Movie Review – X2: X-Men United (2003)

Back in 2000, the film X-Men was a huge hit with the audiences.

Not only did the film showcase some of Marvel‘s biggest super heroes, but it also proved that, when done correctly, comic book films mean big business.  Really big business.  It can be argued that the success of X-Men paved the way for the Marvel comics to be a major player in the film industry, including today’s Marvel Cinematic Universe.

While the first X-Men film was good, it still had a few drawbacks from parts of the story to the special effects to some of the characters as well.  Fortunately, those areas were *all* corrected in X-Men‘s first sequel, the 2003 film X2.

X2, also known as X2: X-Men United, brings back all of Charles Xavier’s X-Men plus Magneto and Mystique.  We also see a few new characters in this film as well.  The story for X2 involves a renegade army colonel who embarks on a personal crusade to ride the world of ALL mutants, whether they’re good or evil.  The X-Men have to band together with the Brotherhood of Mutants to defeat their common foe.

Directed by Bryan Singer, X2 has a strong cast including Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, James Marsden, Anna Paquin and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos.  New faces in this film include Alan Cumming, Brian Cox and Kelly Hu.

X2 begins in the White House in Washington, D.C.  It seems to be a normal day when suddenly a person disguised as a visitor begins attacking the security guards.  This mutant, Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming), easily moves from room to room, teleporting himself to always keep the Secret Service guessing.  He makes it into the Oval Office and defeats the last of the President’s Secret Service guards.

Nightcrawler tries to assassinate the President of the United States (Cotter Smith) with a knife, but he’s shot in the arm.  He drops the knife and flees.  As we see, attached to the knife is a message that says “mutant freedom now.”

Meanwhile, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is investigating a dam and old military compound at Alkali Lake in the Canadian Rockies, but he doesn’t find anything.  The dam is still functional but it looks like nobody has been there in quite some time.

At the While House, the president meets with Colonel William Stryker (Brian Cox), a renegade military scientist with a history of black operations.  He tells the president that Charles Xavier’s school is really a haven for mutants, and that may be where the assassin is hiding.  The president authorizes him to raid the school as long as there aren’t any casualties.

Colonel Stryker then visits with Magneto (Ian McKellen) in his high-security, plastic prison, and he uses a serum to control Magneto and make him speak the truth.  Magneto reveals detailed information about the X-Mansion as well as Cerebro, the advanced machine that Charles Xavier (and other telepathic mutants) can use to locate every person and/or every mutant on the planet.

When Wolverine returns to the X-Mansion, he’s warmly welcomed by his fellow mutants.  He learns that Rogue (Anna Paquin) is now in a relationship with Bobby Drake / Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), though they haven’t figured out how to be physical yet.  There’s news of the attack in the White House on TV, and Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) uses his Cerebro machine to try to find the mutant responsible for carrying out the attack.  It’s difficult to pinpoint the mutant’s location, but he eventually finds his location in Boston, Massachusetts.

Xavier sends Storm (Halle Berry) and Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) on a mission to find the mutant and bring him back to the X-Mansion.  Wolverine is assigned to stay in the X-Mansion and “babysit” the younger students while Xavier and Cyclops (James Marsden) leave to have a meeting with Magneto.  Xavier thinks that Magneto was involved in the White House attack, but he needs more information.

After impersonating Senator Robert Kelly (Bruce Davison) and Yuriko (Kelly Hu), Colonel Stryker’s assistant, Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) infiltrates a building and uses a computer system to learn of Magneto’s location.  She also learns the identity of one of his prison guards.

In Boston, Storm and Jean Grey locate Nightcrawler hiding in a vacant Catholic church that’s being refurbished.  He is unwilling to talk to them, so Storm and Jean use their powers to capture him. After he has been subdued, Nightcrawler proves to be a sympathetic mutant who carried out the assassination attempt against his own free will.  Colonel Stryker used a serum to make him attack the president.  Nightcrawler joins the X-Men and helps them in this film.

Charles Xavier and Cyclops arrive at the prison, and Xavier meets with Magneto.  Magneto denies having any role in the attack on the White House.  He then tells Xavier about his recent visits with William Stryker.  Stryker’s son, Jason, was once a student at Xavier’s school, but Xavier was unable to help Jason with his mental power of projecting images into people’s minds.  When Xavier senses trouble, Magneto tells him that he was forced to tell Styrker everything about the X-Mansion and Cerebro.

