Once That Was X-Cellent, Is Now X-Traodinary

While the first film of any ‘Super Hero’ series tend to be pictures that are different and exciting with having a new story, new character and slightly different action pieces from other hero flicks, arguably the hardest job to top the original film is the dreaded sequel that the director has to come up with. In recent years, it’s quite evident that Superhero sequels tend to fall down the pecking order in terms of cinematic quality which for me is disappointing. Marvel Superhero films especially in the forms of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Spider-Man 3 and Iron-Man 2/3 definitely fit the description of what I just mentioned of not only being films that don’t offer an experience of being original and new, but also being films that are borderline boring and narrative-wise, rely on ‘big-budget-action-sequences’ to progress the story. To counteract this though, you can’t say that all superhero sequels are dreadful and one of the films that shows this with it’s great story, memorable action-sequences, complex characters and intriguing ideas is Bryan Singer’s X2:-X-Men United. Like with his first instalment, Singer again has not only once again flourished out the social themes of Individualism and discrimination which all originated from the original comic story-lines, but with a smart script and narrative, Singer has also improved on the characterisation of the X-Men characters by going into greater depth on multiple individuals which allows the story to go from one place to the other in a near perfect manner which is something you don’t see done right often.

Several months have passed since the X-Men defeated Magneto (Ian Mckellen) on Liberty Island and imprisoned him in a seemingly impregnable plastic chamber and everyone seems to be settled and doing their own thing with Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) setting off to find out who he really is and where he came from. After a mutant attack on the President of the United States, fear once again overwhelms everybody over the prospect of someone being a mutant and using their powers in devastating effect. The news of this attempted assault causes a public outcry against mutants which in turn renews support for the Mutant Registration Act with William Stryker (Brian Cox), a military commander who has rumoured to have experimented on mutants, who is the front-runner to resolve the ‘mutant problem’. Stryker, with the President’s blessing and the capture of both Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Cyclops (James Marsden), puts into motion a plan to eradicate the mutants and begins an offensive on the Xavier mansion/school; causing Wolverine and the likes of Ice-Man (Shawn Ashmore), Rogue (Anna Paquin) and Pyro (Aaron Stanford) to flee and regroup with the likes of Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) and Storm (Halle Berry) who have both acquired Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming) who was the mutant that was under control by Stryker to kill the President and start a mutant war. With Stryker apprehending the likes of Xavier beforehand, there are other devious plans in the works as Stryker intends to use Xavier in another Cerebro; a Cerebro that harms mutants instead of merely locating a single mutant. Magneto, having escaped from his plastic prison with the help of Mystique (Rebecca Romijn), forms an unlikely alliance with Wolverine and the other X-Men to stop Stryker and his plans before it’s too late…

As briefly mentioned in the opening to this review, X2‘s success comes in the form of the characterisation and how each one of the protagonists and antagonists have their own little story arcs within the film. Now rightly so you might be thinking that multiple story-lines within a Superhero film is very uncommon; especially since Comic-Book films tend to only have one central character that just only revolves around that person in terms of who they are and how he’s going to ‘save the day’. However, with X2 and any ‘X-MEN’ stories overall, the story-lines tend to be different from your usual typical Superhero plots. Referring back to my previous review of the first X-Men film (which I’ll leave a link to and the end of this review), the ‘X-Men’ stories have always been tales that differentiate themselves from the ‘usual pack’ as they not only heavily interweave themes of discrimination and individualism within all the action and narrative, but with having so many characters both good and evil, ‘X-Men’ tend to focus their stories on a multitude of mutants or humans. Typically when it comes to ‘X-Men’, it’s usually through the stories of any of the characters that we learn more about the social and political themes that ‘X-Men’ tends to give off which is why they are more relatable than your typical heroes of Iron-Man or Captain America etc. By saying this as well, I would go as far as saying that ‘X-Men’ is a franchise, compared to something like ‘The Avengers’, that a majority of different age groups can relate to; it has a little bit of everything for the youngster looking for the flashy action and for the sophisticated viewers who will be intrigued by the many different plot points that feature the themes that I have just hinted at. Once again with X2, Singer has created a world which is grounded and realistic despite it having elements of comic-book motifs which of course is understandable. There are cinematic ideas that Singer I think has implemented in X2 which the original film didn’t have. The obvious improvement which I hinted at was the way Singer focused on a variety of different characters rather than one simple point of view. If you remember from the first instalment, you could argue that as the audience, our view of the film was mostly shown through the ‘father-daughter’ relationship that Wolverine and Rogue conveyed. You know you had Wolverine who was searching about who he was which Xavier and the others helped with and you had Rogue was metaphorically showing us the world of X-Men. With X2, it’s drastically different as there are multiple little story-lines that you can easily understand without no confusion and this is certainly as improvement. This decision alone just shows how Singer has grasped more of story elements that the X-Men comics used to do. While you have Wolverine still searching for his past in where he came from and what happened to him in terms of his metal claws, you also have interesting story-lines in the form of Jean Grey and her struggle in controlling her powers, the ‘touch-and-go’ relationship between Rogue and Ice-Man and Xavier when he meets a ghost from his past when he gets captured by Stryker. The last detail to note about the characterisation is how each little plot line can again, attract a wide range of audiences. So with Wolverines journey, you could argue that his endeavours would suit the younger core audience as he’s a character that is deemed as a bad-ass who gets into the majority of the fights in this film and the relationship flick with Rogue and Ice-Man is I would say, more applicable to the teenage/sophisticated demographic.

