Hey folks, Harry here... Here's a review that... well, it isn't a lot of fun. I can understand it though. There is that part of me that everytime I watch a clip from X2, I'm aggravated by the mass of black leather. I look at Nightcrawler... and kinda miss that angular red and black costume that played so well off that blue skin of his in the comic. Also... There's nothing I'd love more than to see Colossus hurl Wolvie into an army of Sentinels.... Or find the X-men in the midst of the Kree-Skrull war... Or on that living planet... Or the fights against the Hellfire Club... The Apocalypse storyline with Warren's wings cut off and replaced with them damn cool metal razor blade wings. Just as I would most want to see the Fantastic Four dealing with the glory of issues 48, 49 and 50... the coming of Galactus... I want to see KINGDOM COME at Warner Brothers. As much fun as I'm having with the MARVEL AGE of Cinema... I know that what they are unleashing is just the tip of an iceberg of cool. When do we get that perfect gigantic Comic film? I'm not sure. Personally, I love the emerging sense of wonder these films are giving us. The best moment of SPIDER-MAN... was the very last one... When finally we see him web-swingling & slinging like we've always dreamed of. My disappointment with Rogue... well, I know that she's supposed to have been raised by Mystique... She's supposed to have killed Ms. Marvel and sucked her flying, invincibility and super-strength so she can be the badass I knew her as... but hey... They've reinvented her, instead, I'm curious to see how they develop her character. I'm curious to see if Avi Arad has an overall masterplan to weave the filmic universe together by getting the studios to co-operate like they did in the Golden Age of Cinema where Universal would loan Karloff out to Columbia for a series of Horror films in exchange for some other performer. We'll see. Anyway, Diabolik's review isn't very spoiler filled, but it smacks of a certain amount of... not so much criticism, as impatience, and frankly... I understand that completely. Here ya go...
Hey Harry,
Call me Diabolik, and I've come to burst the X-Men bubble unfortunately. Please don't read this review if you want to save the virginity of this movie for your own cinematic coitus!
First of all, I started reading X-Men in 1983, am well versed in the Marvel Universe (bring on Secret Wars - The Movie!!), and so I feel quite protective towards all those guys. That is why I was SO disappointed by X2. I'll try and keep this review brief.
There are many positive things to say about X2. And I am absolutely convinced that Ain't it Cool News will lavish this movie with univerally glowing reviews. Indeed, this film will be hugely successful at the box office and will receive good reviews everywhere it goes. Fair enough, I concede to the elements of fanboy enthusiasm and excitement (I am a fellow geek), that can often mask a truly perceptive anlysis of a movie's merits and shortcomings. But scratch beneath the surface of your excitement at the prospect of tearing into X2, and you'll find that something is rotten in the state of Singer...
From start to finish, X2 is bogged down by a pedestrian, leaden script that never lets the X-Men truly Rock and Roll. The first hour - whilst holding a handful of fanboy gems that I'm sure you'll love - is a slow plod through exposition hell. Nightcrawler's entrance is a truly inventive action sequence. Wolverine's once again living and breathing in glorious technicolour. Colossus ROCKS (briefly). But beyond these basic fanboy staples (and a few more that shouldn't be divulged), we're left with an opening hour of boring, uninteresting set-up. I guess, for me, this is just not the storyline I wanted to see. Stryker is such a boring villain! I'm sorry, he just is. I really don't care what he's up to most of the time. And Wolverine, well, yeah he's all present and correct, but he's strugglin' in there with inferior dialogue and a lack of...X-factor.
Rogue is criminally underused: it's like they're holding her back for a later film. Magneto and Mystique lose much of their sense of menace and danger in this flick. Xavier is a wet blanket. Cyclops goes strangely AWOL for half the flick (bizarrely reminding me of the character who just inexpicably disappears from the last third of 'Hills Have Eyes 2'). Storm is laughable: they've gotta do something better with her for X3. Basically the script doesn't really know how to juggle all its balls in the air, and ends up dropping most of them in favour of slavish devotion to the demands of a plodding script.
Jean Grey IS a genuinely exciting character in this movie, but mostly because the fans know what's gonna happen to her in X3...
One of your other London reviewers summed it up for me: we don't get to see the sense of teamwork and powers blazing in all directions. Instead, the X-Men don't really seem like superheroes at all, just a bunch of under-developed, under-fleshed-out dudes in leather running through well-budgeted sets; or worse still: the X-Men were just a bunch of actors this time round; I could picture them between takes sippping coffee and having fun with a SERIOUSLY UNDER-INSPIRED BRIAN SINGER. You know that awkward feeling when you're watching a movie and you become painfully aware of the artifice of movie-making; the make-up, the hair, the costumes, the dodgy CGI (the hurricane sequence in particular, a redundant lowpoint in an already disappointing second half, which reminded me of James Bond's bluescreen surfing escapades in Die Another Day).
I must also add: one of the London reviewers said the audience was applauding and going wild: not true. They were grasping those intermittent moments of coolness like life rafts on the stormy seas of disappointment.
I don't want to say much more, but I know that Harry loves to take a magic carpet ride when he goes to the movies; he likes to forget about the world outside and disappear into this new fantastical vision that he beholds. I just don't think that's gonna happen for you this time Harry. Then again, you liked xXx, and I thought that was the worst action movie of all time! (Much respect to you for everything else though Harry, I've read your site every day for 3 years or more).
In summary, X2 is not a terrible movie. It's just not the film you're all expecting it to be.
Diabolik.
