X2: X-Men United

X2: X-Men United

This was my weekend for Kelly Hu movies. On Thursday evening, I got off my butt and finally got around to seeing the most recent Jet Li movie, Cradle 2 the Grave, which featured Kelly Hu as basically a hot-looking henchperson of the main villain. She didn't have many lines, just stood around looking pretty and mean until her big fight scene at the end of the movie. (Naturally, she was matched up against the good guys' hottie, Gabrielle Union.) And with this experience under her belt, she was well-prepared to tackle her role as Yuriko Oyama/Lady Deathstrike in X2: X-Men United.

X2 was my second Kelly Hu movie of the weekend. I rarely see movies on the opening weekend, because I don't like crowds and standing in line to wait for one of the not-so-bad seats in the theatre. But this time I took a chance, hoping that if I took off out of work early, I'd be able to beat the crowds. And I was pleased to find that my plan worked, resulting in a pleasurable cinematic experience as I gazed for the second time in as many days upon the 20-foot-tall face of the first Asian American to be crowned Miss Teen USA (1985). But I'll discuss Ms. Hu more later.

The movie was preceded by trailers for two upcoming animated features: Pixar's Finding Nemo and Ang Lee's Hulk. The CGI looked pretty good in both of those movies, and I have to say that some of that Nemo movie's animation looked pretty realistic. Thankfully, they didn't show the trailer for Matrix Reloaded, which saved me the embarrassment of assuming the emergency landing position, clamping my hands down over my ears, and humming to myself. But enough about the trailers, this is a Jeffreview of the movie.

It isn't possible for me to judge this movie purely on its merits as an example of the collective art of the cinema. No small part of my appreciation for this film is based upon its Geek Appeal, which is has in plenty. For good or ill, I cannot claim full geekhood with regards to the X-Men. I would say that I am more of a semi-geek, or a post-geek, though not sufficiently past my geekdom to be an ex-geek. Unless by ex-geek you mean the same degree of geekhood as an ex-girlfriend, who still calls you regularly and occasionally comes over to sleep with you, retains of her girlfriendhood. Which is to say, I used to read the X-Men comic books. I read them for a few years, and at some point I was reading almost all of the various X-Men-related books. But I haven't read them in almost a decade now, although I still retain a fondness for the characters and stories I read back in the mid-to-late 1980s.

It is fortunate for me that the X-Men movies appear to have been inspired mainly by the stories of that period. And part of my enjoyment of the movies is the pleasure of seeing the characters and situations of which I was so fond, realized in a way that is respectful to the source material yet adapts appropriately to the medium of film. So some for the reasons I liked X2 so much have nothing to do with the quality of the movie as a piece of film craftsmanship, just as some of the reasons I disliked Daredevil so much had little to do with the fact that it was a bad movie (which it was). As something of an X-Men fan, it was possible for me to take in the staggering array of characters without batting an eye, understanding with little prompting who they were, what side they were on, and what their powers were supposed to be. I didn't need to be told their names more than once to know who was being addressed, be it by their given name or by their code name. So I can't really judge how well the potential problems of communicating these issues to an uninitiated audience were accomplished.

Having said that, my assessment of the movie is that it ROCKED! Was it a great movie? No. But it was fun, the cool parts kicked ass, and the not-so-great parts were still enjoyable. It had its problems. But it had so many cool moments that the balance sheet ended up way into the green. And it's a pleasure to see a good sequel. There are so many movies which had disappointing sequels, or sequels that didn't necessarily suck, but were simply unremarkable. The same is true of comic-book-based movies and television. So it's a genuine pleasure to have a comic-book-movie-sequel that isn't a stinker.

