To the surprise and joy of, basically, everyone, X-Men was a huge hit in 2000. Comics fans loved it, as it was a philosophically faithful adaptation of the long-running series, distilled as it was down to only a few characters.
More to the point, mainstream audiences ate it up, and it was one of the top ten grossing films of 2000, both in the U.S. and internationally.
Naturally, they didn’t wait long to green-light a sequel.
Fox commissioned both Zak Penn and David Hayter to write treatments, which were then combined into a single script, the final draft of which was done by Michael Dougherty & Dan Harris. Singer read several comics stories looking for inspiration, and the final product was particularly inspired by the various Weapon X comics stories that dealt with Wolverine’s background, as well as the seminal 1982 graphic novel God Loves, Man Kills, which remains one of the best X-Men stories ever told.
The cast was expanded a bit for the sequel. Shawn Ashmore’s Iceman role was increased, as was Pyro’s, the character recast with Aaron Stanford. While neither the Toad nor Sabretooth were brought back from the first film (only a tragedy in the case of the former, as Ray Park was delightful), we get new villains in Lady Deathstrike and William Stryker, each derived from characters in the source material (Deathstrike’s origins were always connected to Wolverine from her first appearance in Daredevil; Stryker is based on the main villain in GL,MK). More importantly, Nightcrawler was added, though his shared backstory with Mystique from the comics was abandoned. Originally, the script included the Beast and the Angel, but they were cut for budgetary reasons (though Dr. Hank McCoy, the Beast’s real name, is seen doing a TV interview, played by Steve Bacic as an ordinary human, and there’s an X-ray of the Angel that can be seen in Stryker’s lab); both characters will make their screen debut in the next film, played by Kelsey Grammer and Ben Foster, respectively.
Thanks to Mystique’s shape-changing abilities, we get Bruce Davison back, playing Mystique posing as Senator Kelly. Kitty Pryde and Jubilee are again seen in small roles in this film, this time recast with Katie Stuart and Kea Wong, respectively. Kitty will be recast a third time for The Last Stand and Days of Future Past; Wong will be back as Jubilee in The Last Stand. And there’s a bunch of other mutant students seen in small roles, notably Daniel Cudmore as Colossus, who will return to the role in Days of Future Past.
“You were an animal then, and you’re an animal now. I just gave you claws.”
X2: X-Men United
Written by Zak Penn and David Hayter & Bryan Singer and Michael Dougherty & Dan Harris
Directed by Bryan Singer
Produced by Lauren Shuler Donner & Ralph Winter
Original release date: May 2, 2003
A blue-skinned mutant attacks the White House. A teleporting acrobat with a prehensile tail, he makes short work of the president’s protection detail and almost kills the president, until he’s wounded by a Secret Service agent, at which point he beats a hasty retreat.
Wolverine arrives at the facility Xavier showed him at the end of the previous film, but it’s long abandoned.
Xavier and all his students are on a field trip to a natural history museum. Grey is worried that something bad is happening—her powers are also increasing to a degree that frightens both her and Cyclops. (In particular, she’s having trouble screening out the thoughts of the other museum patrons.)
In the cafeteria, Iceman, Rogue, and Pyro get into an argument with two obnoxious kids. Both Pyro and Iceman use their powers, and Xavier is forced to telepathically “freeze” everyone in the museum to protect his students.
Wolverine returns just as the X-Men make plans to track down the mutant who attacked the president, hoping to get their hands on him before the authorities do. Xavier uses Cerebro to find him in Boston and sends Grey and Storm there to retrieve him. As it is, this attack will undo the work the X-Men did in stopping Magneto in the previous movie (and the work Mystique has done to reverse Senator Kelly’s positions).
Colonel William Stryker, an Army scientist, is the one who created Magneto’s plastic prison, as seen at the end of the prior film. His son, Jason, is a master illusionist, whom he brought to Xavier years ago in the hopes of getting the professor to “cure” him. The fluid from Jason’s brain can be used to control someone’s mind, and he has been using it on Magneto to get information about Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters in general and Cerebro in particular.
Stryker exposes the former to the president, who authorizes a commando raid on the school. Mystique is in the meeting, still posing as Kelly, and she learns that Stryker is the one holding Magneto. She breaks into Stryker’s office (disguising herself as Stryker’s assistant Yuriko and a maintenance guy) and retrieves various pieces of information, including the schematics of his base (where he intends to build a new Cerebro), but not its location. She also pulls all the files on Magneto’s prison.
Xavier and Cyclops go to visit Magneto to see what he knows about the attack on the White House, leaving Wolverine in charge of the school. Magneto reveals to Xavier that he was coerced into revealing the school’s secrets—to his credit, he is genuinely regretful. We also find out that it’s Stryker who’s after them, and that Magneto and Xavier both already know that Stryker is the one responsible for implanting adamantium into Wolverine. Yuriko subdues Cyclops and gasses the cell, and she captures both Xavier and Cyclops for Stryker.
Stryker himself is busy leading the raid on the school. He did not expect to see Wolverine there, and seeing him prompts some memories in Wolverine. However, the latter’s priority is to safeguard the students (though Rogue has to remind him of this at one point). Colossus gets several of the kids away at Wolverine’s urging, about half a dozen are captured by Stryker, and Wolverine, Rogue, Iceman, and Pyro get away in Cyclops’s car.
Wolverine heads for Boston, as he knows Grey and Storm are there. Iceman’s family lives there as well, and they head over to the Drake family house. Pyro looks longingly at the happy family pictures in the house. When Iceman’s parents come home, he outs himself as a mutant. Iceman’s little brother calls the cops and Pyro reacts by throwing fireballs at the cops.
Mystique poses as a normal human (who looks just like Rebecca Romijn!!!) who seduces one of Magneto’s guards, and injects him with a major supplement of iron. The next day, Magneto senses the extra iron and yanks it out of his body, exsanguinating him. He turns the iron into three ball bearings and escapes.
Storm and Grey find their mutant: Kurt Wagner, a.k.a. Nightcrawler. He was not in control of his actions when he attacked the White House, and Grey mind-scans him to verify. They bring him along when they rescue the gang from the Drake house, and as they approach the mansion, they’re harassed by F-16s. Storm uses her powers to disable the planes, and the pilots have to bail out, but one fires two missiles before ejecting. Grey is able to prematurely detonate one of them, but she can’t stop the second one before it damages the jet.
