X2 (2003)

Deadpool and Wolverine is slowly approaching and in celebration of that triumphant third entry into the Deadpool franchise were diving into every X-Men film. In todays episode we discussed X2 (2003).

Roger Ebert X2 Review
killerxa Letterboxd Review

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 I mean, I was told by my film professor, there are films and there are movies, and sometimes you've got to know what you're walking into. Yeah.  See, but I come from a time when movies were films. 

Deadpool 3 is slowly approaching us. We're very close to that Deadpool 3 fateful release date. It's been many years I've been waiting to see Deadpool, done by Ryan Reynolds, on screen once again. And there's no better way to get excited for that Deadpool Wolverine film than diving into every single X Men movie, all of the great, all of the bad as well. 

It's a very long journey that I don't even know why I agreed to do this, but yet here we are, with episode 2 being X2, released back in 2002 here. A very interesting movie, I wouldn't say it's exactly good, not exactly one of my favorites, but a film that I can somewhat have a slight love for, just like the first film.

And if you happen to listen to that first episode that we did on X Men 1, I talked about how before that we really need to start to think about the context of this film's release, because this is in early 2000s, an era in which there was no MCU, there was no Dark Knight trilogy, there wasn't no Godzilla vs.

Kong, Godzilla X Kong. Franchise filmmaking was still at a very kind of small minimum. There wasn't too much to really go off of. We're kind of in that, you know, post Renaissance era of superhero films. Previously, in the earlier era that we had before this one, we had Keaton, Batman, Christopher Reeve, Superman.

It's been a long time since those movies, and we need to kind of, you know, go into this new era with a new light and a new freshness to it. So with this movie, X Men 2, we had this movie coming off of the first X Men movie, a film that, you know, That was somewhat critically acclaimed by critics and audiences alike.

Not exactly anything too crazy, but something that is a fresh start for filmmaking. Not exactly anything revolutionary. It's not like X Men 1 was Cinema Paradiso or Manchester by the Sea, but it was an interesting movie at the time. And also, since that first X Men movie, we also have Spider Man 1 from Sam Raimi that got released.

So another movie that I think is really good when you watch it again, but not exactly like a, you know. Avengers Infinity War, Avengers Endgame, or Spider Man Across the Spider Verse. But Spider Man 1 is still a very iconic film, very much so a classic, and definitely a lot better than that first X Men movie, and really better than a lot of these X Men movies in this opening trilogy of these X Men franchise stuff.

This opening X Men franchise trilogy and everything is not that good. Spider Man 1 was definitely kind of a benchmark in terms of what the quality of these films should be. That first Spider Man film, not exactly incredible like I said before, but definitely a very, you know, solid benchmark just for what superhero films should be, what we can expect from them.

So, how did X2 perform at the box office? Not only financially, but also critically, how was this film received as a whole? And number one, I hate calling this film X2 before we even move forward anymore. X2 is a very dumb name for this movie. Why would you go from X Men to X2? Why would you ever do that?

It's just very confusing, just from a marketing standpoint. I know it can be kind of cool, this is 2003 we're talking about here, but still, I don't understand why you would go from X Men 2X2, a very dumb idea. They were probably like, Hey Johnny, what should this next movie be called? X2. That's what it should be called, CEO at Warner Brothers.

And they said, Johnny, that's absolutely genius. No, it wasn't Johnny. Johnny, you should be fired. That's a very dumb title for this film.  That aside, how did this film perform financially? This film made 407. 7 million against a budget of 110 million. This was number 9 for 2003's financial list. And That's a pretty, once again, kind of low reception, but. 

That is still early 2000s, so just for inflation. Probably made a decent chunk of money. And, uh, also, this same year, Lord of the Rings Return of the King. So, that's fair. An absolute gem masterpiece. That's what everyone went to go see. Can't really blame them. If I had to pick between Return of the King or X2, It's not a hard decision whatsoever.

Over on Rotten Tomatoes, X Men 2 has an 85 percent critic score and an 85 percent audience score. Very high. Once again, that's a little bit too high, a little bit suspicious. I don't like how high those scores are. It's a little weird. This movie isn't exactly terrible, like poop, but it isn't And 85 percent in my opinion.