********* SPOILER WARNING *********

Well, I've avoided talking about the details of the movie for long enough, so if you're trying to avoid spoilers, this is the time to stop reading. There were a lot of good things about this movie, both large and small. Nightcrawler tops my list of things good in this movie. The opening sequence featuring Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler's assault upon the White House simply KICKED ASS! I don't know why Bryan Singer has decided to make violent Germans in the opening sequence a part of the X-Men movie formula, but if it works then why change things? And in Nightcrawler's case, it definitely works. The sequence skillfully combined Kurt Wagner's acrobaticism and his "bamf"ing, with a little help from his prehensile tail, to create a Nightcrawler who was more dynamic than he'd ever been on the printed page. The teleporting effect differed from the small explosion used in the comic books, but for the movie it worked elegantly. And how about Kurt saving Jean after she was sucked out of the plane? Sweet! I admit that before I had seen the movie, news of Alan Cumming's casting as Kurt had given me some doubts. Prior to this movie he'd hardly been known as an action figure, portraying a series of dorky fops or simply dramatic roles. But he was an excellent choice to breathe life into this charmingly innocent and sympathetic character. And his physical presence as the scarred, blue mutant was far more convincing than Ben Affleck as a blind superhero. The opening scene is one of the most important scenes in a movie, and X2 had me from "bamf."

One thing I liked was the fact that this movie took place a mere month after the events of the last movie. I had just watched the first X-Men DVD earlier that morning, to prepare myself for the sequel, and I wasn't disappointed by the way X2 picked up where X-Men left off. This movie was clearly designed as a sequel to the last, advancing character development and themes directly from the previous movie. No explanation is given as to why Senator Kelly morphs into naked, blue Rebecca Romijn-Stamos. There's little exposition for those who came late to the show, regarding Magneto's lucite imprisoment. We don't have time for that, we've got new mutants to meet! And in comic book terms it makes a kind of sense, as this movie is like the next issue of a comic book following the first, and comic books usually come out on a monthly basis. So for this movie to start a month after the last one ended... okay, that's a bit of a stretch, I know.

On a purely geek level, it was great to see glimpses of several characters from the comic books, even though they were never developed fully as characters. The most satisfying had to have been Colossus. To see him walk in and turn into living metal as the soldiers' shots bounced off of him was a great moment! In fact, it was a little distracting because from that moment on I was hoping to see him one more time, even though I didn't really think I would. In fact, the coolness of seeing him onscreen (and the hope that he will be a major player in the next movie) far outweighed little details like the fact that he was the same size in metal as he was in flesh (in the comic books, he is bigger as metal) and his lack of a Russian accent. Actually, giving Colossus a Russian accent would make perfect sense now, given our friendly relations with the former Soviet state and the influx of Russian immigrants. Something like 1/3 or 1/4 of the people in my apartment complex are Russian.

Magneto's escape from his polymer prison was a very cool and inventive scene. Turning the iron in the guard's blood into a weapon was quite clever, though it leads one to wonder why this hadn't been done before Mystique injected him. Presumably, the normal levels of iron in a man's blood is not enough for Magneto's power to work upon, though this wasn't explicitly stated. But just as cool as Magneto escaping was him getting a beating. In the comic books, Magneto is a mutant of immense power who often seems more a demi-god than a human being. And even though he lacks the over-muscled physique of his comic book counterpart, I associate Ian McKellen's Magneto with the same, vast power. So seeing the old guy get beaten and tortured for information was a dreadful shock, though one which made perfect sense. More than that, it recalled the torture of him and other Jews at the hands of the Nazis, and reinforced his motivation, his hatred toward non-mutant humans, or "muggles."

X2 had a darker tone than X-Men. X-Men involved a rather ridiculous, high-tech James Bond weapon hidden, of all places, in the torch of the Statue of Liberty. There's no reason for that other than the dramatic, Remo Williams vision of a fight on the Statue. Why couldn't the weapon have been inside the Statue downstairs? Why not on a barge in the harbor? How the hell do you install a huge, metal machine in the Statue's torch in the first place? Didn't anyone notice? X2's Cerebro 2 deep within a secret government facility hidden within a hydroelectric dam, by comparison, makes much more sense. You can siphon energy from the dam, it's a strong and non-public structure. Of course, in action movie terms, as soon as you learn that the villain's lair is in or by a dam, you know that the dam will burst in a climactic fashion. And knowing this, as an audience member you ask why they don't land the plane on the reservoir side of the dam. That way, when the dam inevitably bursts, it will be "oh no! The water level is dropping! Now we may not be able to take a refreshing swim after we defeat the villain!" instead of "oh crap, here comes the water! Quick, someone sacrifice Jean to save the rest of us!"