Luckily, Magneto is nearby, and he rescues the jet. He proposes they set aside their differences to combat the greater threat: Stryker. The colonel has copied Cerebro and kidnapped Xavier, and will use Xavier and Cerebro to kill all mutants. They just need the location of Stryker’s base, which Nightcrawler has been to. Grey is able to extract the location telepathically—it turns out to be under the abandoned base that Wolverine visited at the top of the film. Oops.
The only way into the base is through the spillway of the dam that powers it. Wolverine believes that Stryker won’t kill him, so he should go in, but Mystique can actually operate the equipment and find Cerebro, so she goes in disguised as Wolverine, takes out Stryker’s commandos, locks herself in the control room, and lets everyone else in. Wolverine faces off against Yuriko, who has Wolverine’s healing abilities and razor-sharp adamantium fingernails that grow out of her fingers. Grey has to fight Cyclops, who is under Stryker’s control—their battle leads to the dam being badly damaged, though Cyclops eventually shakes off the mind-control. Mystique locates Cerebro and brings Magneto there, but instead of freeing Xavier, he reverses the polarity of the neutron flow (or something) so that Xavier will instead kill all humans. Nightcrawler teleports himself and Storm into Cerebro, and Storm starts a blizzard in the room, which stops Jason, and allows Xavier to recover himself.
Unfortunately, the dam is bursting. Magneto and Mystique steal Stryker’s helicopter, joined by Pyro, who defects to Magneto’s side. Nightcrawler frees the students who are imprisoned and they all join up with Wolverine to escape the base. Rogue semi-competently flies the jet to their location, and they all board—but the engines won’t start back up. Grey telekinetically holds the dam back and starts the engines up, enabling the rest of the team to escape, at the cost of her own life.
The X-Men visit the White House (Xavier doing the freeze-everyone-mentally trick again) and give the president a #notallmutants speech and also say they’ll be watching. Back at the school, Xavier senses that Grey may still be alive. Meanwhile, Wolverine assures Cyclops that Grey made her choice, and it was Cyclops, not Wolverine. (Though not for lack of trying on Wolverine’s part.)
The last shot is of the lake, now set free by the busted dam, a reflection of a phoenix in the water.
“You are a god among insects—never let anyone tell you different.”
With X-Men having established the milieu, it’s left to X2 (which was hastily given the “X-Men United” subtitle when it occurred to Fox that not including the name of the most popular comic-book super-team of the 20th century was perhaps an error in judgment; everybody was abbreviating every damn thing in the 1990s and 2000s, and this was one of the more ridiculous examples) to expand it.
Where Rogue’s fellow students were glorified extras in X-Men, she, Iceman, and Pyro are major supporting characters, and several others (Colossus, Siryn, Artie, Kitty) have tiny if important parts to play. (In Artie’s case, it’s a simple case of having a blue lizard tongue, used to good effect at both the start and the end of the movie.) One of the best moments in the entire film is when they’re at the Drake house and Pyro just stares at the wall of happy family pictures. Aaron Stanford plays it superbly, as you can see the envy, the regret, and eventually the anger, which he immediately uses against the cops who try to take them in. More to the point, it’s immediately followed by the Drake family betraying them, whether philosophically (Iceman’s parents’ inability to accept that their son is a “freak”) or with actions (Iceman’s brother calling the cops). It makes Pyro an easy recruiting target for Magneto, but it also shows just what mutants have to go through.
The big add to the cast is Alan Cumming’s Nightcrawler, and he’s perfect. The movie emphasizes Kurt Wagner’s Catholicism even more than the comics have (though some writers have dealt more aggressively with that than others), probably because the notion of a demonic-looking mutant who is devout was too good an idea to resist. But Cumming also captures Nightcrawler’s physicality, and his inherent goodness. (I love that he constantly tries to introduce himself as a circus performer, a hifalutin intro that the other characters waste no time in getting tired of hearing.)
Bryan Singer also does a much better job showing everyone using their powers, perhaps learning from the mistakes of the first film. Storm uses her powers far more impressively (taking care of the F-16s, freezing out Jason); the kids in the mansion also use their powers effectively against Stryker’s commandos (Iceman’s wall of ice, Kitty phasing through her bed to avoid capture, Siryn’s sonic scream, Colossus’s general awesomeness); Nightcrawler’s combination of acrobatics and teleporting in the White House attack is superbly choreographed and shot; and Magneto’s prison break is beautifully done. Having said that, Magneto is bizarrely subdued in the attack on Stryker’s base—why bother with Mystique’s subtle entrance when he can just rip the roof off?
I remember being disappointed with the film when I first saw it in theatres in 2003, but that was mostly because I let myself be fooled by the hype saying that it would be based on God Loves, Man Kills. The Chris Claremont/Brent Anderson graphic novel remains one of the finest X-stories—hell, one of the finest superhero comic book stories, period—and it remains so in a world still ravaged by stupid prejudices against LGBT folks, against people of color, against Muslims. So when I watched the movie and saw that Stryker had been changed from a popular evangelist to an Army scientist, and tied into Wolverine’s origin, I was severely disappointed. It reminds me of Barb Wire, oddly—that movie aped the structure of Casablanca, as if that movie was a classic for the plot. All X2 takes from GL,MK is a person named William Stryker with an animus against mutants who attacks the mansion, kidnaps Xavier, and uses him in a plot to wipe out all mutants, and the X-Men have to team up with Magneto to stop him. But again, what makes GL,MK great is not the plot, which is at heart a pretty basic evil-villain plot to wipe out mutantkind. It’s the more philosophical issues that are the heart of it—the graphic novel’s climax isn’t a fight scene, it’s an improvised debate between Cyclops and Stryker during what was originally a televised Stryker rally, during which he was going to wipe out all mutants. And it’s brilliant.
X2 is not brilliant on anywhere near that level, but fifteen years later, I’m much more able to appreciate its strengths. Grey’s power increase nicely foreshadows what will happen in the next movie. Getting more insights into Wolverine’s origins work nicely, setting up his forthcoming solo movie while also expanding the character’s arc in this one. (That both those movies disappointed is not this movie’s fault, and we’ll get to both in due course, the former next week, the latter in a couple of months.) Stryker is actually a fine antagonist, mostly due to Bryan Cox’s superlative presence, and Hugh Jackman continues his fantastic work as Wolverine.
It’s not perfect. For the second movie in a row, Xavier is taken out of the action, though here, at least, it makes more sense. However, it deprives us of Sir Patrick Stewart on screen, which is majorly disappointing. So is the fact that Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen only really have one scene together (well, two, but Stewart is silent during the second one, mesmerized as he is by Jason). Having said that, the whole movie’s worth it for Xavier’s threatening to make Wolverine think he’s a six-year-old girl for the rest of his life if he keeps smoking his cigar in the mansion. (“I’d have Jean braid your hair.”)