Roger Ebert, one of the best critics who ever do it, really a absolute genius when it comes to critiquing films. Gave this film a 3 out of 4 stars before he passed away. And he definitely enjoyed this movie. I don't agree with everything that he says, but he does cook here and there. In this specific instance, giving X Men 2 a 3 out of 4, I can't sign off on that.

But, you know, I still respect him. Here's what Roger Ebert had to say about X Men 2.  X2, X Men United, is the kind of movie you enjoy for its moments, even though they never really add up. Made for, and possibly made by, those who have very short attention spans, it lives in the present, providing one amazing spectacle after another, and not even trying to develop a story arc.

Having trained on the original X Men 2000, I have tried to experience the film entirely in the present, And the fact is I had a good time, a dumb time, but a good time. And I definitely agree with him here. I mean, this movie does have its fun moments. It does try to build on things, but what it builds on is just really bland.

We'll get to that later on, but let's just move on here on letterbox. This film has a 3. 4 out of five average, definitely a. Solid average there. This is why I love Letterboxd. We have a review here from Letterboxd from  KillerXa, who gave this film a 3 out of 5 stars. She wrote, A new drinking game. Take a shot every time Xavier and Mindito call each other old friends to hide their secret love for each other.

Once again, Letterboxd is a great place to go to just because it keeps things real sometimes. It doesn't exactly need to be the most accurate and the most, you know, very consistently objectively rating of movies, but it can just be a lot of fun sometimes, which is all I really care about. All right. So with all that egregious, yeah, time out of the way, it's time to dive into X to X Men United, a very dumb title and a very overall.

Pretty dumb movie. I think objectively X2 is better than X Men 1, but only by like 0. 37238576 margin. Not even 1%, just like point percentage above X Men 1. Let's go ahead and dive into it. 

War has begun. 

Alright, so let's go ahead and get started here. Here's everything that I loved about X Men 2, X Men United, and everything that really worked really didn't work, what should have been done better, what I would have done to make this film somewhat better. Let's just go ahead and dive into it, starting out with the very beginning of the movie, the opening.

Once again, if you heard my review on X Men 1 I loved the opening with these first two films. It's very smart having Charles Xavier really introduce the movie really laying down the groundwork, laying down the foundation, letting us know the themes, the world, the story building, whatever. It's all done right here in like two sentences of dialogue from one of our main characters.

Very smart, not too much really needs to be done here, but very, very effective. Now, once again, I gave this film some flowers, and let me take it right back away. The CGI, like two seconds after that, is absolutely miserable. I said the same thing back in the first review, and the same thing is right here.

Once again, the CGI isn't there. I know it's early 2000s, but that's still no excuse for having the CGI be that abysmal. If you can do it good, do it good. If you can't do it good, Might as well not do it at all. That's my rule of thumb here. Now just going into this movie, this movie has a lot more plot with it, a lot more story.

That first X Men movie wasn't really adapted from anything. This one, you can clearly see they really pulled from a lot of different stories and a lot of different comic books to really make it have more of a comic book film. Film y ness to it. That may not be a word. I'm using it today. There's a lot more going on in this film, which I really do enjoy.

A lot more plot, a lot more story. Once again, like I said with the first film, these movies and this story of X Men seem to have Less of physical confrontation. There is still action, but for the most part, at the core, it's more of the psychological confrontation. Psychological warfare. That allows for more nuance and more depth with this world that you really have a lot of access to.

Which is what makes me just really just frustrated with them not really taking advantage of everything. There is character development in this movie, and by character development, I mean just one Real single character that has the most work done around him, and that is Logan in this movie. Logan has the most love and care from the screenwriters and the studio.

They seem to think that he's the only person who exists in this world with an actual personality, an actual, you know, something to build on, even though that's not really true whatsoever. And once again, I love Logan, and Logan in Wolverine is such a great character that you can really explore. They've shown that you can do a lot of great with him, going into The Wolverine movie, X Men Origins isn't that good, but it still has something to it.