A knockout gas fills Magneto’s prison cell, and Yuriko attacks Cyclops.  Both of the X-Men fall and are captured by Stryker’s men.

Just as Xavier and Cyclops were attacked, Colonel Styrker launches his raid on the X-Mansion.  Some of the children are captured before any alarms are sounded.  Wolverine jumps into action and goes on a rampage, killing many of Stryker’s soldiers.  Colossus (Daniel Cudmore) has a brief scene in the film as he helps lead some of the mutant children to safety through some secret tunnels.

Wolverine has a brief encounter with Colonel Stryker before the two are separated.  He then escapes along with Rogue, Iceman and Pyro (Aaron Stanford).  They take Cyclops’s car and head to Boston to hopefully find Storm and Jean.

Mystique poses as a beautiful hooker and finds Magneto’s main security guard at a local bar.  She seduces him and knocks him out with a drugged beer.  She then injects iron into his bloodstream.  When the guard visits Magneto a short while later, Magneto detects the iron and pulls it out of the guard’s body, killing him.  Magneto then uses the small bits of metal to easily escape from the plastic prison cell.

In Boston, the gang of four arrive at Bobby’s parents’ house until they hear from their colleagues.  Bobby’s parents arrive at home, and he’s forced to tell them that he’s really a mutant.  His brother is jealous and heads upstairs to call the police.  Wolverine receives a phone call from Jean and lets her know the situation and their location.

Soon the police arrive and surround the house.  There’s a brief stand-off between the mutants and the police, and one of the policemen accidentally shoots Wolverine in the head.  This angers Pyro and he uses his rage against the police, attacking them with fireballs.  Rogue is shocked by his violence and touches his skin, temporarily removing his power to save the police.  Wolverine’s body regenerates and heals just as Storm and Jean arrive in the X-Jet.  They hop on board and fly away.

Shortyl after they’re airborne, two F-16 Falcons catch the X-Jet and threaten to shoot it out of the sky.  They accelerate and try to outrun the fighters, but the F-16s stay within missile range.  Storm then creates a series of tornadoes to try to throw off the fighters.  The twisters knock the F-16s out of the sky, but one of the F-16s is able to fire a pair of missiles at the X-Jet.

Jean Grey then uses her telepathic power to try to destroy the missiles.  She succeeds at destroying the first one but is unable to stop the second missile.  The missile explodes right next to the X-Jet, knocking out a bunch of control systems.  The X-Jet plummets to the ground.  Just before it crashes, Magneto “grabs” the X-Jet and sets it down safely.

That evening all of the mutants sit down at a camp fire to discuss the situation.  They learn that Stryker was the one who orchestrated the attack at the White House as a way of providing the push to raid Xavier’s school and access Cerebro.  When Jean Grey reads Nightcrawler’s mind, she discovers that Colonel Stryker is hiding at the dam on Alkali Lake, and his secret military base is underground.  They also discover that Stryker has a second Cerebro machine.  By using Stryker’s mutant son Jason to control Xavier’s mind, and having Xavier use Cerebro, then Stryker can potentially kill every mutant on the planet.  All Xavier has to do is concentrate hard enough when using Cerebro.

The X-Men join forces with Magneto and Mystique to take out their common foe, Colonel Striker.

This joining of forces doesn’t stop Magneto from trying to recruit new members to his cause.  First, Mystique tries to seduce Wolverine by posing as Jean Grey, but he refuses.  Later, while they’re flying to Alkali Lake, Magneto shows some sympathy to Pyro and boosts his ego.

The gang arrives in the Canadian Rockies and lands near the dam on Alkali Lake.  The problem is going to be infiltrating the compound.  The access point is a spillway, but the security guards can open the flood gates and easily wash away any intruders.  Wolverine volunteers to enter the base as Stryker wants him alive, but Magneto has Mystique go in his place while disguised as Wolverine.

Mystique enters the base with her disguise, but Styrker recognizes her as a fraud.  Mystique fights off the guards and enters the control room where she opens the doors to the base.  There’s a large battle as the X-Men swarm into the base, fighting the guards while trying to locate the Professor along with the kidnapped mutant children.  Storm and Nightcrawler search and quickly find the children, while Jean, Magneto and Mystique head off to find Charles Xavier.

A brainwashed Cyclops attacks Jean, Magneto and Mystique, but Jean holds him off while the others find Xavier.  Cyclops and Jean get into a battle between his optic blast and her telekinesis, and Jean ultimately wins.  The clash of their powers clears Cyclops’s mind and he tells her about how Stryker used a serum to force him to attack her.  Unfortunately, the clash of their powers damaged the dam’s generators, and the structure begins to crack and fall apart.