Halle Berry won an Oscar between movies for Monster’s Ball, and one gets the feeling that Storm was given the big save of Xavier due to wanting to give the award winner more screen time. (Berry has also dropped her Kenyan accent for no compellingly good reason.)
The person who’s really screwed by this is James Marsden. While Wolverine has always been the most popular X-Man, Cyclops has always been, in essence, Xavier’s right hand, and very much the heart and soul of the team. Of course, when you’re doing a bunch of monthly comics, you’ve got room for everyone—not so much when you’re only doing a movie every couple years, so some people will get shafted, and James Marsden isn’t as sexy as Jackman or Famke Janssen, hasn’t won any Academy Awards like Berry, and isn’t one of the great draws of the movie in the first place the way Stewart and McKellen are. So Cyclops is dispatched by Yuriko (who is never actually identified onscreen as Lady Deathstrike) and barely seen the rest of the movie.
Not that being famous always helps, as Anna Paquin’s Rogue is also given depressingly little to do. Having said that, she has a lot of great moments, from grabbing Pyro’s ankle in order to snag his powers long enough to mitigate the damage he’s doing to the Boston cops to her hilarious flying of the jet to rescue the team.
Kelly Hu is a delight as Deathstrike, as her fight with Wolverine is a high point. Having said that, she was as much a pawn of Stryker as Nightcrawler and Magneto and Cyclops were, and the fact that Wolverine killed her is disappointing. Then again, Wolverine was literally fighting for his life, and that was probably the only way to counteract her own healing factor.
At the time the first two films were released, I thought they were trying to avoid making erstwhile model Rebecca Romijn have to actually act by giving most of her dialogue to other actors playing the people Mystique is disguised as (Romijn has all of one line herself in the first film). This is hilarious to see now, considering that Romijn is currently the lead on a successful TV show in its fourth season. And X2 does give Romijn more to do, including one of the three or four best lines in the movie: when Nightcrawler asks her why she doesn’t look normal all the time, she says, “Because we shouldn’t have to.”
More to the point, the movie works as a movie. The characters are all well-defined, as Singer’s fantastic ability to explicate character with one or two lines of dialogue (Mystique and Nightcrawler’s exchange) or a longing look (Pyro in the Drake house) is on full display here. The action sequences are more confident and thrilling, the bigger cast is mostly well balanced, and splitting them up enables most everyone to get at least a moment to shine. It’s a true ensemble piece, and one that continues to deal head-on with the issues of mutants trying to find their place in a world filled with people who hate them just for what they are. Stryker is a particularly un-nuanced boogeyman, unfortunately, but Cox helps ameliorate that, and besides, prejudice at its heart is un-nuanced. Makes for an excellent sophomore entry, solidifying the series.
Next week, we look at the third film in the trilogy, and the first not directed by Singer, X-Men: The Last Stand.
Keith R.A. DeCandido urges folks to support his Patreon, where you can read his takes on things like Black Panther (which he won’t get to in this rewatch for at least another year), Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and more. In addition to monthly movie reviews and weekly TV reviews, Keith provides exclusive vignettes featuring his original characters and excerpts from his works-in-progress.
They’re F-16s, not F-14s. Other than that, nice review. This was a great film (and, sigh, the last really good X-Men film for, well, many years), and I didn’t realize how many of the background mansion kids turned up in the later Singer films.
I remained impressed by how this movie manages to juggle so many characters without turning into an incoherent mess. Yes, Cyclops gets shafted, but most everybody else gets their own character arcs and grace notes and it all flows together smoothly.
hoopmanjh: OOPS! Thank you for that, I meant to look it up to verify, and then forgot. It’s been edited.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Here I was all ready to show off my comic-nerd cred by saying that my biggest disappointment in X2 was that it failed to be God Loves, Man Kills, and now I’m reduced to saying “yeah, me too.” I harbor a little extra resentment because X2 came out in the era when Marvel thought that making the comics match up with the movies better would draw in more readers (it didn’t), so Stryker, who was a perfect one-off villain, was suddenly brought back in the comics, transformed from an evangelist to a military nutbar, and forced to hang out with Deathstrike for no reason that makes any sense for the comics versions of the characters. The X-Men have more than their fair share of religious/military zealot organizations; they didn’t need Stryker.
One line that struck me in this movie is during the stand-off at the Drakes’ house, a cop corners Wolverine on the porch, and orders him to “drop the knives.” Wolverine just replies “I can’t.” The obvious line-reading is that Logan is just angry at the cop for asking him to do something stupid and impossible, but Jackman puts a layer of anguish over the top of it, implying that Logan would very much like to drop the knives, because he knows this situation isn’t going to end well, and he’d do anything to prevent that, but he’s stuck. Maybe I’m overthinking it, but it always felt to me like Wolverine showing a bit more restraint and feeling than he has up to this point.
Because… it wasn’t good?
I remember having mixed feelings when Deathstrike is killed. It’s sad because, if memory serves, for a brief second you see her revert back to normal as the metal is being injected, then darkly funny when her body goes clank against the bottom. My theater had a good chuckle from that.
This is probably the best film in the series, certainly the best pre-First Class entry. It tells a potent and emotional story and goes bigger, richer, and deeper than the first. The Nightcrawler sequence at the opening is an amazing action set piece, with a beautiful and clever handing of Kurt’s teleportation power.
I do feel there are a couple of plot holes in the climax, though. Magneto suddenly becoming genocidal against normal humans, rather than just wanting freedom for mutants, seems like a contrived turn to cartoon villainy for a character who’s been more nuanced up to then. And though Jean’s sacrifice at the end was intended as an homage to The Wrath of Khan (right down to the closing music before the credits almost directly quoting James Horner’s TWOK score from the equivalent moment), it doesn’t really work logically. Why the hell did she need to leave the X-Jet to levitate it to safety? She couldn’t do that from inside?
As for Lady Deathstrike, it’s always good to see Kelly Hu, but it’s a waste to cast her as a character who virtually never speaks, since her voice is her most beautiful attribute. Luckily, she’s more than made up for it with an active career in animation voice work.
Oh, by the way, the White House sets built for this movie were kept around and used in other Vancouver-made productions, including the Stargate SG-1 episodes that featured William Devane as the president.