And also Logan, when we get to that, that beautiful, masterful, neo Western masterpiece, Logan and Wolverine is definitely something you can explore and definitely absolutely should. But, you know, we have characters like Scott Summers and Storm and Jean Grey that. Need to have something to them. You have Iceman in this film, the one of the coolest characters in a comic book movie, no pun intended, and he doesn't have a lot to do in this film.

I understand that he's, you know, more of a younger character, trying to just build on his powers and just kind of set him up for that X Men Last Stand, which is really cool as well, but You can do more with these characters the struggle that they go through they try at times and they get really close I mean specifically Iceman had a moment with his parents and this that was a very cool sequence but They don't really go that far.

They don't take that step. They're not that bold with this world and with these characters to really take it to that next level. This film does get dark, but it just doesn't take that step of making these solid characters great characters. Alright, so with all that characterization out of the way, more so lack thereof characterization, very much so needed, very much so deserved in this movie, but didn't really happen.

We move on. Let's just go forward. Let's talk about the plot of this movie and. This movie is just really long, and it gets lost in its plot a lot of the time. This movie, I watched it, I logged it on Letterboxd, I don't really know what happens. I know what happens. I watched the film start to finish.  At the same time, it doesn't really feel like anything happened in this movie.

There was a plot, there was a story, one character had a character arc, that being Logan, and we do get set up for a third movie, but Still, this movie just gets lost in its plot. It's very boring. It's two hours and 13 minutes long for what reason I don't really know why. I think that the director and the writers and the studio had to have seen the movie, had to read the screenplay, had to have watched cuts of this movie and said to themselves, this movie can't be this long.

It has no reason being a two hour and 13 minute movie for how little is really happening in this film. Maybe I won't say for how little is happening in this movie, but just what's happening in the movie doesn't feel like anything whatsoever. It's kind of hard to explain. I'm not a screenwriter, I don't work in the film industry, but this movie really starts and ends with its screenplay, which feels very cluttered and just kind of messy.

Poor execution and just poor pacing throughout the entire movie that feels very long, kind of just, just not good whatsoever. And then onto the editing of the movie, the editing, the CGI, the line delivery, and the writing, and all of that just feels awkward, and it feels weird, and it feels like it just doesn't really have a place in the movie.

Everything feels, for some reason, disjointed. It doesn't really feel cohesive in any way. I really just have a very hard time with this film. It makes me very, very frustrated because it's not exactly terrible, but it's not exactly bad either. It's not like we're going through a Zack Snyder Justice League instance where they released this film.

It wasn't exactly the cut that the director wanted. It feels like everything in this movie was shot intentionally, and everything that was released was the cut of the movie that they wanted out, and yet it doesn't really feel that way somehow. And I think it feels that way really specifically in the third act of this film, which, like the rest of the movie, feels very fatty.

I don't know how long exactly the third act of this film was, I didn't exactly write it down, but the third act of this film feels very long. It feels like they're just doing a lot of the work that should have been done in the middle of the movie during the third act of the film in terms of characterization.

All of that stuff with Wolverine is really chunky in that third act of just trying to develop all that happened for some weird reason. I think that the beauty of having a third act in a movie is that when you get to that point in the film, when the third act happens, it just kind of rolls along. It's almost like the film is writing itself when the third act hits.

When this third act happens, it feels like the writers are just trying to shoehorn in all the stuff they kind of forgot to do in the middle of the movie. It's like, Which makes it feel just kind of cluttered, really fatty, a little bit messy, and a little bit disjointed. I don't really like it whatsoever. 

Another critique of this movie overall is that it just feels very dumb. I don't know exactly where, I can't really pinpoint exactly what scene, what character, what piece of dialogue feels dumb, but when you watch the film, it does just feel very stupid. It just feels like a dumb way to do this movie. All the characters, for some reason, are just very dumb in this movie.

I can't really describe it, I know, it's just a weird critique, but I just watched it, wrote it down, that this movie just feels dumb, for some reason. Maybe if I had to pick one exact point and reason specifically, I think it's just them going about splitting up the X Men in this movie. I mean, you have Professor X and Cyclops go out to do their own thing, then Professor X and Cyclops get captured for, like, the entire runtime of the movie, neither of them get any kind of development whatsoever, and then you have Jean Grey and Storm that separate on to do their own thing, Will he disappear the entire movie?

