X2 — Xmen United Mini-Review

06 May, 2003 by John Hawkins

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X2 — Xmen United Mini-Review / Theoretical Question — Should We Lock The Xmen Away?: When I was a kid, I used to enjoy comic books. My fave was Spider-Man although I read the X-Men semi-regularly as well. Of course, it was hard to translate that to the silver screen back in the seventies and eighties. That’s because the special-effects of the day just weren’t good enough to capture the action. But that has changed big time and the special effects in X2 were simply superb. Add that together with solid plot, the great action, and the complex and interesting characters…yes, I said complex and interesting characters in an adaptation of a comic book. I know some of you are probably poo-pooing that, but just consider one of the characters — Magneto. Here’s a guy who lost his parents in the Holocaust and now he’s concerned (with good cause) that there’s going to be another Holocaust with mutants ending up in the death camps this time.

That’s a theme running through the comic by the way — mutants just wanting to live their lives and humans fearing them and wanting to either destroy them or lock them away. It’s interesting that the comics creators came up with that idea because it would be a difficult issue to grapple with if there were actually mutants. Imagine if you will, extremely powerful mutants who were born with powers they can’t get rid of. Some of them are good, some of them are bad, but many of them are VERY, VERY, dangerous. Some of them can manipulate the minds of humans at will, others can control the weather, and still other mutants can flawlessly imitate anyone they wish. I won’t give away all the details, but in X2 President is attacked by a mutant, a US Senator is successfully impersonated by a mutant, and still another mutant threatens the continuing existence of human kind.

So do you lock the mutants up or kill them for how they were born? Especially when you know there are mutants that are good, decent, and upstanding people who have done nothing wrong? If you say no, would you be willing to live with the terrible risks of letting the mutants run around free? Consider that in America we’re afraid to let law abiding people have assault weapons, so how do you think we’d feel about someone who could fire optic blasts from their eyes or gouts of flame from their hands? Think about the incredible risks of having someone like Professor X out there. He could simply roll up to a nuclear silo and mentally force the people inside to fire a nuclear weapon, thereby starting WW3…and what could stop him? So should these mutants be destroyed to protect humanity or should we respect their rights as human beings mutants? That’s pretty deep for a comic book, huh?

Back to the movie review. The only real flaw in the movie was one that couldn’t really be helped. There are so many Xmen and the comic has been around so long that it’s almost impossible to fully develop the characters the way it should be done in a 2 hour movie. I mean you have Professor X, Storm, Nitecrawler, Wolverine, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Rogue, Iceman, Pyro, Magneto, Mystique, & William Stryker who are all main characters. How do you give them all the time they deserve? You don’t, although X2 gives it their best shot.

But, I don’t want to give you the wrong idea. I enjoyed the movie and any fans of the Xman comic book or who liked the first movie will probably enjoy it as well. It’s a fun, action filled movie and I’d give it a thumbs up…