@6/X-Husband: Berry had a couple of years to improve her Kenyan accent between films if she’d been willing to. But she was famous enough that she didn’t have to, so they changed the character to accommodate her.
X-Husband: You aren’t wrong about Berry’s accent. *laughs* And yes, I thought the “clank” was hauntingly effective.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Well yeah, if he wasn’t then the movie would last twenty minutes. Xavier has a gamebreaking level of power, if he isn’t taken out then he wins pretty much easy every time. Hyperpowered telepaths are just one of those characters that it is insanely difficult to write a story about.
Even in the McAvoy reboot series he is either taken out or nerfed in some way to stop him cleaning everything up pretty much immediately.
I remember being so freaking hyped by this movie (I say this as a person with no comics experience, just general nerdiness). That said, to this day I get the plots of all 3 movies mixed up in my head sometimes. I can never remember which one is the one where they’re going to turn everybody into mutants, which one is the one where they’re going to cure the mutants, and which one is the one where they’re going to kill all the mutants.
But…the two things that stood out for me were:
1)Magneto’s Escape – I remember thinking it was just such a cool scene, and that regardless of what I thought of the overall plot (not that I had any issues with it, but I recognize comic book movies come with a certain amount of suspension of disbelief in places and the powers are sometimes a bit handwavey as plot demands) I could just appreciate the coolness of the moment.
2)NIGHTCRAWLER. I was so excited by his character. I had taken German throughout middle/high school and so had this thing for guys with German accents, and so I was 100% down for a German, Catholic telporting mutant. He’s adorable. Also, I have an uncanny ability to dissappear in crowds (I’m very short and sometimes get overwhelmed and just need to get out of a crowd, and am able to weave my way through to get to some other place before the people with me notice), which my husband has taken to calling BAMFing.
Anyway – there’s a lot of poignant stuff here (Iceman/Pyro’s encounter with Iceman’s family, Magneto’s inevitable betrayal, Jean’s sacifice, Stryker’s hangups) but mostly this movie is just a lot of fun to watch. I’m not typically a big action sequence person, but many of the scenes is this movie are just beautiful.
@5 That’s interesting since one of the things I appreciate about the escape from the mansion is that Wolverine obviously kills the soldiers he attacks. The movie didn’t try to pretend that Wolverine would just knock people unconscious.
The most vivid memory of this movie that I have is watching it in the theaters and Wolverine, while battling the first commando in the kitchen, suddenly roars and shoves his claws in the commando’s chest. My brother, sitting next to me, pumped his fist and “Hell yeah!” As gigantic Wolverine fans, that was the kind of moment we had been waiting our whole lives for.
Funnily enough, I was browsing through Barnes & Noble one day not long after and came across the novelization of the movie. I flipped through it to see how that moment was described in the book. After reading it, I put the book back down and walked away, shaking my head in frustration. If I recall correctly, the book try to make it seem like Wolverine avoided somehow killing him. Sigh.
noblehunter: Those were two different situations, though. The attack on the mansion was a targeted assault on the children Wolverine had promised to protect. Stryker’s soldiers attacked at night with the intent of taking or killing anything that got in their way, preferably before they even knew what was happening. The standoff at the Drakes’ was different — these were cops responding to a 911 call who did not come in shooting, they identified themselves, they approached in good faith without violence at first, asking Logan to drop his weapons.
Wolverine would absolutely view the former as viable targets and the latter as ones to be hurt as little as possible.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Oh and forgot to mention the alternate scene on the DVD. When Wolverine KILLED that first guy (I don’t care what some stupid book said!) the original shot showed Wolverine roaring in that guy’s face the entire time. But the censors thought it was too intense for a PG-13 rating, so Bryan Singer cut away halfway through the shot to show Iceman’s reaction. It wasn’t until recently that my life long dream of a rated R Wolverine movie finally happened…
Austin: Your memory is completely faulty. Here’s the passage in question from the movie novelization, which is from Iceman’s POV:
So yeah. Oh, and the novelization was written by Chris Claremont, who knows more about the X-Men than any person ever in the history of the world. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
#11 / #13 — I am entirely in agreement with our host. Commandos coming after the kids are legit targets; cops doing their job are not.
#15 — is that some Claremont-ian prose, or what?
The thing about Wolverine is, he’s a killer, he accepts that he’s a killer, but he doesn’t like being a killer. He struggles to be better than the monster he was turned into. The berserker is a side he unleashes when he has to, or when he’s driven to it, but it’s not something he embraces or delights in. The whole reason he’s with the X-Men is because Xavier gave him a chance to become something better. So there’s no conflict between Logan killing Stryker’s men at the school and being reluctant to fight against the cops. Even aside from the difference Keith pointed out, that dichotomy is inherent to the character. He has a savage in him, but that’s not the only thing he is or wants to be. It’s his curse, and the best Wolverine stories make us feel regret when circumstances force him to regress to that level.
One of the things I love about Logan is that Xavier’s talent, where in these movies he has to be removed from the game for the rest of the movie to exist, becomes a monumental, a force-of-nature threat without his control. It becomes a reminder that he was always playing on a whole different level than everyone else.
#8 – I found it haunting in a Mel Brooks Young Frankenstein sort of way. :)
McKellen’s delivery in the prison scene with Xavier is just perfect. The way he guts out “you should’ve killed me when you had the chance!”, which is so cliche but those guys make it work.
Of course, removing Xavier from the action is far from unprecedented in the comics. How many times has he been seemingly or actually killed, or disappeared, or turned evil, or whatnot? And the whole second season of the ’90s cartoon had Xavier and Magneto stranded in the Savage Land in their own ongoing side plot, whereas the Wolverine and the X-Men animated series had him in a coma in the present and occasionally talking to Logan via telepathic communication from 20 years in the future.
I didn’t mean to suggest that there were conflicting characterizations of Wolverine going on, only that one of the big things I remember from the movie is that it did not shy away from the fact that when Wolverine gets into fights, he’s going to kill people. Which accentuates his desire to de-escalate the situation with the cops.
@15 – Hmm, interesting…how about the rest of the fight in the mansion? I swore I read something about him avoiding killing some of those guys…
@7:”I do feel there are a couple of plot holes in the climax, though. Magneto suddenly becoming genocidal against normal humans, rather than just wanting freedom for mutants, seems like a contrived turn to cartoon villainy for a character who’s been more nuanced up to then.”
Magneto is responding to a genocidal threat against mutankind. Remember, Stryker has just come awfully close to killing every mutant on the planet. Besides, Magneto has been pretty consistent in his belief that mutants are the master race (cf the “God among insects line”).