Don't have a lot going on for them either. And then, I feel like a good chunk of this movie is just Logan and Magneto, both of them kind of having their story in this film. Which isn't the right way to do it. I think if you're going to have an X Men movie, make it an X Men movie, not exactly Logan and Magneto origins.

Those are the two coolest characters in this film, won't lie whatsoever. They do have the coolest moments.  I think it just could have been done a better way. The villain gets way too much time. Logan Wolverine gets way too much time. It feels very mismanaged. Doesn't really feel like they did a good job making an X Men movie with this film.

It feels like their main priority was trying to make this movie a decent movie with X Men inside of it. Not exactly an X Men movie. Just a movie that has X Men characters and an X Men storyline. And lastly, before we go into our superlatives, I just want to hammer in a couple more points here that I have written down.

Number one, I know I talked about it before, and I'm going to be talking about it throughout our entire X Men series that we have going on here. They aren't taking advantage of the characters or the actors playing them just whatsoever. I mean, you have Holly Berry playing Storm and James Marsden playing Cyclops, and yet, both of those characters are just some of the most uninteresting in this movie.

I don't understand how you manage to just literally lock Cyclops inside of a room for the entire run time. And then when he gets to the end of the film You want me to believe that he just has so much character with him, even though I haven't gotten to know him whatsoever. I don't read comics, so I don't know exactly what Cyclops has to offer in terms of a character.

He's been getting a lot more love recently with the new X Men animated show.  I just can't sit here and believe that Cyclops is a great character after this trilogy of movies. And also, we're going to be talking about this when we go into X Men Last Stand, but you have Jean Grey in this movie. Clearly you're building towards a Dark Phoenix storyline.

Yet, we're not. You haven't earned that storyline whatsoever, at all. Throughout both of these movies, Jean Grey doesn't have a lot of dialogue. She doesn't have a lot of character development. Except for with, obviously, Logan Wolverine, who takes all the spotlight in X Men Last Stand when we talk about it. 

Jean Grey deserves more runtime, and if you're gonna do a Dark Phoenix storyline like we see inside of X Men Last Stand, it should be more. It should be a bigger story. It should just be deserved. It should feel felt. I think the equivalent with these three movies is like them going from Avengers in 2012 right into Avengers Infinity War, with no real development, doesn't feel very meaningful, If you go from Avengers in 2012 right into Avengers Infinity War, that Avengers Infinity War that we would get in like 2014 with no Captain America Civil War, no Iron Man 3, no Guardians of the Galaxy, no Spider Man movie, it would obviously feel pretty just underwhelming, pretty just not really well deserved whatsoever.

That's exactly what this trilogy of films does. You shouldn't really be going into a Dark Phoenix storyline  That's my rant. I mean, I'm going to be talking about it a lot deeper inside of X Men Last Stand episode. Pretty much saying that the entire episode, but, you know, it's just definitely something that is just such a dumb thing to do, that they definitely just didn't really understand how to do it.

And the last bit of love I'll give to this film, the themes are still really good. This is just, once again, feels like a true comic book movie. It feels like I'm literally reading a comic book throughout the entire run time. A very boring and dull comic book, but still a comic book nonetheless. And also, once again, out of the ones that I've seen so far in this series, this is the most fun I've had in these movies.

The first one has its fun, it has its fun. time but this movie is longer. It has just the ability to have more fun thrown in there. It's not exactly executed that well but it is fun quote unquote. Everyone perceives fun differently. My perception of fun may just be different than yours but I had a fun time here and there.

I kind of laughed at sometimes. I'm not going to try to deny it. All right, so with our feature presentation out of the way, I think I've yapped just about enough with this movie. I think you can definitely see how I feel about it and what I really wanted to see from it. It's time to go into our superlatives.

This part of the episode is where we give out all of our rewards, all of the credit, and including our MVP at the very end of the episode. It's something that you never really want to miss out on.  You know all those dangerous mutants you hear about on the news? 

