X2: X-Men United is as good as you remember

I probably made some post somewhere saying that I’m watching all the X-Men movies in chronological order and will comment and stuff and whatever and stuff. True story! Though don’t expect in-depth reviews or commentary, because that’s not what I’m doing here. Also, these assume you know the movies well, so I don’t bother with a summary or synopsis or whatever, and here is more:

X2: X-Men United

This is more like it! X2 is everything the first movie is not. It’s smarter, it’s more finely honed, it’s more exciting, it has more emotion, it has a better narrative, better use of powers, better setpieces, and so on.

wasted opportunity

Maddeningly, X2’s strength is highly reliant on the first movie, so you kind of HAVE to take them together as a single package. That kind of sucks.

But in some ways it’s worth having such a lousy intro if the result is a movie this good. Unlike the first movie, which has close to zero memorable sequences, this one is chock full of them. Nightcrawler’s stunning raid on the White House (still one of the coolest sequences in all superhero movies). Wolverine going balls out during the raid on Xavier Mansion. Magneto’s badass escape from prison. Pyro taking out the cops. Wolverine vs. Lady Deathstrike. Jean saving the rest of the team.

Every one of them is thrilling, visually arresting, and well-staged.

That said, one thing I had never noticed before is how damn LONG the third act is. They are in the Weapon X facility for a long long long long time, so long that it flirts with getting wearisome. Only just a bit, it’s not a major flaw, just something that really stuck out to me this time.

Another thing about the cool scenes and major setpeices of this movie: they are proof that if well-staged and well-choreographed, you don’t need an epic scale and major CGI for them to be thrilling. The raid on the mansion, for instance, is pretty low tech, all things considered, yet it’s AWESOME.

Anyway, X2 is still great stuff.

Another thing I learned: it’s stupid to take blog posts too seriously. Save that shit for books.