I think this is the best of this original line of X-films. Certainly better than The Last Stand, and it worked better for me than the first one. But as good as McKellen, Steward, and Jackman are in these roles, I can’t help but feel that the X-Men lose something overall in being so focused on those dudes. What struck me so long about the X-Men in the comics is first, the tense enmity/alliance between Wolverine and Cyclops that provides the team’s gravity, and second, pretty much the entire A-Team of Marvel women (at least until fairly recently.) Neither of those really come across in these movies.
@23/Austin: “I swore I read something about him avoiding killing some of those guys…”
If that was the case, then why do you think that’s wrong? Like I said, he’s ruthless when he needs to be, but he doesn’t go out of his way to kill without need. And his priority in that scene was to protect the students. Fighting the soldiers was a means to that end, not an end in itself.
@24/trajan23: “Magneto is responding to a genocidal threat against mutankind. Remember, Stryker has just come awfully close to killing every mutant on the planet.”
That would explain Magneto wanting to kill Stryker. I have a hard time accepting that it would make him want to kill everyone. I have an even harder time accepting that he’d force his dear friend Charles to have to bear the guilt of being the one who killed everyone. It just seems like they made him a cartoon villain for the sake of the climax, and that clashed with his more complex characterization before.
I mean, even aside from the ethical issues, Magneto would have to be an idiot to think he could just kill 6 billion people at once and a mutant paradise would result. Society would totally collapse. There wouldn’t be enough people left to make it function, to grow the food and operate the infrastructure and run the factories and power plants — and that’s not even touching on the problem of cleaning up 6 billion corpses. It’s just not a sane or practical plan. No matter how vengeful Magneto might have been at that point, he certainly should not have been that stupid. The entire plot point was overkill, no pun intended.
“Besides, Magneto has been pretty consistent in his belief that mutants are the master race (cf the “God among insects line”).”
Exactly why he shouldn’t think he’d need to kill all humans for mutants to survive. If you’re actually secure in your superiority (as opposed to using bluster about your superiority as a cover for insecurity), then you don’t feel threatened by the competition.
When putting that final draft together, Dougherty and Harris had no qualms about ripping off a Joss Whedon line from another franchise. Or maybe it was all a big coincidence….
‘Have you tried not being a mutant?’ is a word-for-word direct copy of ‘Have you tried not being a slayer?’. A line that was spoken by Joyce Summers during the Buffy season 2 finale, back when she was still coping with denial concerning Buffy’s true identity and power.
X2 was my favorite X-Men film (if not superhero movie altogether) for the longest time. It took Days of Future Past and Logan to finally surpass it for me. A superb iconic score by John Ottman and a plot full of intrigue, character and potential. Nightcrawler’s attack is the best possible way to start a film. Pyro’s reaction to the police brutality is a well earned set piece.
@26 – It’s not that it’s wrong (though I don’t think that’s really the Wolverine I read in the comics) but just the fact that it’s clearly not what is depicted on screen. Wolverine killed most of the commandos. But the book, from what I remembered, made it a point that he magically avoided the major organs or something. But then again, Keith has me doubting my memory, so that might not be the case.
@@@@@ 26:” “Magneto is responding to a genocidal threat against mutankind. Remember, Stryker has just come awfully close to killing every mutant on the planet.”
That would explain Magneto wanting to kill Stryker. I have a hard time accepting that it would make him want to kill everyone.”
He’s not killing everyone. Just the humans…inferior beings who threaten who threaten mutankind…
“I have an even harder time accepting that he’d force his dear friend Charles to have to bear the guilt of being the one who killed everyone.”
Sacrifices have to be made…..
“It just seems like they made him a cartoon villain for the sake of the climax, and that clashed with his more complex characterization before.”
I disagree. His first plan (mutant elite ruling over humanity) failed. Human response: attempted genocide. Wiping out humans is the only way to end the human threat. Indeed, some of my African American students have likened Magneto genocide attempt in X2 to Jean-Jacques Dessalines’ decision to exterminate Haiti’s French population in 1804. In Dessalines; mind, that was the only way to safeguard Haitian independence.
“I mean, even aside from the ethical issues, Magneto would have to be an idiot to think he could just kill 6 billion people at once and a mutant paradise would result. Society would totally collapse. There wouldn’t be enough people left to make it function, to grow the food and operate the infrastructure and run the factories and power plants — and that’s not even touching on the problem of cleaning up 6 billion corpses. It’s just not a sane or practical plan. No matter how vengeful Magneto might have been at that point, he certainly should not have been that stupid. The entire plot point was overkill, no pun intended.”
Human society collapses. And, upon its ashes, the new mutant. society will arise. Sure, lots of hard work will be required, but the struggle will be worth it.
(Corrected some egregiously bad typos)
@@@@@ 26:” “Magneto is responding to a genocidal threat against mutankind. Remember, Stryker has just come awfully close to killing every mutant on the planet.”
That would explain Magneto wanting to kill Stryker. I have a hard time accepting that it would make him want to kill everyone.”
He’s not killing everyone. Just the humans…inferior beings who threaten who threaten mutantkind…
“I have an even harder time accepting that he’d force his dear friend Charles to have to bear the guilt of being the one who killed everyone.”
Sacrifices have to be made…..
“It just seems like they made him a cartoon villain for the sake of the climax, and that clashed with his more complex characterization before.”
I disagree. His first plan (mutant elite ruling over humanity) failed. Human response: attempted genocide. Wiping out humans is the only way to end the human threat. Indeed, some of my African American students have likened Magneto’s genocide attempt in X2 to Jean-Jacques Dessalines’ decision to exterminate Haiti’s French population in 1804. In Dessalines’ mind, that was the only way to safeguard Haitian independence.
“I mean, even aside from the ethical issues, Magneto would have to be an idiot to think he could just kill 6 billion people at once and a mutant paradise would result. Society would totally collapse. There wouldn’t be enough people left to make it function, to grow the food and operate the infrastructure and run the factories and power plants — and that’s not even touching on the problem of cleaning up 6 billion corpses. It’s just not a sane or practical plan. No matter how vengeful Magneto might have been at that point, he certainly should not have been that stupid. The entire plot point was overkill, no pun intended.”
Human society collapses. And, upon its ashes, the new mutant society will arise. Sure, lots of hard work will be required, but the struggle will be worth it.