As far as the structure and pacing goes with X2, it relatively moves along at a stable and respectful pace and that’s a good thing. One of the things that I gripe about comic-book adaptations is sometimes the logic within the time-frame of the film or the structure of the narrative. Most of the time when you sit down and watch a Superhero film, you will find that most of the narrative is taken up of lavish action sequence and typically tend to be filling the time which is annoying and boring to say the least. With X2, Singer once again manages to create a piece of work that is grounded and realistic in terms of it’s source material. there aren’t moments where I feel the action sections bog down the film. Most common of the time in which a Superhero film deploys it’s action is near towards the end with the good guy faces the villain in a final showdown, it tends to go on and on with just nonsense filler. You can’t really discredit what Singer did with the ‘final showdown’ sequence at Alkali Lake since he manages to squeeze in a balanced time for each individual, something very similar to Avengers: Assembled. One minor complaint which doesn’t effect my positive view of the film whatsoever is the fact that there is a few mistakes concerning the editing and continuity of X2. The one funny continuity error that I found straight away when I first watched this film was an editing error in which Storm and Nightcrawler are rescuing the captured Xavier students at Alkali Lake and as the camera cuts to the students who are stuck in the prison, in the background you can see a faint Nightcrawler figure in the dark background who isn’t supposed to be there since it cuts back to Storm and Nightcrawler outside the prison. Jokes and errors aside, the structure that Singer has gone for is refreshing to visit once and a while and one of the ways it works are the different stories that each character has. In my opinion, if Singer wanted to, nowadays he could have easily made a T.V series with the amount that goes on in X2 and to be honest, the idea of it being a T.V series isn’t a bad idea, considering everything comic-book related is being thrown in to T.V these days. The last thing to note about the structure is the ending. I mentioned before that Singer balanced the action rather well at the end sequence at Alkali Lake with it switching to character after character. One thing I do like about the ending is the tease for another X-MEN film with seeing a faint Phoenix insignia in the water where Jean Grey ‘died’. Obviously it was a good cliff-hanger, but the result of that was awful which I’ll leave for another day.

The last aspect to only talk about is the acting performances and how that as well has improved. One of the complaints that I had with Singer’s first iteration of X-Men was the lack of development and impact the characters had to the story. For the most part, the characters of Storm, Jean and Cyclops were just there because they were part of the X-Men. With clever writing, those characters that I have just mentioned especially make more of an impact, especially Storm played by Halle Berry who I thought offered a lot more in terms of the themes that X2give off with discrimination and individualism when she’s with Nightcrawler. Cyclops I actually thought was someone that was again there just because he was part of the X-Men. There were only a few instances when he showed emotion when he was with Jean and that is a bit weak in terms of his progression. For me, when I look back at different iterations of X-Men, Cyclops is usually the one that has more of a complexity about him when he interacts with the different characters and not just Jean. Besides that slight disappointment, the rest of the performances are convincing. Hugh Jackman as Wolverine is something that comic-book die-hard’s and ordinary folk will like due to his look resembling the visuals from the original stories and his interaction with others. The old guard of Patrick Stewart and Ian Mckellen as Xavier and Magneto are again convincing. There chemistry together when they delegating with each other in the plastic prison for instance, is something that older and sophisticated audiences will like. Just to quickly note, the set piece of Magneto breaking out of that plastic prison is by far one of the better action sequences with it’s camera work. It’s kind of hard to determine who out of this big cast had the best performance. The reason why it is hard is due to the fact that it switches from character to character frequently and no one really has a lot of screen time, but that again, is something that I like and is refreshing.

What other Director can you name that has responsibly adapted something like this to film? Apart from the two Directors of Peter Jackson with The Lord of The Rings/The Hobbit and Christopher Nolan with The Dark Knight trilogy that I just thought of in my head whilst I’m writing this, I honestly can’t think of anyone else. Bryan Singer for my money joins these great directors since he’s tackled and perfectly produced a comic-book film; an art medium that a majority of people disregard as children’s/geek literature to which Singer has transformed with both X-Men films into a very human, poignant experience. What is a stand-out aesthetic from his first instalment and especially in X2, is his management of the characters and how he uses the vast amounts of these characters to fully express the themes of the original X-Men and the story which overall just shows Singers understanding of the original source material. He’s created a version of X-Men that not only will always be respected by a majority of different audience groups, but also a version that surpasses the minuscule and predictable hero flicks that can be saturated…

Right, and on that bomb-shell, it’s time to end. As always everyone, thank you for reading and enjoying my latest film review. If you liked what you read about the review or have an opinion on the film that I just reviewed, then by all means, feel free to drop a comment down below and tell me what you think. Just a quick refresher, last week I posted a Blog update explaining some changes coming to my Blog. So next week will be the last Monday I post a Review simply because Monday’s will be a day that I’ll be significantly busy on. So instead of posting a review on Monday, I will now be posting on Friday’s starting on the week of the 28th of September. Here is the link to that Post here – http://rabbittevision.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/looking-ahead-blog-update-3rd-and-final.html. Anyhow, thank you once again for reading my latest post. I’ll be back as always next week to deliver you guys a film review of top quality… hopefully. See ya, have a nice day and week!! 🙂

X-Men Review – http://rabbittevision.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/x-men-review.html

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ – Alex Rabbitte