One definite sign of X2's darker tone is the amount of death in the movie. In the first movie, there were no clear deaths. Certainly none of the heroes died. And of the villains, Toad got blasted into the harbor by Storm's lightning and Sabertooth plummeted from atop the Statue, crashing through the upper deck of a boat far below. Either of these events would be enough to kill a muggle, of course, but for a superhero movie none of these would be more than a character could survive, should a sequel warrant it. In contrast, many soldiers in X2 die at the point of Wolverine's claws, and the entire trio of villains, William Stryker, his hallucination-inducing son Jason, and their mind-controlled muscle, Yuriko, are pretty clearly killed. And Singer handle the introduction of death into the franchise with skill, for it is no small thing. When Wolverine is attacked in the kitchen, there is a moment's pause of realization after he impales the soldier against the refrigerator. And lest we suspect that Wolverine might have taken it easy on the fellow at the last instant, the trio of claw holes in the refrigerator after the soldier drops assure us that there is now one less soldier upon the earth. This arresting scene lends weight to the plethora of killings that must inevitably follow. It tells us that this is not Luke Skywalker bloodlessly swatting Jabba's guards off the deck of his desert skiff. This is not the comic book explaining that it's all right, kids, Wolverine doesn't really kill people, he retracts his claws as he is slashing them, just enough to keep from killing them. No, this is a man taking the lives of other men because he knows that the lives of these children may hang in the balance.

That said, how cool was it to see Wolverine kicking much ass? (That's a rhetorical question.)

Iceman's coming-out scene with his parents was good. It was funny, with the obvious gay analogy, and it was nice to see some mutant-kid/muggle-parent interaction. The abrupt transition in the first movie of Marie at home to Rogue the runaway was lacking in a greater understanding of her family's reaction to her mutancy, and the wealth of children attending the school begged the question of what has happened to their parents. Now we have at least some idea, and a deeper sympathy for these outcast mutant children.

The fight scene between Yuriko and Wolverine was way cool. It made good use of the characters' respective claws, and the moves were interesting to watch. Respect must go to rookie fight choreographer Jimmy Edwards. Karate black belt Kelly Hu's fight as Yuriko was more interesting than her fight in Cradle 2 the Grave, which coincidentally was choreographed by Corey Yuen, the Hong Kong veteran who choreographed the first X-Men movie's fights. Of course, Cradle had a much smaller budget (which often translates into less prep and shooting time) and the fight had to be choreographed around Gabrielle Union (I don't know if she can fight at all). Whatever the reasons, Kelly Hu's fight in X2 was much more memorable than her Cradle 2 the Grave fight, and not just because she got pumped full of molten adamantium. If you know what I mean. Regardless of the fact that these were superbeings battling it out comic book style, you can only see Lady Deathstrike sink a handful of needle-sharp claws into Wolverine so many times before you start to squirm a little, "ew, that can't be good for you." My nitpicky gripe about that fight is that afterward, Wolverine's uniform should have been perforated like a pasta strainer. I mean, she was poking the hell out of him, with five fingers at once. Even if Wolvie had a healing factor, his outfit should have been shredded like Enron documents.

