SPOILERS LIKE YOU’VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE

It’s 9:30 AM. I didn’t go to bed until 2:00 something, and I’m not the most alert person at the moment. So… to any grammar errors you see I say – ha!

But last night I saw one of the greatest movies I’ve ever seen. I saw one of the greatest fight scenes I’ve ever seen. Last night magic was born and angels received their wings. Last night I saw X2… and MY GOD! Talk about a great fudging movie. Talk about a movie that owns your soul, because I’m just going to make the claim now… better than Spider-Man. Yeah, I said it… and I’ll say it again. Better than Spider-Man.

There are so many things I could say at the moment I don’t even know where to start. And I’m so groggy at the moment I don’t know if I could get it all out. But lets start with the opening fight scene. To sum it up for those who haven’t seen the movie, the first scene involves Nightcrawler. Without giving away the plot, he’s been “hired” to kill the President. Needless to say he has a couple dozen guards to run through before he can make it to the Oval Office. What happens next is worth the price of admission by itself. My first thought was that they weren’t going to make Nightcrawler anywhere near as agile as he is in the comic… but I was wrong.

It’s simply amazing to watch Nightcrawler flipping around the room, bouncing off walls, rushing in with drop kicks and teleporting to the left hook. And once he’s actually in the President’s office, the fight kicks way up. Nightcrawler is literally just tossing people across the room, and from there we get this awesome Matrix like effect. Everything is in slowmo except Nightcrawler, and he’s running around the room bashing the hell out of the guards. Trust me, it’s amazing. Had I left right then I would of left a happy man. But now that I got that first fight of the movie out of the way, let me talk about the plot now.

The plot of the movie goes like this. There’s a man called Stryker (can’t remember his full name, it’s not as if I have a name template in front of me). Needless to say he’s a mutant hater of the highest order. Just so happens he’s also one of the most powerful man in America. He doesn’t want to knock off just a few mutants; he wants some wholesale slaughter. In order to accomplish this he’s going to need a few ingredients. Like for starters one Cerebro, a freshly picked Professor X, and an underground base to operate all this from. Of course Stryker never ran this by the President. But who’s got time for small little details like that?

Through Cerebro, Professor X can get in contact with every mutant on the planet at once. And he can pick and choose whom he wants to contact, humans or mutants. Stryker wants Professor X to use his powers to operate Cerebro and kill off every mutant on the planet. A few problems though… For starters Cerebros aren’t free. Somebody’s going to have to go the school to get it. And Professor X isn’t going to do this willingly, guess you’re just going to have to mentally break him down. And what about the American public? Just gonna have to find a way to make them upset to. And thus the basics of the plot are born.

And more so than the last, X2 goes beyond the basic of the plot. In fact, there’s a lot of side stories, character development out the wazoo, and the fight scenes don’t hurt much either. Needless to say, there are no real “underdeveloped” characters this time around. Well, aside from maybe Cyclops who really isn’t even in the movie a lot, the cast is extremely well developed and their on-screen chemistry seems natural and not forced. In other words, acting out the ass, especially Nightcrawler. Once you see Alan’s portrayal of him you can’t imagine another X movie without him (and don’t keep track of how many times I refer to Nightcrawler :p).

Now, unlike the first, the pacing to the movie is much more balanced and well thought out. There’s not going to be that huge drag time while you’re waiting for something cool to happen. Stryker is on their ass. The cops are on their ass. Time is against them. The X-Men don’t have any time to slow down. So what you have is a movie with great character development and depth, but at the same time the movie is paced well enough that you get both character development, amazing action scenes, and enough drama to keep your eyes clued to the screen. Not once during the movie did I ever sit back in my chair. I was just that amazed.

