X-Men 2 comments
May. 3rd, 2003 06:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinanjuJust got back from seeing X-Men 2. No worries--any spoilers will be hidden behind the cut tag.
Overall: Wow. Cool. I loved it. I saw an afternoon showing solo since (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
snippy is out of town til tomorrow evening. She wants to see it too, so we'll be seeing it together Real Soon Now (tm). Theatre was full, with no annoying crying children, no obnoxious conversations going on (that I could hear, anyhow). A very pleasant moviegoing experience and a kick-ass movie.
It's really good. Go see it. Now. Details, for those who want them...
It takes up some time after the first movie, beginning with Nightcrawler's attack on the President. Cool sfx and lots of acrobatic moves. It doesn't look quite the way it did in the comics, but the feel is exactly right. Nightcrawler's audible vanishing and reappearing in a puff of inky smoke, his rapidfire 'porting from foe to foe, always moving, never where you expect him to be, was amazing.
Of course, fans of the X-Men know that Nightcrawler is one of the good guys, so we're wondering why he'd try to kill the President. Turns out, of course, that he was brainwashed into doing it by none other that Stryker, the villain of the piece, as a mean of motivating the President to give him carte blanche to attack Xavier's school.
We also see Scott, Jean, Storm and a bevy of mutant schoolkids on a field trip. We get hints of Jean's growing power. Iceman (Bobby), Rogue and Pyro have a confrontation with some other teens. Things get out of hand. Xavier steps in, using his considerable telepathic powers to "freeze" everyone else til they can leave--and laying down an important plot point in the process. (Can I just say, by the way, that Anna Paquin is hot? Ummmmmm, Rogue.)
Xavier has tried to track the President's attacker with Cerebro but only discerned that he's in Boston. Jean and Storm fly there to try to catch him. Scott and Xavier go to visit Magneto in his plastic prison. Magneto confesses that he told Stryker all about the school--he had no choice, he's been drugged repeatedly with Stryker's mind control brew.
Which brings us to our next set-piece. The SpecOps invasion of Xavier's mansion answered one burning question. Will Wolverine kill people with those claws? We know that he can kill people with them. And he certainly gave Mystique a taste of them in the first movie, but she survived.
Oh yes. Wolverine can and will. And does. He doesn't hesitate to use his claws to gut, disembowel or perforate the vital organs of numerous SpecOps goons (all in the dark and very quickly--no graphic bloody action). Not that he staves off the attack. Wolverine, Rogue, Bobby and Pyro escape in Scott's car.
That was one plot point I found implausible. The SpecOp guys know the layout of the mansion, including the secret parts (aside from a few escape tunnels). Presumably they know a dozen vehicles at least are registered there. But they have nobody guarding the garage? Or at least, the street exits of the grounds? (Some of the targets can just race off in an automobile and not be seen or pursued? I don't think so. Or if they can, the SpecOps guys were morons.)
Senator Kelly turns out to (still) be Mystique in disguise. I was disappointed by that. I'd hoped that Kelly had survived his "death" in the first move and was now "passing" as a normal human. That would have explained his change of heart on Mutant Registration and made something important of Magneto's cryptic comment to Storm when she told him Kelly had died ("Are you sure you saw what you think you saw?"). Besides, it would have been a nice indicator that Magneto's original plan to change world leaders into mutants and thereby change their behavior wasn't just a pipe dream--that it could, in fact, have worked to some extent, even if the evil machinations necessary to do it were unacceptable (at least to our heroes).
Besides, I find it hard to believe Mystique could carry off the impersonation successfully--not over the long-term. Sure, she can look and sound like him. But she's not really him. She doesn't know everyone he knew, and she certainly doesn't have his experience and skills as a politician. And even if she could, being an influential Senator is a full-time (more than fulltime) job. She'd have very little time or freedom of movement to do anything else. Like sneaking into secret government facilities and hacking computers and arranging to seduce and assault guards to set up Magneto's escape.
Speaking of which--that was a great scene. I'm not sure you could actually inject enough iron into someone to give Magneto three ball bearings (effectively) when he yanked it all out of you (ouch, that's got to hurt)--but it was a great scene. Well worth the suspension of disbelief.
I think Magneto is one of my favorite characters, if not the favorite. I loved Magneto's line to Pyro in the Blackbird: "You're a god among insects. Don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise." Or his comment to Rogue: "We love what you've done with your hair." There's no doubt that he's still a villain, still convinced that he's right, and always looking for a way to put one over on the humans (and the X-Men). Plus the whispering and giggling (well maybe not _giggling_) with Mystique.
And is it just me, or are Magneto and Mystique lovers? It sure as hell looks that way to me.
Wolverine's fight with Lady Deathstrike was entertaining, though not nearly as spectacular as I'd expected. But it was nice to see people with huge, nasty sharp claws using them with lethal intent. Slash, cut, stab, tear, stabbity-stabbity-stab through the torso and vital organs. I knew the molten adamantium would come into play, but not how--and the exact means surprised me. Ow, repeat, OW.
That fight, and Magneto's many power stunts, demonstrated one of the reasons I think these movies are successful. They take the powers seriously; the real world implications of the powers, and myriad ways that people who really had those powers could use them, are given some serious thought. For instance, Magneto's lesson to Stryker's SpecOps: "Once the pin has been pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend." Simple, easy, direct--and it was done without ever exposing himself or his allies to the slightest risk from the gun-wielding goons.
And then there was Jean Grey. Dare I whisper the word? Phoenix. A large part of this story was very similar to the graphic novel God Loves, Man Kills. The ending is straight out of the origin of Phoenix in the earliest New X-Men comic. It was the Blackbird and not a space shuttle, and a huge flood rather than a cosmic storm--but Jean sacrificing her live to save the X-Men only to return (I'm quite certain) as Phoenix was right there on the screen.