It was cool to see the progression of Jean's powers through the movie, pushed each time by the crisis at hand. We actually see this begin with the first X-Men movie. It's a matter of debate among geeks: were her greater powers awakened by her desperate use of Cerebro? Was it exposure to Magneto's mutation device that unlocked her abilities? Whatever it was, we learn early on that Jean has been different since the events of the first movie, a month prior. And by the time she is battling her mind-controlled lover, Scott, her abilities are far beyond her simple levitation tricks. And what geek wasn't awestruck by her "death?" Toward the end of the movie, her use of her new, enhanced powers were accompanied by a flame effect around her eyes, and at the last moment of her life, as she battled the flood, her crackling aura took on a distinctly bird-like shape. Sharp-eyed geeks noticed the faint, winged shape beneath the surface of the water at the end of the movie. And all of these images are obviously references to the progression of Jean Grey in the comic books, in which she sacrificed her life while saving her comrades, only to return to life in a vastly more powerful form as Phoenix. As Phoenix, when Jean Grey would use her powers she was surrounded by a flaming, bird-shaped aura. The Phoenix storyline was a major event in Marvel Comics in the 1980s, as she was gradually corrupted by her god-like powers and was eventually killed by those seeking to save the universe from her destructiveness. Geeks love seeing stuff they read in comics come to life in movies. They're funny that way.

Of course, X2 wasn't a perfect movie. There were good things about it as well as bad things, and sometimes things that were both good and bad. X2 had a huge number of characters. Sabertooth and Toad didn't make it back for X2, but more characters were added, leaving a total of about 15 major characters in X2. That's a lot of characters to juggle. And while this movie is more plot-oriented than the first, I thought the handling of such a large number of characters was rather deft, considering the circumstances. Still, don't walk into X2 expecting "In the Bedroom." Throughout the 35-year history of the X-Men, each of the characters has had a chance to shine at some point or another, and each fan has their favorites among the mutants. Although X2 was X-tra long, clocking in at around 2 hours and 15 minutes, that's a far sight shorter than 35 years, and so unfortunately many characters are not as well-defined as our lead mutant, Wolverine. The first X-Men movie was clearly centered around him as he meets the X-Men for the first time. We got to know him and Rogue, as well as Prof. X, Magneto, Jean Grey, and Senator Kelly. But others among the first movie's 11 major characters didn't receive much development. Magneto's henchmen, Sabertooth, Toad, and Mystique, never rose far beyond being superpowered muscle. Storm was left with little more than a bad accent and a worse wig. And we got to know Cyclops only as far as we needed to in order to establish him as Wolverine's rival for Jean Grey's affections. We got little insight into his personality and role within the group.

X2 saves some time by taking the established characters as read, and putting most of its character development time into the new characters. The chief success of this effort is Kurt Wagner (but in the Munich circus he was known as the Incredible Nightcrawler!), who warms the screen in a combination of pathos and innocent hopefulness. Shawn Ashmore returns from an extremely brief appearance in the first movie as Bobby/Iceman, getting a rare heart-to-heart scene with Wolverine as well as the movie's mutant kiss scene with Rogue. I really would have liked to have seen him ice up for combat, encasing himself in the frozen carapace he often wore in the comics. With the state of CGI today, I'm sure he could look really cool. No pun intended. And your Anakin this evening will be St. John Allerdyce, whose "real name" is Pyro (he is a god among insects, don't let anyone tell you otherwise), the anti-Iceman both in powers and personality as he does his mutant version of the surly, brooding son of the vampire Angel, Connor. John/Pyro made a cameo in the first X-Men movie, creating a fireball from a cigarette lighter in the classroom scene, but for this larger role Singer has hired a new, slightly more experienced actor to portray the mutant malcontent. The sinister William Stryker, the movie's main villain, also gets plenty of screen time, though in truth he never rises much above the standard vengeful movie villain despite an imploring I'm-a-victim speech he gives just before unleashing his mutant son Jason upon Prof. X. Stryker's muscle is Yuriko, played by former Miss Hawaii Kelly Hu. She gets a grand total of one, maybe two lines, and a cool fight scene with Wolverine, but in the end she never rises beyond the standard-issue thug. She spends the entire movie as a mind-controlled henchperson, with no hint of who she was before she ran afoul of Stryker. This is especially a disappointment because in the comic books her origin is tied into an interesting love story involving Wolverine and an army of ninja. In X2, all that is gone and replaced by nothing. And her death at the end implies that no more is forthcoming.