The first thing you’re going to notice about X2 is the budget. Even in the first fight scene you can tell there was some dough spent on this movie. And the thing I liked the most is that there’s some daylight this time around. If you remember X1, then you remember how 90% of the movie seems to take place at night. Not here. The specials effects and just the way in which they use their powers are amazing. You’re definitely going to see some movie inspired special effects here. Like when Magneto attempts to break out of prison, and… and… oooh, I just can’t spoil it for you all! But lets just say some cool stuff happens.

Now, the cast is missing a few characters. The most obvious being Toad and Sabretooth… you will not miss them. Returning of course everyone else plus a few new faces. Some of these returnys you’re going to see a side of kick ass to them that you never knew existed. Like when Mystique is in Stryker’s underground base and the dog poo hits the fan., some good stuff goes down my man. Not only her, but everyone gets a good chance to showcase their powers. Nightcrawler, Mystique, Storm, Pyro, Magneto… you name it and they did something cool. And of course there’s Jean… I’m just going to leave it at that.

And Yuriko’s fight with Wolverine just more all around good stuff. In fact, that was one of the most creatively directed scenes I’ve ever seen – ever. Even the first fight with Nightcrawler isn’t as creative as some of the angles we see in that Yuriko fight. But the Nightcrawler fight is just overall better. :D

I’m still pretty tired, and I could go on, but I won’t. Let me just say that if you like movies (not comic books, not fantasy, just movies) GO SEE X2 – NOW! I saw it last night and the only thing on my mind is going to catch that Nightcrawler fight one more time. I HAVE to see this movie again – soon. In my opinion it’s the best movie Marvel has made by FAR, and may even be the fourth best film I’ve see this year. That’s assuming Matrix 2/3 and LoTR3 is better. But needless to say, X2 set a high bar and it’s not going to be easy to hurdle.

9.5/10

The One, The only One
- The Lotus One

I must agree! I' ll have to do the official Kikizo review on this. X2 was amazing! That Nightcrawler scene was so COOL!!! Just awesome. They went all out on this. I' d also have to say it was better than Spider-Man... far better! I loved Spider-Man too. X2 is one of the best movies I have ever seen hands down.

To touch a bit more on the Wolverine vs Deathstrike scene, they did an amzing job. It was pure insanity! they both had the healing powers and adimantium claws! That part where wolverine realized she could heal too was insane! He had ahis claws up in her stomach annd she looked at him with her cut up face and all her wounds healed and then she started wooping up on him again! Then where she stuck her claws right into his throat and she started punturing his chest repeatedly. OH MY LORD THAT WAS AWESOME!!!

I' d also have to agree about that part when Magneto escapes. That was the SHIZITE! So freaking amazing. They did an awesome job on this movie. Like I said, one of the best movies I have ever seen!

Yeah, I' ve heard it was good.

Although for some reason I read one review that said it was basically an " ADD kid' s dream come true," as he said it was just one mass of special effects, and not much else. Other reviews have been mostly positive, though.

Taht reviewer must have never scene an action flick before... Really, this movie was great and I highly recommend it.

Hey - the Kikizo review is now up (a bit late, but then, whatcha gonna do?) Jennie seems to like the film, but then, she fancies about half the characters.

Personally I am not a fan of either X Men movie. Too many characters, too much happening, lack of focus and lack of satisfying line of development through the film. Crap endings. X Men 3 had better give some structure to things! But I may be completely missing the point since I have a degree of ignorance towards X Men, having never really read the comics or watched the cartoon series.

We need to get you into Marvel man! [url]www.marvel.com[/url] There are some free online comics if you click on the dotcomics section. Check them out.

Personally I am not a fan of either X Men movie. Too many characters, too much happening, lack of focus and lack of satisfying line of development through the film. Crap endings. X Men 3 had better give some structure to things! But I may be completely missing the point since I have a degree of ignorance towards X Men, having never really read the comics or watched the cartoon series.