I'm the worst one.  So, starting off our superlatives, what was the best scene in the movie? What was truly the scene stealer of X Men, X Men United? In my opinion, it was the scene of the X Men confronting the president. That is definitely, by far, the best scene in the entire movie. No question. And it has a lot of competition.

I mean, you have the scene of Pyro just absolutely going crazy on the police. That sequence is a lot more fire than I remember. Once again, no pun intended. But the scene of the X Men confronting the President is just really just nothing short of absolute perfection. I don't see a way where this scene gets just really executed in any better way than the way they did it in this movie.

I'll admit there's just a lot of not so good with this movie, but that one scene is what brought it up to a higher score for me because there's just, just really nothing better I could have done with that one sequence. It feels like it belongs inside of a comic book. I don't know if they just shot that scene straight out of the comic book, but if they did, I wouldn't be surprised whatsoever.

It's just really just chef's kiss perfection sequence. For my favorite quote of X Men, X Men United comes from Pyro when Pyro tells the police, You know, all those dangerous mutants you hear about on the news. Well, I'm the worst one that got me so hyped. When I saw that sequence pyro, I knew was a pretty fire character, but I didn't think that he was just spinning bars that hard.

I mean, there's not a lot of characters in comic book films who just spit bars like that, that crazy. For absolutely no reason. I mean, he just went on Demon Time for just really no reason whatsoever. There was no reason to really go that hard. I wasn't really familiar with Pyro's game in this movie, because he really is just him.

Not gonna lie. If I had to make just one small change with this film, what would it be? Once again, Just like the first film, I want more X Men, I want more suits, I want better characterization. These films deserve to be just better as a whole. These films don't need to be massive, grand spectacle films for them to be good X Men movies.

I mean, we saw with First Class, we saw with Deadpool, we saw with Logan. All three of those movies, pretty minimal for the most part in terms of just what they're doing, how they're doing it, but just, The story that they're telling and the execution of those movies are what makes them just really good flicks, and they aren't doing too much.

They don't have that huge of a budget in comparison to Infinity War and Endgame, but the way they're doing these movies with the stories is what makes them just that much better. If they did up these first three movies, then they would really be, I think, some of the best ever, but they didn't. For a double feature.

What's a little bit of double trouble for X Men, X Men United. In my opinion, go from Spider Man one came out in 2002, then go right into X Men, X Men United. I think that's a pretty cool double feature you can do. I would definitely love to do that. I mean, Spider Man one, definitely more superior film, but you're going to finish Spider Man one thinking that Spider Man is going to show up in X Men, then he won't.

So you'll be more disappointed by X Men United. It's just more of a perfect way to watch these two films, in my opinion. If X to X Men United was a song, what would it be? In my opinion, I think it's my sacrifice from Creed. Once again, just like the first X Men film, there's no reason why Creed is really the song for this film, but it just feels right.

That's all I can say. There's nothing really that It works better than a Creed song for an X Men movie. It just really is like peanut butter and jelly, and like Logan in movies. It just really is inseparable. I don't know why. So we got a couple things to dive into before we send you guys off on your way.

One of those things being Buzz from the Backlot. What is Buzz from the Backlot? If you happen to be new here, Buzz from the Backlot is pretty much our sitemap where we give you guys just some fun facts to lose in your daily life. Let's say you're at work, or at a dinner party, or you're eating lunch with the in laws.

You need to kind of just soothe the situation with some very fun movie facts. That's the exact way you should handle any conversation, just with film fun facts. That's the best way you should do it. So, that's exactly what we have here for you. Today we have a few really cool fun facts, overall pretty bland, just like X Men United.

I tried my hardest. For our first fun fact, unlike the first movie where Rebecca Roman wore contact lenses, this time Mystique's eyes were rendered digitally. This is actually the same thing that they did with Dune Part 1 and Part 2 most recently, with the blue eyes with the Fremen and also Paul Atreides as well.