Of the first movie's characters, Magneto is again in the spotlight as Prof. X finds himself in the Rapunzel role, a captive to be rescued. There is irony in the fact that, just as in the first movie the X-Men rushed to save the world's leaders from death at Magneto's hands, in X2 they rush to save the world from Prof. X. I also found it clever the manner in which he was turned into the Cerebro-powered super-weapon, by Jason Stryker manipulating his compassion. It appears to be another element of the X-Men movie formula, that part way through the movie Prof. X must be incapacitated by the villain. I think this would be due to his enormous power. As one of the world's most powerful mutants, illustrated in this movie by his ability to freeze all those around him as if freezing time (the same power Catherine Zeta Jones possesses in those T-Mobile commercials), it would be too easy for him to solve every problem with a little deus ex crania. Unless faced with an equally-powerful adversary (and really, how many of those are there?), it would be no problem for him to freeze or mentally manipulate almost any villain, or at least turn his allies against him. So unless some way were found to eliminate him from the narrative, there would be nothing for the rest of the X-Men to do.

Of course, central to the returning X-characters is Wolverine. This movie was less of a Wolverine movie, nicely broadening its scope toward more of the ensemble, but Wolverine is still the star. And in case the audience hasn't figured it out, Singer reminds us by having both Rogue and Jean Grey gush over him, and even Mystique makes her move on him. I half expected Storm to start flirting with him too. The theme of a Wolvie/Jean/Cyclops love triangle is advanced in this movie as Jean Grey spends more screen time with Logan. But Cyclops gets shafted in terms of screen time and character development. Even moreso than the first movie, Scott comes off as little more than an asshole who doesn't like Wolverine, and has few lines. At least in the first movie he has a bit of a sense of humor about it, making a joke to Wolverine about yellow spandex and chuckling when Wolvie calls him "a dick." In X2 we see only that he cares about his motorcycle ("borrowed" by Logan at the end of the first movie) and that he loves Jean. And this second thing comes to light more in his anguish when Jean Grey dies than in any tenderness they share on camera.

Rounding out the list of major characters who get shafted is Storm. Storm gets more screen time in X2, though that's not saying much, sans accent and wearing a different bad wig. We get a glimpse into her character and the half-hearted attempt at a character arc in her brief exchanges with Kurt about faith (and anger). She also gets her powers showcased in one scene in which she uses her weather control to create tornadoes as she's piloting the X-jet, and in another in which she rather pointlessly blows up a church. Well, she doesn't actually explode the whole church, but when a frightened Kurt (in the Munich circus he was known as the Incredible Nightcrawler!) is reluctant to descend from a rafter, she summons a lightning bolt to turn said rafter into splinters, sending the devil-tailed mutant plummeting into Jean Grey's telekinetic grasp. I guess Jean wasn't powerful enough to yank him down, and using less-destructive wind to blow him down would have been... too much trouble?