Eduardo: In fact, both Whedon and the X2 screenwriters were riffing on the all-too-common request made by parents of children who come out of the closet. “Have you ever tried not being gay?”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Basically there isn’t much to choose between Stryker and Magneto. Both are reacting to a perfectly genuine threat to those they think of as their own kind but in the most irrational, hateful, immoral way possible.
@6: I remember being struck by a moment where Deathstrike snaps out of the mind control and looks briefly terrified at her unfamiliar surroundings before Stryker yanks her head down and injects her with more serum.
@27: I think they really wanted to echo the “Have you tried not being gay?” line so many LGBT teenagers hear.
Perhaps it’s just the fact Nightcrawler is my favorite and I wanted to see more of him, but I was and am still pretty disappointed by his appearance in X2. The fights were good and they compensated for lack of blue fur (which I don’t think they could have pulled off I an appealing way, so good choice) with unique (if questionable) religious scars. However Nightcrawler loses much of the fun personality that’s made him so popular. When I heard Neil Patrick Harris was considered, that killed me. I think he would have captured Kurt’s personality well. Of course, Alan Cumming could speak German fluently, so oh well. I do really like the new kid playing him. Still a little quiet, but more fun.
I remember liking this one a lot better than the first one, and can enjoy it a lot more on re-watches too.
Most of the reasons are things you mentioned at least somewhat…but basically it boils down to this one was more of what I wanted to see from an X-Men movie. The mutants were using their powers more, and the effects and action shots were better done. More Iceman! He was another one of my favorites, so to see him have more of a role here was awesome. Also, Rogue using her powers for a useful purpose…just kind of went to cement her place as a useful member of a team when she didn’t have flight or strength, and really just had her draining power. Nightcrawler was so friggin’ awesome (another favorite–seem to have a lot of those), and the White House scene was so well done and a great showcase of his powers.
I actually thought Mystique as Kelly was interesting too–at one point when she’s shown pictures of the X-Mansion, she tries to dissuade suspicions by affirming it’s just a school. Shows that while she’s on the side of the “bad guys” and has her differences, she (nor Magneto) are not actually out to get the X-Men…and she’d rather err on the side of protecting other mutants.
Cyclops, unfortunately, was still woefully underused.
Mutants clearing up 6 billion corpses and growing some veggies would take time, but prolly not hard. Some teleporters, maybe a weather witch? Give ’em 5 weeks.
#30
Sure it’ll be worth it… until a new, more powerful generation evolves and wipes out the previous mutant society. We teach our children well, don’t we, Magneto?
@28/Austin: “It’s not that it’s wrong (though I don’t think that’s really the Wolverine I read in the comics)”
Which comics? I think Wolverine came to be depicted more violently in the ’90s than he was in earlier decades. He didn’t kill that often in the early years, and when he did, it was shocking.
” but just the fact that it’s clearly not what is depicted on screen.”
Hardly unprecedented for novelizations. It’s only in recent years that studios have begun demanding that novelizations be exactly like the movies they’re based on; for decades, novelizers were free to take liberties, to expand on films’ stories, even to correct plot holes and errors. Try comparing Isaac Asimov’s novelization of Fantastic Voyage to the movie sometime, or Vonda McIntyre’s novelizations of Star Trek II & III.
In fact, as I recall, the X2 novelization ended with Jean getting away safely with the other X-Men and being present in the final meeting with the President, because the book came out before the movie and the studio didn’t want it to give away the ending.
@32/roxana: “Basically there isn’t much to choose between Stryker and Magneto. Both are reacting to a perfectly genuine threat to those they think of as their own kind but in the most irrational, hateful, immoral way possible.”
Exactly the problem. The films did not portray Magneto as irrational, hateful, and immoral up to that point. He was portrayed as a well-intentioned extremist, someone whose cause had merit despite his methods and whom Charles considered redeemable. So there’s a dissonance between the way he was portrayed for most of the first two movies and the way he’s portrayed for the sake of X2‘s climax.
@33/Ophid: “blue fur”
I wish the movies hadn’t taken that so literally. In the comics, Nightcrawler and Beast were originally meant to have black fur, but 4-color printing often used blue to represent highlights on something black due to the limited color palette that was available to comics at the time. Over time, artists used less and less black and the blue highlights came to dominate, and things that were meant to be black were reinterpreted as blue. (This happens with costuming too. Batman’s cape and cowl were originally supposed to be black, and Spider-Man’s costume was originally supposed to be red and black.)
In Kurt’s case, black fur would make enormously more sense than blue, because one of his powers in the comics is an ability to blend almost invisibly into shadows.
Christopher: um, both Nightcrawler and Beast were regularly and consistently, over and over, identified in dialogue and captions as having blue fur.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@37
Black is not a good colour if you are planning on blending into a shadow; it, counter intuitively, makes the shadow seem too deep. Black draws the eye, and creates a regular shape within the shadow. Dark greys, dark greens, and dark blues, all do a better job of helping someone blend into a shadow and break up an outline than black does.
@38/krad: Yes, they were called blue later on, but not originally.
https://www.cbr.com/beast-mode-tracking-the-avenging-x-mans-physical-evolution/
“James Marsden isn’t as sexy as Jackman or Famke Janssen”
how dare you sir
I like this film but I’ve never quite got the “It’s the best X-Men film ever, nay the best superhero film ever!” hype that it seems to receive. I remember at the time thinking that Magneto was the obvious choice for the first film and waiting with bated breath to hear who the second film’s villain would be. Apocalypse? Sinister? Juggernaut? The Sentinels? No, it’s…William Stryker. Who? (Sorry, GLMK fans, I’ve never been a real comic buff so that one kind of passed me by.) I get the philosophy behind it, that they didn’t want to have a conveyor belt of evil mutants so went for a human villain, but it was a bit of a let-down. They then had to drag in Lady Deathstrike for no good reason and make her a generic hench-person so there was someone for Wolverine to fight at the climax: With Wolverine, Storm, Jean Gray, Magneto, Mystique and Nightcrawler there, a bunch of ordinary guys weren’t going to stand a chance.
Aside from poor Cyclops, who gets a bit more action than first time round but also disappears for a massive chunk of the movie, I think the film gave everyone something to do. Wolverine of course gets a central role, with Jean and to a lesser extent Storm (who gets a lot of screen time but little characterisation) just behind. Iceman gets to do stuff, Rogue is less central than in the first one but has a lot of screen time and gets her cavalry moment at the end. Nightcrawler fades into the background a bit after a strong introduction but still gets plenty of chances to showcase his powers along the way. Xavier might be removed from the other characters but the plot hinges around him and we get to see just how much effort Jason has to go to to manufacture a scenario that will trick him into killing all the mutants. Mystique benefits from being Magneto’s right hand mutant rather than just one of the gang, and Pyro has an interesting if slightly depressing character arc as someone who can’t accept Xavier’s desire to live among humans and is seduced by Magneto’s desire to dominate humans. And the 90s cartoon fan in me was delighted to see Jubilee getting her biggest role of the trilogy.
