Review of X2 (2003) by Pur__0_0__ — 09 Apr 2021

X2 is the X-Men movie that I would have absolutely loved to watch if I was a fan of the X-Men franchise as a kids. Sadly I became a fan of the series only in the recent years. This movie has all the characters from the cartoon series, and its story is even better than the prequel. Nightcrawler was my favourite character, and here he is. I was a little disappointed he wasn't there in the first movie, but he is here now. And that makes me like it already.

The movie opens with Nightcrawler fighting an entire team of security guards at the White House. It is one of the best choreographed fight scenes from any Marvel movie at that point, and one of my favourite after the warehouse fight scene from Batman v Superman. When he bursts into the room I was actually cheering for him. After that the scene shifts to the mutants who are showing visitors a museum on dinosaurs. Normally I don't like to watch those "teenagers get into a fight cliché scenes, but this one is an exception, especially the way everyone turns into a mannequin when they have to escape before anyone learns they are mutants.

Magneto's entrance was also awesome. The idea of Mystique just using a little bit of metal in a man's food could help Magneto walk all the way out of the prison was pretty creative. And then the mutants escaping from their plane and Magneto stopping them just before they hit the ground; it really made me like Magneto a lot. I actually liked Magneto in the first movie also because he had been on the receiving end of a lot of oppression and all of this was just his rage coming out, but here he absolutely nailed it.

Now of course I can't be going about telling all the things that happen in this movie, since there are a lot of storylines going on, and in spite of that it never feels complicated. The acting, costumes, CGI, music - everything has been done to perfection. The ending is also one of my favourites from all X-Men movies. I always consider this to be "the" X-Men movie, since it is so faithful to its source material and yet doesn't feel unrealistic. Everyone (except Wolverine of course) looks exactly like their comic counterpart. You can pause on any scene and expect it to be a panel from a comic. It's kinda sad that X-Men movies, for that matter any comic book movie franchise, no longer follows the source material. It's kinda fun to watch this movie because of that very reason. I can see myself watching this movie many times again in the future because it's so good, and that's actually saying something because I usually don't watch the same movie twice unless it's coming on TV and I have nothing better to do, or if it's as good as this and I have to show it to someone.