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Damn, what a great remake of The Empire Strikes Back!
You're so right about that. In so many ways, it was like a X-Men Vs. The Empire Strike Back mash-up. And that's a very very good thing.
I was impressed pretty much the whole way through, my only major problems with the film are
a) Halle Berry utterly fails to bring Storm to life. That is not anything like what Storm is meant to be - she's supposed to be this aggressive, powerful presence - an African goddess. Berry seems confused and timid most of the time. She may be something like the bland Storm of post-Claremont X-Men, but I'd prefer her to be more like the Storm of Mutant Massacre-era X-Men. Berry seems to want out of the franchise, hopefully they will just hire someone better for the role for future films.
b) Where the hell was Cyclops for most of the film? Scott should be a far more central character, they just have him filling up space and mourning. What a waste, really. Scott's become one of my favorites since Grant Morrison started writing him - hopefully they'll touch on how messed up he is in future installments. I think it would be nice for Scott to be involved with Emma Frost when Jean makes her inevitable return as the Phoenix, and for some approximation of NXM #139 to take place. I refuse to believe that lameness is an "essential element" of Scott's character. It wouldn't be too hard for them to make Scott's uptight nature at least half as interesting as it is in New X-Men.
I was very happy to see little bits of Grant's ideas integrated into the film - the visual representation of Cerebro at work is lifted directly from NXM #114, for example. Also, there's the notion of mutants having their "mutant names," which is touched on when Pyro has his little conversation with Magneto and Mystique. There's a few other things, but I can't recall right now.
I loved Alan Cumming's Nightcrawler. Not a lot to say about it, he and the writers got it exactly right. So did the special effects guys - I think that the depictions of his and Magneto's abilities were the most impressive, though the special effects were almost uniformly clever and convincing by my standards.
I didn't know about Mastermind being in the film, and was very happy with how he was integrated into the story, though it made some things a little confusing.
I really loved the attack on the mansion. I thought that was an extremely effective sequence, and filmed very well. Siryn was used in the best way imaginable, and I was very happy with Colossus. They never do let you know where Colossus went with those kids - I think they should explain that in the next film, have the kids rescued from the Morlock tunnels, which can set up the Morlock massacre for a future film.
There's just a lot of little things that made me happy as a life long X-Men fan, I don't really need to mention everything. I think they nailed the tone and the pacing, it reminded me of why I liked the X-Men so much when I was a little kid. I started reading the X-Men just before the Mutant Massacre, and I think that the X-Men concept works best when the group is in a state of constant panic and with the odds stacked against them. I like when the X-Men are on the run. This film was all about that - that's why the Empire Strikes Back was so great too. It's more exciting when the heroes don't seem to have a chance and are in constant danger.
I also liked that the X-Men-as-metaphor-for-homosexuality thing was foregrounded a few times, particulary when Bobby 'comes out' to his parents. Bobby and Rogue were really well done too, by the way.
Yeah. I rate X-Men 2 very highly. It's 200% improvement over the first film. The crowd I was in seemed to really love it, too. |
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