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Movie Review: X2: X-Men United (Singer)

You may have noticed that I am a bit of a comic geek. As such, I am required to see these movies, even if I haven't read any X-Men comics since I was in grade school. (Sure, I tried reading some more recently... ugh...) I enjoyed the first movie, and it actually helped spark my return to reading comics, but my expectations for this one weren't particularly high. This one started getting into characters I didn't know (Deathstrike) and looked like it had too many people in it to really be interesting. It did a good job of keeping things moving (except for a couple of slow spots towards the end) so you wouldn't really notice the complete pointlessness of having all the characters. It also had some clever scenes, especially involving Magneto's escape from prison and getting to see a little more of Mystique in action. The central premise, though, of the conflicting philosophies of Xavier and Magneto never really played out, and Xavier's use of mind control really undercut the credibility of his argument for me. Of course, I have a hard time getting over the terrible "evolution" speeches at the beginning and end of the movie. Hopefully some writers will gain a basic understanding of biology before they try writing the next movie. I do have to give these writers credit, though, for limiting Cyclops's role. Overall, you could do worse for an action movie, but I still think this concept could have been used for even more.