Yeah - Adam doesn' t like the X Men films at all! If you read my review, all of my opinions conflict with what he says. Lack of focus (what?) and lack of satisfying linear story development (what???!!!) I' d say out of all the action films, this is one of the best ones ever. The story and character development is very sophisticated in normal " action film" terms.... and the last movie when i enjoyed the ensemble cast so much was prolly in Ocean' s Eleven, which Adam also disliked. When someone refers to Magneto as the baddie as opposed to Stryker, then you gotta get them over to the marvel site. Poor soul.

My initial reaction was that it was better than Spider-Man, but only in that there was greater dynamic and maybe even more humour to it. But SM is still tops for sure. A lot of people who have seen it have already told me that they felt the first film was more of an introduction to the second and nothing really happened. But i think that' s why i loved the first one - because it brought all those characters alive. Like seeing all of the characters perform all these cool things in a human form - finally.

I never read the comics, but boy, does anyone remember Spider-Man and his amazing friends? When Iceman and Fireman/Pyro were all at college. Even the new X men cartoon rools! =) I love Nightcrawler in the film when he fights.

Jenn, if you get a chance, head on over to MRQE and look up the reviews for X-Men 2. Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times) has his review up, and it backs up a little of what Adam is talking about. He liked it though (3/4 stars), but I really thought it was an interesting review.

IMO, he writes awesome reviews. I agree with probably 90% of what he says. Here' s his last paragraph:

" X2: X-Men United" lacks a beginning, a middle and an end, and exists more as a self-renewing loop. In that it is faithful to comic books themselves, which month after month and year after year seem frozen in the same fictional universe. Yes, there are comics in which the characters age and their worlds change, but the X-Men seem likely to continue forever, demonstrating their superpowers in one showcase scene after another. Perhaps in the next generation a mutant will appear named Scribbler, who can write a better screenplay for them."

Jennie, I' d just like to say you had an AWESOME review. I agree with pretty much everything you said, buut I would have given it a 9 overall. I think it tops spider-man, and I am more of a spidey fanatic than I am an X-men one.

I also like the new cartoon series. It rules! About Spidey and his a mazing friends, it was Spidey, Iceman, and Firestar(a girl) not Pyro. I actually have an episode I bought a while back of that series. It' s so funny that their college dorm had an entire computer system through out it. Where did they dig up the money for that? Lol!

In terms of storyline, the second one is also going to have some minor troubles especially when there is a lot of back story to the characters. You only have to look at BTTF 2, T2 or LOTR: TTT to understand that some part of the film assumes the audience has some prior knowledge to the characters, even if may not be to the full scale.

So there never will be a " once upon a time..." styled beginning and a " they lived happily ever after" when there will be a pt 3. In terminator 2, there was no way of understanding Sarah Connor without having seen her trauma in the first one.

I think some character' s story lacked direction - yes - as discussed in the review of how Prof X, Cyclops and even Pyro or Storm for that matter seemed to have be pushed to the back.

What was interesting was iceman' s story was his folks, Wolverine' s continued story with his past, Jean' s story of self becoming into the phoenix, etc. Ensemble movies are always difficult but i thought it was done very well in X2.

I do want to see this; maybe I' ll catch it this weekend.

Identity is another one that looks awfully interesting...

X2 was definitely better than the first =), people actually died in this one =P

fav part was when wolverine goes berserk in the mansion and makes pin cushions outta the bad guys ^_^

had a friend point out a few problems though.. but i guess they had to make some changes as they do with every comic / superhero on who comes up onto the big screen - but one of these is lady deathstrike' s healing ability (ala wolverine)... wha? how' d that happen?

well.. i' m detracting from the main point... it was awseome! =), definitely a must get on dvd... only real dissapointment was the fact that colossus only appeared for a brief 10 seconds or so and had one line... (rather bad one too...) although i read and heard a great deal about his part in the film prior to it being completed.

oh yeah... nightcrawler rulz!

Yeah, if Colossus would have been shown in a big action scene that would have ruled. He is one of my favorite characters!