And yes, Magneto. For much of the run time, he’s almost one of the heroes, but then he turns the tables and tries to take over Stryker’s plan to further his own agenda. I kind of accept the point that this is a big escalation from his plans in the first film, but Magneto’s philosophy has always been “Kill or be killed”. Faced with an opportunity that would never come again to get rid of the people that he sees as the enemy and fears will one day wipe out his people, I can see why he’d go for it.
Daniel Cudmore is actually back as Colossus in the next movie, arguably with a bigger role but with less dialogue. I’ve heard a story that they did film an alternate ending where Jean uses her powers from inside the X-Jet and leaves with the others. Problem is I’ve never seen it, even though there’s a lot of deleted scenes out there, so I’m slightly sceptical. I have however seen behind the scenes footage of Famke entering in costume during the scene at the president’s office and making a joke about being late, so I do wonder if they shot that both ways, one with her absent and one with her there.
@41, to be fair, no one is as sexy as Famke Janssen.
@42/cap-mjb: Well, to be fair, choosing a villain for a sequel shouldn’t just be about going through a checklist of popular characters; it should be about figuring out where the narrative and the lead character arcs need to go next and choosing the villain that best serves those needs. Given the mysteries that were set up about Wolverine’s origins in the first film, it was logical to follow up with a story that answered some of those mysteries, that made the plot personal. And it made sense to follow up a mutant-vs.-mutant movie with a mutant-vs.-human plot, as you say.
Plus, at this point, they were still trying to keep the series fairly grounded and naturalistic. Having the team fight giant robots or a big blue Egyptian god would’ve been a bit much for that era if a film were to be taken seriously. (They did manage to pull off the Sentinels later on, but their attempt at Apocalypse wasn’t that successful.) Maybe they could’ve done a grounded version of Mister Sinister if they’d called him Nathaniel Essex and avoided the goofy costume. That could’ve been a personal story because of how it tied into Scott’s background. But the movies were never as much about Cyclops as they were about Wolverine, and a Sinister story wouldn’t have fit the thematic elements they wanted to explore.
@44/CLB: The Sentinels did seem to be under consideration quite a bit during this period. I think they were even considered for the first movie before they decided not to throw all the ideas in at once. I seem to recall concept art for them doing the rounds prior to the second movie, and that would fit in with the mutants v humans idea and provide scope for a more traditional action climax with all the characters involved, rather than the simple Wolverine v Deathstrike duel, if Stryker had them working for him: He does seem just the type to use them as well. They seemed to be toying with them for the third movie as well, hence a character who’s almost certainly Bolivar Trask but doesn’t have anything in common with him except the name.
Apocalypse… Physically, he doesn’t seem particularly out of place in the same series as Nightcrawler, Mystique and Toad. I guess it depends on whether you think the Egyptian god bit is a vital aspect of his character or just window dressing. Arguably the crux of the character is that he’s Magneto taken up a notch: Someone who believes the strong should dominate the weak but has an even more narrow view of who the strong are. So I guess he could be considered the logical choice to escalate the threat.
Austin: I checked a few other passages, and they didn’t softpedal Wolverine’s actions. In fact, the novel is more explicit in saying that Wolverine killed the soldiers, since there’s no actual blood in the fight scenes in the movie itself, and you could probably convince yourself that they were just wounded in some cases. (At one point in the novel, there’s a mention of Wolverine slicing off an entire forearm, which doesn’t actually happen on screen.)
It’s clear that the novelization, in fact, did the opposite of what your memory claims it did. Rather than downplay Wolverine’s killer instincts, Claremont — who basically established pretty much everything about Wolverine over the course of the first decade and a half of the character’s existence — doubled down on it.
So you’ve been misrepresenting the novelization all these years, dissing it for doing something when it, in fact, did the opposite. :) Sorry!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@45/cap-mjb: “They seemed to be toying with [Sentinels] for the third movie as well…”
More than seemed. The Danger Room sequence early in the third film has Sentinels as the enemy, though we only see the head of one after Wolverine severs it. So implicitly, the X-Men already fought Sentinels sometime in the past — which fits fairly well with Days of Future Past.
And Apocalypse being “Magneto taken up a notch” could be the reason they didn’t want to use him in the second film — they’d just done Magneto, so just doing more of the same wouldn’t have been that interesting. It was definitely a good choice to have the antagonist be someone who was as much Magneto’s enemy as the X-Men’s, because then you get the interesting change-of-pace dynamic of the rival mutant factions working together (until the sudden but inevitable betrayal). Although it certainly would’ve been possible to include the Sentinels in the Stryker story. They may have decided against that in order to keep things grounded, as I suggested, or maybe just to save money.
I’m guessing “saving money” was the biggie. That’s why they dropped Beast and Angel from this movie, after all………..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I’ve always thought X2 was slightly overrated. Especially in a world where there have been lots of superhero films since that were better. But that said: it’s pretty dang good.
@47/CLB: Yeah, I don’t know what the thinking was behind that Sentinel cameo. Except maybe “We paid someone money to design this so we’re damn well going to use it!” Days of Future Past sort-of explains it if you can sort through all the timeline issues. At the time, I ended up rationalising it as something the government had considered but not actually developed, and the X-Men had got hold of the concept and programmed their Danger Room with it.
I think the X-Men could have still teamed up with Magneto against Apocalypse, if he saw him as being as big a threat to mutantkind as normal humans. But yeah, the idea of it being a normal human trying to wipe out mutants was an interesting theme to explore.
@50/cap-mjb: But that’s what’s cool about the original film introducing the X-Men as an established team already — it’s not necessary to assume that all their important adventures took place after that film. Even before DOFP, it was possible to assume that they’d met the Sentinels before the first movie. Or possibly in the interval between two films.
@51/CLB: Oh yes, true enough. I guess I was thinking that if they’d done a “proper” Sentinel movie in future they’d have been more likely to treat them as a new threat than go “Oh, it’s you again, is it?”