Rogue returns in this movie, growing toward womanhood as she is tempered by the heat of X2's escalating conflict. A scared girl in the first movie who seemed to specialize in running away from her problems, in X2 she begins taking initiative, consciously using her powers for more than merely bringing herself back from near-death. Halfway thru X2 there is a scene in which the younger mutants reflect upon not having yet earned their black, leather X-Men uniforms, but by the end of the movie she is clad in full X-Men raiment. But I'd say that the most satisfying character to return from the first X-Men movie was Mystique. The other mutants, you pretty much know that they'll be bcak for X2, and character-wise you're largely given as much development as you'd expect. However, the shape-shifting, blue mutant really comes into her own in this movie, a contrast to her role in the first where she was little more than a henchman with a cool special effect. In X-Men, her memorable scenes were a cool fight scene with Wolverine and one in which she sneaks into Prof. X's school disguised as a student. When in the end we discover that she has taken on the guise of the late Senator Kelly, I admit that I wondered just how she would pull off such a thing, in practical terms. After all, convincingly taking the role of a high-profile US Senator requires more than simply looking and sounding like him, as viewers of West Wing should know. But beyond her mutant morphing and fighting skills, she had given no indication that she possessed the intelligence or the cleverness to accomplish such a task. In X2 we learn more about this enigmatic character. Is she good? As Magneto says, "you have no idea." She shows that she is intelligent and capable, despite her penchant for walking around stark naked. And we even get a glimpse into the strength of her political conviction when Kurt Wagner asks her why she doesn't remain in human guise permanently, and she replies, "because we shouldn't have to." Yes, she is a strong-willed and capable woman. But we're also reminded of her evil/mean side when, chuckling in a corner with Magneto, they make a snide remark about Rogue's hair. Man, evil mutants are catty bitches.

Magneto's return was handled well in X2, both in the scene of his escape and in his handling as a character. I liked the way he and Mystique were worked into the plot of this movie. Although M&M were recast on the side of the heroes (for the most part) in this picture, they were never wholly free of menace. And by the time they leave at the end of the movie, flying off with Pyro and leaving Stryker in chains to the mercy of the bursting dam, we have little doubt that the Brotherhood is back in full effect, while at the same time we can't help but sympathize a little with their reasons for leaving the way they did. If Darth Sidious can tempt Anakin as well as Magneto slyly wooed Pyro over to the Dark Side, then I will be well satisfied in Vader's genesis. M&M effectively filled the roles of neither villains nor heroes, while remaining important to the story. And don't tell me you didn't think it was cool when Magneto pulled the pins on those soldiers' hand grenades.

As much as I enjoyed X2, there are some things about it which I viewed less favorably. One thing that was lacking from the movie was more footage of Colossus. And I say that not just because it was cool to see Colossus, but because after we see him usher the mutant kids through the secret drainage pipe out onto the grounds of the school, we never see them again. Did they just cower in the woods for a few days? Did they keep running until they were picked up by highway patrol vehicles? The world needs to know. This was a plot thread that was left dangling in a way that makes me think they shot the scenes but later cut them in order to keep the movie under two hours (which they failed to do by 15 minutes). Anyway, I'm expecting this scene to show up in the Deleted Scenes section of the DVD. On the subject of minor characters, I wonder why Kitty Pryde and Jubilee were recast. X2's Shadowcat seemed more youthful, and neither character had any screen time anyway, so I wonder why they didn't just bring back the same actors. If you watch the first two Harry Potter movies, you'll notice that many of the extras who were in the first movie were used again in the second movie. How about a little continuity? Small though their roles were in the first X-Men movie, I rather liked the Kitty Pryde and Jubilee they had, and in the Deleted Scenes they get even more screen time.

Sometimes Wolverine was just not the Wolverine I know and love. In the beginning of the movie, he arrives as Alkali Lake to find the base there decimated, a heap of rubble. So he returns to the X-Mansion. This seemed to me to clearly be an attempt to "fix" the way the first movie ended. What the hell am I talking about? Let me explain. At the end of the first Back to the Future movie, Doc Brown comes back from the future and tells Marty that there's a problem with Marty & Jennifer's kids. So Marty and Jennifer hop into the DeLorean and they fly off into the future together. This seemed as if it was intentionally setting things up for a sequel, but it was really meant as a joke. Sort of like "whew, I'm back from my big adventure, what a relief to be home again. Oh no, there's another adventure to go on!" When Back to the Future turned into an unexpected worldwide phenomenon and it came time to write the sequel, they found that they had a problem: what do they do with Jennifer? The successful formula of Back to the Future was centered around the duo of Marty and Doc Brown. So they "fixed" things by leaving Jennifer unconscious for most of the movie, effectively removing her so Marty and the Doc could run around and do their thing. The few scenes she had made no impact upon Doc and Marty's storyline.

