X2: X-Men United (2003) Review

The first big budget sequel of the summer season thunders into theaters with a swagger and emotional payoff that raises the bar for The Matrix Reloaded, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, Terminator 3 and Lara Croft Tombraider: The Cradle of Life. Hugh Jackman as Wolverine (Courtesy of 20th Century Fox)

As anyone who saw Spider-Man can attest, one of the few disappointments was the way Willem Dafoe's villain came across on the big screen. After a wonderful first half, the sheer visceral power of last year's box office champ was sapped somewhat by the unconvincing sight of the Green Goblin on his flying contraption.

No such problems for X2: X-Men United. Returning director Bryan Singer has juggled thirteen characters, gargantuan sets and raised expectations in such a way as to avoid anything that is remotely cheesy. The USC graduate's heartfelt directing style is largely responsible for a consistency of tone and buoyancy that make X2 the most successful big budget comic book adaptation since Superman: The Movie and Batman.

Singer demonstrates a willingness to have more fun with his colorful mutant characters and concocts some wickedly funny moments with the unofficial current denizen of the sci-fi fantasy film genre, Sir Ian McKellen. He also presents a more violent view of the mutant world and Hugh Jackman's character, Wolverine, giving him the opportunity to unleash his potent rage in a spectacular climactic fight scene with another admantium claw wielding aggressor, Lady Deathstrike (Kelly Hu).

But the real villain of this second X-Men episode is Lady Deathstrike's boss, William Stryker (Brian Cox), a wealthy former Army commander and scientist who once experimented on mutants. After a mysterious attack on the president by a teleporting mutant (Alan Cumming) inside the White House walls, he initiates a full-scale offensive against the non-humans beginning with a nighttime invasion of the school run by the very telepathic Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart).

In short order, the metal manipulating Magneto (McKellen) escapes from his plastic prison and forms an unlikely alliance with the Professor to combat Stryker, while Wolverine and a team of other mutants wind their way to Stryker's cavernous hideout at the foot of a remote dam, where both Wolverine's past and the machinations of Magneto and Stryker are finally exposed.

One of the goals of the filmmakers was to create a film that does not require familiarity with the first X-Men movie in order to enjoy or understand it. In this pursuit, they have succeeded admirably. An obviously more relaxed Singer, freed from the earlier constraint of having to provide expository introductions to each of his main characters, throws in everything this time but the proverbial mutant kitchen sink.

There are romantic subplots involving Wolverine and Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) as well as a pair of Junior X-Men, Rogue (Anna Paquin) and Iceman (Shawn Ashmore). Meanwhile, the addition of a human nemesis arrayed against the mutants, Stryker, played by the actor who first brought Hannibal Lector to the big screen, nicely triangulates the Shakespearean tumult of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen's characters.

Through it all, Singer maintains a fluid sense of storytelling and attention to detail, backed by the impressive work of first time production designer Guy Dyas, who met Singer during pre-production for a new Battlestar Galactica TV pilot before that project was bumped in favor of X2.

There can also be no doubt that leading man Hugh Jackman is far more comfortable on screen this time around in his sixth Hollywood film than he was when he first donned the guise of Wolverine several years ago. He and Singer seem to possess an unspoken language of communication as actor and director and, beyond the tantalizing ending of X2, the main reason for another episode in the series would be to observe the natural evolution of their collaboration.

Although some might make the comparison between X2 and other second sci-fi franchise installments such as Return Of The Jedi and Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers, a more apt frame of reference is to contrast the recent efforts of Singer with those of fellow director and USC film school graduate Stephen Sommers.

Sommers has found concurrent success with The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, and is in fact currently working with Hugh Jackman on his next film, Van Helsing, a 2004 Universal summer release which casts the actor as a vampire hunter battling Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolf Man.

But Singer's X-Men films feel a little bit more real than the Mummy series. His greatest talent as a director may well be his ability to ground his films with a kind of authentic resonance that pays homage to his own personal favorite films, Jaws and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. There are all kinds of fantastical and almost nonsensical things going on in X2: X-Men United, but amazingly enough, it never feels contrived.