@26
”Exactly why he shouldn’t think he’d need to kill all humans for mutants to survive. If you’re actually secure in your superiority (as opposed to using bluster about your superiority as a cover for insecurity), then you don’t feel threatened by the competition.”
I think that’s it exactly. Deep down, I don’t believe Magneto is secure in his superiority. He couldn’t save his parents from the Nazis. He couldn’t get out of the plastic prison without help. I think he completely freaked out and chose the overkill option of exterminating all humans precisely because he was afraid that the next time humans tried, they’d win.
As to why he would put all of the guilt onto Charles, well, Charles was convenient
One thing that has always annoyed me, from the minute I saw it in the theaters until right now: The climax of the movie and reason for Jean sacrificing her life is centered around a bursting dam. They go to great lengths to set this up, including having the characters discuss their attack plan for avoiding the risk of being simply flooded out in the Blackbird.
When they do so, a character literally named Iceman is sitting right there. He gets no lines, is not mentioned, and plays no part in the climax. FREEZE THE DAMN LAKE!
@53/DrDredd: “As to why he would put all of the guilt onto Charles, well, Charles was convenient”
Yes, that’s exactly the thinking that I find out of character for Magneto as he’d been depicted in the films up to that point. I can buy some character thinking so callously, but not this character, not the way his values and his relationship with Charles had been portrayed. It reduced a nuanced character to exaggerated villainy for the sake of an artificially cataclysmic climax, and I think that’s weak writing.
@54/CapnAndy: I really doubt that Bobby at that age had the level of power or control necessary to freeze such an immense volume of water. That would take a hell of a lot of energy.
@55–In the previous movie, Magneto was willing to kill an innocent mutant teenager–the embodiment of the people he’s supposed to be protecting–because he thought it was necessary for the greater good of mutantkind. On a practical level, I expect he’d say the same about making Xavier bear the guilt of genocide. On an emotional level…Charles left Magneto in a position where he was helpless to stop his mind being repeatedly violated by an anti-mutant zealot for the purpose of killing all mutants, a plan which nearly succeeded. Stryker was using Magneto as a tool in the same way Magneto used Charles, and Charles is the one who let that happen. (Remember how Magneto’s first line to him is “Have you come to rescue me?”) Whether Charles can fairly be held responsible is not the point, the point is I think Magneto’s actions at that moment are coming from a place of trauma, rage and sheer terror–of course he’s not secure in his superiority, Stryker came within inches of committing genocide on his people–and he’s taking it out on Charles and the human race. It’s a decision he wouldn’t have made a month ago, and probably he wouldn’t have made it a month later, but at that moment…no, I don’t personally think it’s out of character. (This is absolutely not a defense for Magneto’s actions, just theorizing about the state of mind he committed them in.)
@56/Greenygal: Those are fair points, but it still just didn’t feel right to me. Maybe I just felt it was overly melodramatic to escalate the stakes to the fate of the whole world. That’s kind of a movie cliche. The stakes of the story were already high enough without the need to toss in a contrived threat of global apocalypse. I’m not quite sure what could’ve been done in its place, though. Maybe just have Magneto try to kill Charles, so that nobody could use his mind to threaten mutants again. From a dramatic standpoint, that threat to one person might’ve had higher stakes than a threat to six billion people, because it would’ve been more personal for the characters and the audience. It wouldn’t have just been an offscreen abstraction.
Or maybe Magneto could’ve set it to target only telepaths, so that none of them could’ve been put into Cerebro in Charles’s place. A painful decision to sacrifice a subset of mutants so that the rest could be safe. And then the effect would’ve struck Jean, and that might have catalyzed the beginnings of her Phoenix powers.
*Sees picture of Pyro*: “Hang on, is that who I think it is?”
*Checks IMDB*: “Yes it is! It’s James Cole!”
(I’ve seen this movie several times, but the last time was a number of years ago, so I didn’t recognize Aaron Stanford when I saw him again in Twelve Monkeys.)
Has it ever occured to the X-men that they might improve their image if they lost the black leather? And they’d also be able to step over low walls!
@55 – Yeah, maybe, and if they’d put in even one line to that effect I’d have been satisfied. But they didn’t, and so to the best of my knowledge Bobby’s power is “can freeze things he’s touching” and yeah, it’s a really big lake, but they’ve got hours and he’s not doing anything else. Dude should have been sitting next to the lake the whole time; even if he can’t get it all (and doesn’t have sufficient control for “freeze the bits next to the spillway first so there’s an ice wall”), every drop he freezes isn’t going to be available to flood any X-Man attackers when they make their move.
@60/CapnAndy: What? How could Bobby possibly have known hours in advance that the dam would burst, let alone that Rogue would land the X-Jet directly in the water’s path and damage it in the landing? His power is cryokinesis, not precognition.
This is my favorite of the original trilogy; I was so happy to see Nightcrawler (my favorite X-Man). Cumming is great, and his movements and teleporting were perfect even if I didn’t like the decorative scarring on his face.
Magneto’s use of the iron in the body of the guard to break out with the ball bearings was pretty cool. It was also nice to see Colossus, Siryn, etc.
@33 – Ophid: Given what we were getting at the time in terms of superheroe comic adaptations, Nightcrawler was brilliant. He could have been AWFUL.
@49 – Alchemypotato: It’s not overrated if you take into account that at the time, there weren’t any better superhero films in terms of faithfulness to the comics.
@62 Fair, though I try not to rate things by how bad they could have been.
I should also follow up by saying I agree that Cumming did a good job, but they just didn’t give him enough to do given the opportunities presented by such a fun character (and apparently he agreed because he didn’t think it would be worth it to do another movie with something like 5 hours of make up each day). I hadn’t heard of Cumming when this came out, but when I’d seen him in other things I realized they really underutilized his talents.
What I mean is that it was great for the time, not that it could have been horrible. It’s a figure of speech.
@CLB you make it sound like you think Magneto is stronlgy loyal to Charle’s good health (not wanting to put the guilt on him.)… I don’t recall Magneto that way, as in his past he drove a bloody steelpike through his torso making him a cripple just because they had an argument. So just because he calls him “old friend” doesn’t mean that if someone stands in his way of his goals, he will try his best to avoid hurting him.
and regarding trying to kill so suddenly 6 billions – those ants, imprisoned me!! me, the mighty Magneto! being at their mercy!? I’ll never, NEVER let them to this to me again… he realized that those ants can become too much of a danger to the allmighty Magneto, so he took the chance he got to kill them all. If you think that sparing those humans and trying to find any other hopeless solution is what Magneto is about, you should read more background material on Magneto.