Similarly, in the first X-Men movie we have a character, Wolverine, part of whose appeal is that he is an anti-hero, a gruff, badass loner who is used to wandering the world alone. So part of his motivation for staying with the goody-goody team of X-Men was Professor X's offer to use his mental abilities to help Logan find his lost past. By the end of the movie, we have to have a payoff of this, which is illustrated in Wolverine's motorcycle ride to Alkali Lake. This means that the beginning of X2 must address Wolverine's discoveries at this place. But the thing is, much of X2's plot hinges around the revelation of Wolverine's past and the secret held within the Alkali Lake complex. So we can't reveal the secret of Alkali Lake until much closer to the climax of the movie. How do we "fix" this? We have Wolverine arrive at Alkali Lake and find nothing, thus necessitating the X-Men's return to Alkali Lake for the climax. This is preferable to the alternative of having Wolverine find the Alkali Lake complex, then get captured and held prisoner until the X-Men arrive for the climax.

My peeve is that Wolverine, having traveled all this way to Alkali Lake, shouldn't have simply turned away. The Wolverine I know from the comic books wouldn't have. He would have used his finely-honed sense of smell to discover that there was more here than met the eye. He would have scratched and clawed his way through the frozen earth to find whatever hidden, underground secrets were there. He would have noticed the suspiciously-nearby hydroelectric dam just over yonder and investigated, using his mutant sense of smell to ferret out all the hidden passages. He wouldn't have just shrugged and said, "Oh, there's nothing here. Well I guess it's time to go home, then." Come on, are you telling me that you didn't take one look at the ruins of the Alkali Lake complex and say to yourself, "hmm, it must be underground?" And speaking of his sense of smell, there were a couple of incidents in which he really shouldn't have been taken by surprise, thanks to his animal instincts. My favorite example is when Mystique attempted to seduce him by taking Jean Grey's form during their little camping trip. In the first movie he had no problem knowing that it was Mystique in the guise of Storm at the end of the movie. He identified her immediately and stuck his claws through her torso. Or maybe he simply had some antagonism toward Storm which hadn't been fully explained earlier. I'm just saying that Logan shouldn't have been fooled by Mystique for a moment. If nothing else, the smell of blue paint and latex should have tipped him off.

And speaking of Wolverine, what was up with his hair? It looked higher and more hairsprayed than it did in the first movie. I liked how it looked in the first X-Men movie, carrying through the distinctive look from the comic books in a manner realistic enough to survive the movie. But in this movie it was as if the designers said, "it's a bigger movie, we've gotta have bigger hair." It wasn't so huge as to be horribly distracting, and in non-close-ups it started to look okay, but it resembled a bouffant enough to bother me. I was also not that pleased with Storm's hair. She's supposed to have flowing, stark white hair. Her in thei movie was different from the first movie, but to my eyes it was no particular improvement. What is wrong with just long, straight hair? Bangs are out! Leave it all long, let if flow in the wind.

I enjoyed the climactic ending of X2, in which Jean Grey sacrifices herself in a Wrath of Khan moment. I didn't find it as moving as the original Wrath of Khan, but nevertheless it was a good scene and I liked the way it set things up for a Phoenix return. It definitely left me looking forward to X3 (as opposed to Triple-X, which I thought was okay, but not that great). But aside from thinking "you know, you wouldn't be having this problem if you had simply parked the plane on the other side of the dam," I was also left thinking, "why the hell did Jean leave the plane?" Think about it. It's not as if she was doing a Mr. Fantastic thing and saving the plane by blocking the water with her body. It was a telekinetic mind-over-matter affair. Are we to believe that she couldn't have psychically stopped the water and raised the plane from inside? It would also have obviated her preventing Kurt from teleporting out to save her, thus freeing up more of her power to save the plane. I can only imagine that the power she was using to stop the water was some sort of destructive energy which, if projected through the cockpit of the plane, might have damaged the plane itself. But that was hardly made clear.

