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