They, in the first movie, did it, you know, more by hand with the CGI. In the sequel for Dune Part 2, they did the blue eyes with just AI, which is, in my opinion, pretty cool. The only time AI should be used in a good way. Why am I talking about Dune II inside of an X Men United episode? I have no idea. Dune II is just a better movie anyway, so that's a fair reason why.

For our next fun fact, most of the extras playing frozen people in the beginning of the movie were actually mimes, who are used to not moving whatsoever. For our third fun fact, Neil Patrick Harris auditioned for the role of Nightcrawler, but lost out to Alan Cunning, who speaks fluent German. In my opinion, why would you ever turn down Neil Patrick Harris for anyone, especially Alan Cunning?

I mean,  Alan Cumming is in my opinion, I think he's a pretty Decent actor, but in terms of just the coolness of both these characters. Would you rather have Alan Cumming or Neil Patrick Harris? Not a debate, you know it's not. And for our final fun fact of this episode, The replica for the president's desk in the Oval Office was so detailed that it took two months to build.

That is two months for this overall pretty mediocre film. Not worth it in my opinion, but we'll keep moving forward. Now it's time to dive into our MVP.  MVP is definitely our biggest award of the night. Would this movie work without our MVP, this actor or actress really being at their best in this movie?

In my opinion, absolutely not. This movie would not be what it is without our MVP. And we have five nominees for our MVP. Starting out with Sean Ashmore for his role as Iceman in this movie. He really is just him. Next, Patrick Seward for Professor X, Ian McKellen as Magneto, and Aaron Stanford for his role as Pyro, a role that I didn't think I would love this much, but he really did deserve that MVP nomination.

And finally, Hugh Jackman is also our nomination for MVP, his second nomination, and who is our MVP for X Men United.  Hugh Jackman, congratulations on your first ever win, your second nomination in Quarters of the Mystery. Sadly, Hugh Jackman couldn't make it in. He just is busy right now, and I'll show you, but we're gonna mail it out to him.

He said he'll send us in a video once he gets it. I really can't wait to see it. Thank you, Hugh Jackman. Congratulations on your first ever MVP, he's really going to get like five in a row because he's like the best character in any of these films, but we'll move on. Our final score for X2 X Men United is a D This is the exact same score as the first movie.

I put both these films pretty much, like, side by side. I think that this second film is slightly better than the first movie. Not by a big margin. Both of them are equally just not that good. But this film is not that good, but a little bit better. I enjoyed it a little bit more. A little more fun to it. I really appreciate that it's just taking that next step.

It's not that good, but I just hope that this movie and this trilogy would have gotten better. Sadly, we saw with X Men United, that didn't happen, but this film, I think, was a pretty strong step in the right direction. If you're listening over on Spotify, you can answer our big question for this episode.

My big question for you is, what is the future of the X Men? After the way that Fox handled this trilogy and all these characters, this whole franchise as a whole, What is the future of X Men in film in general? Not just the MCU, but overall movies. Should the MCU take the step of maybe just doing this as an Elseworlds storyline and making it just the best it can be?

Or should they double down with just having a very crowded MCU movie with not a lot of character development, but a lot of fun with Avengers and X Men content side by side? In my opinion, I think that the MCU and this X Men as a whole should are just really dead. It's almost like the westerns and how they all died.

There's no real light at the end of the tunnel. I'm happy that I got to witness the just absolute prime pantheon of comic book films.  From what we're seeing, at least the MCU and Marvel films  won't get better anytime soon, and I'm in no rush to see another X Men film during this time. Well, thank you for taking the time out of your day to listen to this episode.

I really appreciate it. If you can, share the show, leave a review, do all that fun stuff. The next episode in this series will be X Men Last Stand, very sadly, a not so good movie. Stay tuned, in the next couple days we're going to be doing my March recap. Everything that I watched in the month of March, a pretty stacked month, 36 films in one month.

Very big shock for me. Follow us on all of our socials down below in the show notes. Until then, stay swagged out, stay cool, watch more movies like every single day. That's my homework for you. Watch a film every single day. That's all you have to do. It's a hard path, but one that's definitely worth following.

But until next time, I'm your host Logan, and I'll see you guys in the movies.