This was pretty long for an action movie. Clocking in at 2 and a quarter hours, it did at times seem to feel a bit long, and unlike its predecessor, it seemed to meander a bit plotwise. It lacked a steady buildup to the climax, and at times I had to wonder where this was going, if anywhere. Like the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, this movie seemed a bit episodic as the original fellowship split off into three smaller units to pursue separate, parallel quests. This was good in a way, as it gave certain individual characters room to shine a bit, but it also had the effect of diluting the dramatic build a little bit. Unlike Two Towers, however, by the end of X2 we have the convergence of the separate plot threads into the climactic finale, which worked to the movie's benefit.

And finally, I will address the lovely Kelly Hu's role in this movie in greater depth. There is little debate over the fact that the former beauty pageant winner is a hottie. But as I am fond of saying, so is everyone in Hollywood. And she is an "ethnic" hottie, which while not as much of a disadvantage as being an "ethnic" male, can still be an obstacle in Hollywood. Which is just my way of saying that the Asian always gets shafted.

In X2 Kelly Hu takes on the role of Yuriko, also known as Lady Deathstrike. There isn't much to be gleaned about her character in the movie. She is a mutant with healing abilities and physical enhancements which similar to Wolverine's. She is under mind control, not unlike Kurt Wagner and occasionally Magneto (when they choose to interrogate him). Mostly, she walks around silently behind Stryker. Her character has a name (two, actually) because she is based loosely upon a specific comic book character. But in the movie she is mostly a moving prop. In the end, she moves faster as she fights Wolverine, claw versus claw, as the bad guy's muscle. Then she gets killed, and that's it. She doesn't get to speak, she hardly gets to act, she's just an extra with a stunt double. Every other actor with the same amount of screen time else gets a character with a personality, and some lines. But the Asian gets shafted.

We get that she is under mind control. But who was she when she wasn't being controlled? Who was Yuriko before Stryker turned her into his lethal bitch? We'll never know, because now she's dead. Let's take a look at the other characters who were under mind control. Kurt Wagner (in the Munich circus he was known as the Incredible Nightcrawler!) was revealed as a rich, interesting character, charming and religious. Magneto was similarly fleshed out over the course of two movies. Cyclops was a hero, forced to fight the woman he loved, and though he wasn't that fleshed out he at least had a personality. So all these white actors get mind controlled, but they are still people, while Kelly Hu's Yuriko is nothing more than a robot. The Asian gets shafted.

In the climactic final action, Stryker and his forces battle the mutants. His son Jason, a pathetic and malicious individual, controls Professor Xavier. Yuriko, under mind control, battle Wolverine. Cyclops, also under mind control, battles Jean Grey. Stryker and his cannon fodder die, as they are the bad guys. Jason who is doing his part as much out of a craving for his father's approval as he is out of pure malice, dies because he is one of the bad guys. Cyclops is redeemed, because he is simply a mind-controlled pawn, and thus doesn't deserve death because he wasn't responsible for his actions. But the same could be said about Yuriko, but she is killed in the end. She was the one innocent to be killed (well, Jean Grey could also be called an innocent who was killed, but since she chose her fate, and she'll probably be back as Phoenix anyway, I don't count her). See the theme here? The Asian gets shafted.

Bottom line: out of all the actors with comparable screen time, Kelly Hu is the only one whose character is more of a prop than a person, and who is unjustly killed off in the end. The Asian gets shafted.

Rant aside, this movie had many more positive things than negative, and it has my recommendation. I also recommend seeing the first X-Men movie prior to watching this one, to get you up to speed on the story so far. In the hands of Bryan Singer, these movies manage to rise a smidgin above standard summer action fare with more attention paid to character development than one might otherwise have the right to expect.