It was a great film.
Overall: Wow. Cool. I loved it. I saw an afternoon showing solo since (
snippy is out of town til tomorrow evening. She wants to see it too, so we'll be seeing it together Real Soon Now (tm). Theatre was full, with no annoying crying children, no obnoxious conversations going on (that I could hear, anyhow). A very pleasant moviegoing experience and a kick-ass movie.It's really good. Go see it. Now. Details, for those who want them...
It takes up some time after the first movie, beginning with Nightcrawler's attack on the President. Cool sfx and lots of acrobatic moves. It doesn't look quite the way it did in the comics, but the feel is exactly right. Nightcrawler's audible vanishing and reappearing in a puff of inky smoke, his rapidfire 'porting from foe to foe, always moving, never where you expect him to be, was amazing.
Of course, fans of the X-Men know that Nightcrawler is one of the good guys, so we're wondering why he'd try to kill the President. Turns out, of course, that he was brainwashed into doing it by none other that Stryker, the villain of the piece, as a mean of motivating the President to give him carte blanche to attack Xavier's school.
We also see Scott, Jean, Storm and a bevy of mutant schoolkids on a field trip. We get hints of Jean's growing power. Iceman (Bobby), Rogue and Pyro have a confrontation with some other teens. Things get out of hand. Xavier steps in, using his considerable telepathic powers to "freeze" everyone else til they can leave--and laying down an important plot point in the process. (Can I just say, by the way, that Anna Paquin is hot? Ummmmmm, Rogue.)
Xavier has tried to track the President's attacker with Cerebro but only discerned that he's in Boston. Jean and Storm fly there to try to catch him. Scott and Xavier go to visit Magneto in his plastic prison. Magneto confesses that he told Stryker all about the school--he had no choice, he's been drugged repeatedly with Stryker's mind control brew.
Which brings us to our next set-piece. The SpecOps invasion of Xavier's mansion answered one burning question. Will Wolverine kill people with those claws? We know that he can kill people with them. And he certainly gave Mystique a taste of them in the first movie, but she survived.
Oh yes. Wolverine can and will. And does. He doesn't hesitate to use his claws to gut, disembowel or perforate the vital organs of numerous SpecOps goons (all in the dark and very quickly--no graphic bloody action). Not that he staves off the attack. Wolverine, Rogue, Bobby and Pyro escape in Scott's car.
That was one plot point I found implausible. The SpecOp guys know the layout of the mansion, including the secret parts (aside from a few escape tunnels). Presumably they know a dozen vehicles at least are registered there. But they have nobody guarding the garage? Or at least, the street exits of the grounds? (Some of the targets can just race off in an automobile and not be seen or pursued? I don't think so. Or if they can, the SpecOps guys were morons.)
Senator Kelly turns out to (still) be Mystique in disguise. I was disappointed by that. I'd hoped that Kelly had survived his "death" in the first move and was now "passing" as a normal human. That would have explained his change of heart on Mutant Registration and made something important of Magneto's cryptic comment to Storm when she told him Kelly had died ("Are you sure you saw what you think you saw?"). Besides, it would have been a nice indicator that Magneto's original plan to change world leaders into mutants and thereby change their behavior wasn't just a pipe dream--that it could, in fact, have worked to some extent, even if the evil machinations necessary to do it were unacceptable (at least to our heroes).
Besides, I find it hard to believe Mystique could carry off the impersonation successfully--not over the long-term. Sure, she can look and sound like him. But she's not really him. She doesn't know everyone he knew, and she certainly doesn't have his experience and skills as a politician. And even if she could, being an influential Senator is a full-time (more than fulltime) job. She'd have very little time or freedom of movement to do anything else. Like sneaking into secret government facilities and hacking computers and arranging to seduce and assault guards to set up Magneto's escape.
Speaking of which--that was a great scene. I'm not sure you could actually inject enough iron into someone to give Magneto three ball bearings (effectively) when he yanked it all out of you (ouch, that's got to hurt)--but it was a great scene. Well worth the suspension of disbelief.
I think Magneto is one of my favorite characters, if not the favorite. I loved Magneto's line to Pyro in the Blackbird: "You're a god among insects. Don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise." Or his comment to Rogue: "We love what you've done with your hair." There's no doubt that he's still a villain, still convinced that he's right, and always looking for a way to put one over on the humans (and the X-Men). Plus the whispering and giggling (well maybe not _giggling_) with Mystique.
And is it just me, or are Magneto and Mystique lovers? It sure as hell looks that way to me.
Wolverine's fight with Lady Deathstrike was entertaining, though not nearly as spectacular as I'd expected. But it was nice to see people with huge, nasty sharp claws using them with lethal intent. Slash, cut, stab, tear, stabbity-stabbity-stab through the torso and vital organs. I knew the molten adamantium would come into play, but not how--and the exact means surprised me. Ow, repeat, OW.
That fight, and Magneto's many power stunts, demonstrated one of the reasons I think these movies are successful. They take the powers seriously; the real world implications of the powers, and myriad ways that people who really had those powers could use them, are given some serious thought. For instance, Magneto's lesson to Stryker's SpecOps: "Once the pin has been pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend." Simple, easy, direct--and it was done without ever exposing himself or his allies to the slightest risk from the gun-wielding goons.
And then there was Jean Grey. Dare I whisper the word? Phoenix. A large part of this story was very similar to the graphic novel God Loves, Man Kills. The ending is straight out of the origin of Phoenix in the earliest New X-Men comic. It was the Blackbird and not a space shuttle, and a huge flood rather than a cosmic storm--but Jean sacrificing her live to save the X-Men only to return (I'm quite certain) as Phoenix was right there on the screen.
It was a great film.