Meanwhile, Wolverine finds Stryker in an adamantium smelting room, and he has flashbacks to the military experiment that gave him his metal claws and bones.  Yuriko is also there, and we see that she has adamantium fingernails as well as the power of regeneration.  Wolverine has his toughest battle yet as he fights Yuriko in the smelting room.  He eventually wins by injecting Yuriko’s body full of the liquid metal, killing her.

In the second Cerebro, Jason forces Charles Xavier to believe that he’s in the X-Mansion and escorted by a little girl.  The girl goes with Xavier into Cerebro and urges him to find all of the mutants.  Once he does she has him focus hard and try to kill them all.  This causes a painful shriek inside all of the mutants’ heads, that is, except for Magneto as he is wearing his special helmet.  Magneto finds Xavier and gets him to stop attacking the mutants.  However, Magneto then tells Jason to make Xavier kill all of the humans instead.  Charles does so and uses his mental powers and Cerebro to start attacking the humans.

Wolverine finds Stryker on a helipad trying to escape from the base.  He knows that the dam is going to collapse and flood the entire area.  Wolverine ties him with chains and makes him tell him more about his past.

Magneto, Mystique and Pyro flee from the dam on the colonel’s helicopter.

The rest of the X-Men locate the second Cerebro, but they’re unable to open the door and save Charles Xavier.  Nightcrawler teleports himself and Storm into the room.  Storm creates a blizzard to clear Xavier’s from Jason’s illusion.  They teleport out of the room as it begins to collapse.

It’s a race out of the dam as it continues to break and a wall of water threatens flood the area.  They run outside and watch as Rogue tries to fly the X-Jet to them, but she crashes it into the snow.  Part of the X-Jet breaks.  As the try to repair it, the dam breaks and water heads right to them.  Jean Grey goes outside to use her telekinetic powers to lift the X-Jet into the air.  As soon as the X-Jet is able to fly, Jean lets go and allows the flood water to crush and drown her.  Both Cyclops and Wolverine are devastated that Jean Grey chose to sacrifice herself to save the rest of them.

The team flies to Washington, D.C. where the president is about to make a live address to the nation.  The mutants appear in the room and Charles Xavier gives the president classified information about Colonel Stryker, and how he tried to start a war.

Back at the X-Mansion, the X-Men remember Jean Grey and the choice that she made at Alkali Lake.  Wolverine informs Cyclops that Jean chose to be with Cyclops instead of him.

X2: X-Men United ends with a scene of Alkali Lake and the flooded river valley.  Jean Grey’s voice says the same speech about evolution as Charles Xavier did in the beginning of the first film.  As the camera pans down to the water, we can see a reflection of a shape that looks like a Phoenix.

So is X2: X-Men United a good film?

This isn’t merely a “good” film.  This is an outstanding film and, to this day, one of the absolute BEST superhero films ever made.

This X-Men film has it all from a terrific cast of characters to a variety of action scenes to a great story to an evil villain to a superhero performing the ultimate sacrifice.  That opening segment with Nightcrawler attacking the Secret Service agents is a work of art.

If anything, I would have liked to have seen more of Colonel Stryer, his evil plans, and how Jason factors into everything.  Apparently it’s the fluid from Jason’s brain that is used in the serum that controls the other mutants, but it’s not really explained in the film.

But that’s relatively minor.

The rest of this film is exceptional.

X2: X-Men United (2003) – movie trailer

X2: X-Men United is a shining example of how superhero films should be made.  Make this film a part of your family’s collection.

Wolverine – “Got any beer?”
Bobby – “This is a school.”
Wolverine – “So that’s a ‘no?’ “
Bobby – “Yeah, that’s a ‘no.’ “

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Wolverine – “You picked the wrong house, bub.”

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Pyro – “You know all those dangerous mutants you hear about in the news? I’m the worst one.”

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Nightcrawler – “You know, outside the circus, most people were afraid of me. But I didn’t hate them. I pitied them. Do you know why? Because most people will never know anything beyond what they see with their own two eyes.”
Storm – “Well, I gave up on pity a long time ago.”
Nightcrawler – “Someone so beautiful should not be so angry.”
Storm – “Sometimes anger can help you survive.”
Nightcrawler – “So can faith.”