producing, though, watch out. It’ll probably suck. And isn’t it funny that the phrase “Oscar winner, Cher” elicits so much laughter?

FINDING NEMO-This still looks a little weak as far as Pixar goes, but it looks better with each preview. This one takes a step back, though and looks like just a teaser. Albert Brooks and Ellen DeGeneres are usually funny, though, so I’m there.

28 DAYS LATER-If Sandra Bullock comes back as a zombie in this one I’m going to be severely disappointed. But with Danny Boyle behind the (very cheap) camera, this zombie/epidemic flick looks great. Damn sight better than The Beach. (Of course, I liked that one. Sorry.) And the video effect just adds to the creepiness. Zombie-rific!

HOLLYWOOD HOMICIDE-I never, EVER want to see Harrison Ford shake his ass again. And are he and Josh Hartnett supposed to be father and son or partners? They really act like father and son. Even some of their lines seemed that way. Weird. This looks funny, but scary all at the same time. But I guess I have to see it because of Harrison. But I’m more looking forward to the Indy movies coming out on DVD in November. That freakin’ ROCKS!

By the way, is the young hunk/old hunk thing a winning combo or just a marketing move? I guess we’ll see, but I’m leaning towards the latter. “How can we get moms and daughters into an action comedy that usually only guys would want to see? FORD AND HARTNETT!!”

Freaks.

And now, on to the Grand Mutation.

There are very few sequels that are actually better than the first of the series. And some of those are up for debate. The Empire Strikes Back, I think, is universally seen as a better film than Star Wars. Some say The Godfather, Part II is better than the original. There are even those who say that James Cameron improved on the Alien series and his own Terminator movie. (I’m not so sure about that last one. Love T2, but the first has an edge.)

I guess we’ll have to add Bryan Singer’s X-Men movies to that list. While the first film was exciting and had a lot of cool stuff going on with the characters, I still felt detached from most of them. If Jean Grey or Cyclops had been killed I really wouldn’t have cared too much except that they are some of the main characters in the comics.

This time out, though, he managed some emotional investment in all of the lead characters. (Yeah, we still don’t care too much about Storm, but I think it’s obvious that the filmmakers don’t, either. That’s why Halle Berry probably won’t be back for a third film. Too bad.)

But I get ahead of myself.

X2 (hate that title, actually) picks up where X-Men left off. Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is still looking for his origin story, Magneto (Ian McKellen) is still in his plastic prison and Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) and Cyclops (James Marsden) are still planning on making little mutants.

When Wolverine gets back, though, everything takes a turn for the worse. Not only does Cyclops pick up his own jealousy, but new character Iceman (Shawn Ashmore) even gets jealous of him because of Rogue’s (Anna Paquin) reaction to the Wolv-man’s coming home.

Oh, and there’s the whole assassination of the President plot. But who cares about that.

Alright, I’ll get into it.

The movie opens with a daring (and very cool) attempt on the life of the President (Cotter Smith) by Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming), a teleporting lizard-man. But who put him up to it?

It all started with a man named William Stryker (Brian Cox), a military man who may have something to do with the creation of Wolverine. Now he has a way of controlling mutants and he means to destroy all of them with the help of Magneto and Dr. X (Patrick Stewart).

So how do you stop a mad-man from killing all of the mutants? Join up with the other side, of course. The X-Men must join forces with Magneto and Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos looking better than ever in her blue nakedness) in order to save themselves.

The story still allows for some interesting parallels (Stryker is frighteningly like Eichmann and the scenes with Iceman “coming out” is a pretty obvious, but poignant, reference to what it was probably like for Singer to come out to his family) and even some more unrequited love (Wolverine/Jean Grey and Rogue/Iceman).

All of this emotional stuff helped the actors develop the characters and put in even better performances than they did the first time around. Storm got a little more action, but not a lot. (And her scenes with Nightcrawler were interesting. Is there something going on there?)

I was kind of disappointed that neither Halle nor Anna tried their accents again. Storm and Rogue are African and Southern (respectively, of course) and that wasn’t shown in this installment at all. What happened? Did they just decide to not bother? Too bad. I liked Rogue’s little southern drawl.

But speaking of Nightcrawler he was fuckin’ awesome! Alan Cumming was by turns threatening (a first for him) and sympathetic (also a first) as the mutant that no one can quite get a handle on.

Then there’s that other blue one. Mystique was a lot cooler this time out. And Rebecca actually showed her real self at one point in a scene that may have been a reference to her recent role in Femme-Fatale. Or it could have just been her playing another seductress. Who knows? Either way, she made the middle finger funny again.

Anna Paquin and Shawn Ashmore are great as the young lovers who aren’t allowed to love. Pretty tragic, but still very loving to each other. Didn’t we all feel that way at one point? (And wasn’t there a point where Iceman could have done something to stop…well, I won’t get into that. There’s a point where I think he would have acted, but he didn’t. Too bad, too. It would have been cool.)

Luckily Cyclops isn’t in it too much. He’s the least interesting of all of the characters, I think. But Jean more than makes up for his absence by kind of being the moral center in the absence of Dr. X. (Both Dr. X and Cyclops have been kidnapped by Stryker.)

Just to the side of that moral center is the angry and tortured Pyro (Aaron Stanford expanding on the promise he showed in Tadpole). He may be one of Dr. X’s kids, but he’s starting to wonder if that’s where he belongs.

But the center of the story is still Wolverine. And Mr. Jackman is still awesome in the role he seems to have been born to play. He’s uncontrollable, caring and totally bad-ass. And this time he actually gets to kill people! There’s a real body count in this movie. His fight with Yuriko Oyama (Kelly Hu) is pretty amazing, but underused. Pretty cool to see two indestructible mutants with long claws go at each other. In another life they could have been great friends. Or at least very dangerous fuck-buddies. And I actually would have liked to have seen a little more of the two of them together. Maybe actually have Wolverine not really want to fight her.

Ian McKellen managed to, once again, make the ultimate comic book bad guy (or one of them, at least) sympathetic. When he reveals that he was the one who told Stryker certain secrets (we know early on, not giving anything away), he is genuinely ashamed of himself.

But I guess it’s all still up to Singer and writer David Hayter to really get us into the movie, and they did a great job. Yeah, there’s the occasional flubs. (Magneto and Mystique laughing at Rogue is kind of dumb. And I just don’t see Magneto saying, “We love what you’ve done with your hair.” Bad, bad, bad.) But by the end you’ve completely forgotten and forgiven because you still care about all of the characters, something that a lot of old comic book movies never bothered to make you do. The tragedies of the end of this movie (did that dam threatening to burst remind anyone else of the original Superman?) actually touch you and make you want to see the next installment years before it’s even written. (Singer has the third one all planned out, but he’s waiting for a script to say whether or not he’ll direct it. He’d better do it. I can’t imagine anyone else doing any better.)

So, by all means, if you love comic book movies or just liked the first X-Men flick, GO SEE THIS ONE!! It’s no Superman or Spider-Man, but it’s damn close.