Detailed X2 notes (spoilers!)
Tonight I didn't have enough brain to read or edit subs, so I decided to expand my notes on seeing X2 into complete English sentences.
First, some of the previews we saw: one for The Matrix Reloaded (still looks like fun); one for The Hulk (unfortunately, the CGI in this looks extremely computer-generated; I suspect I'll have a very hard time suspending disbelief, and I've never been a big Hulk fan to start with); and (among others I've forgotten) one for Stuck on You, a really awful-looking Farrelly Brothers conjoined-twins movie starring Matt Damon, who I've previously always had a lot of respect for.
Onward to my comments on X2. There will be spoilers here; also, this is not so much a coherent review as an assortment of notes.
Also, if you didn't already know I'm a comics geek, it will become abundantly clear as you read the following. I hope you won't hold it against me.
- I really didn't like the goofy zoom-through-a-body(? or something) effects in the opening titles. Several movies recently have opened with CGI zooms through someone's body—a trend that must stop.
- I thought the music was overdone, even in the opening White House scene (dramatic chords as we see the mysterious figure). I don't normally notice music in movies, but it was pretty glaring in parts of this movie.
- The revisions to the timeline are fascinating, and imo mostly well done. There's no way to make a coherent realistic timeline out of the comic book series (Kitty was 16 for, what, five years?); since they wanted all the characters to fit into one coherent universe, they had to assign ages to them, and I think it was an interesting (and mostly good) choice to go with more or less the New Mutants period but to reassign some ages. (I was startled by how young several of the characters looked, but that may partly just be that they looked like the ages they were supposed to be, whereas the comic-book characters tend to be drawn as looking significantly older. I gather that Jubilee, frex, is supposed to be about 13 in the comics, but she looks like she's in her mid-20s in the pictures I've seen.) I thought it was an especially interesting choice to make Bobby a teenager when the others from his generation in the comic are older. (Bobby was a couple years younger than the others originally, I think, but only a couple; I think he was 16 when Scott et alia were 18 or so.) I can see most of them growing into the characters I expect them to be, rather than starting out as those characters.
- Good stuff with Bobby and Rogue. (But, as Nick W. noted on a mailing list, they really need to experiment with plastic wrap. Someone get those two some dental dams!)
- Good stuff with Jean and Logan.
- I'm entirely uninterested in Scott; see previous entry on the Rocky Horror Mutant Show.
- God Loves, Man Kills, the early X-Men graphic novel which parts of this story draw inspiration from, is one of my favorite X-Men stories. It's a little heavy-handed in its analogies between mutantphobia and other forms of prejudice, but does a good job (imo) nonetheless. I gather that that story is director/co-writer Bryan Singer's favorite X-Men story. I wouldn't go so far as to say that the movie is based on the graphic novel, but there are connections; for example, the villain of the GN was one Reverend Stryker, who has a device that can kill mutants at a distance.
- As with God Loves, I liked the analogies in the movie between mutantphobia and homophobia. In particular, I liked the idea that Stryker was upset because he'd sent his son to Xavier to be "fixed"/"cured," and I loved the Bobby-coming-out-to-his-parents scene. Perhaps a little cliched, but it felt very true nonetheless.
- I'm not really comfortable with the Cerebro-links-to-everyone-on-Earth business (rather gives Charles ultimate power over all of humanity, doesn't it?), nor with Charles's freeze-people-in-time power (which also makes him immensely powerful). On the other hand, I vaguely recall in one of the very early issues of the original comic book series (long before Claremont/Byrne), Charles does mind-control various people in order to talk to certain government officials. But the details are hazy in my memory.
- Nightcrawler mostly well done. Expected him to be furry, though. :( V. glad he wasn't really a villain; after the opening scene, I was prepared to be seriously annoyed if they messed with his character that much. Despite various people's complaints about the handling of his religion, I thought it was reasonably well done, and I'm expecting that the hints of pride about the circus stuff was quasi-foreshadowing of him growing (over the course of the next couple movies) into the happy-go-lucky swashbuckler we all know and love. And I was impressed with the actor (Alan Cumming); based on his Spy Kids role, I'd worried that he would play the part for laughs, but I thought he did a good job. I wasn't so impressed with his bamfs, though—I thought the sound effect wasn't loud enough, and the swirling colors (while a cool effect) didn't make much sense, and I always thought the smoke and sulfur smell were interesting parts of the effect, contributing to the he's-a-demon feel (and thus the contrast with who he really is).
- I think there was significantly more death in this than in the previous movie. Logan in particularly kills people without compunction—I get a bit more of a sense of the brutal-killer side of him here than I think I did last time, which ties in nicely with the you're-an-animal business from Stryker. (Btw, I gather that we did eventually get a Wolverine origin story in the comics, but it was long after I stopped reading the various X series, so I still don't know the details. Which is just as well, since I imagine they messed with it a bit in the movie.) Also, I liked the subtle statement that Wolverine is at least as old as Stryker; I suspect that people who didn't read the comic and didn't think about the implications of Logan's healing power might not have caught that. (Do we ever find out in the comic just how old Wolvie really is? I know it's established that he's much older than he looks (and he looks older in the comic than in the movies); I'm just not sure how old.) . . . In other news, Wolverine still not short. Or hairy.
- Various characters and names looked/sounded vaguely familiar but I wasn't sure why. I knew the name Stryker but didn't remember Rev. Stryker; I knew the name Jason, connected to an illusionist, but didn't remember that in the comics it was Jason Wyngarde, a.k.a. Mastermind, of the Hellfire Club. All in all, I think they've done a decent job of re-imagining elements of the comic while keeping some of the essentials intact. I had no idea who Pyro and Lady Deathstrike (a.k.a. "claws chick") were in the comics, until I went and looked them up afterward; I think they, like Jubilee and Gambit (who was mentioned only in passing, and only by his mundane name) and Siryn (who I thought was nicely done), came after my time as a reader. . . . Heh—"[T]here's nothing hotter than claw on claw action," says co-writer Dan Harris in an interview.
- It occurred to me after the movie that the spooky non-sleeping TV-watching kid must be Doug Ramsey. But I think I was wrong; after looking at the IMDB cast list, I'm now thinking his name was Artie, and another article gives his full name as Artie Maddicks, though his powers don't match those of the comic character with that name.
- V. pleased to see Mystique (a.k.a. "Rebecca Romaine-Lettuce," as j7y calls her) have more of a role; I liked her a lot more here than last time.
- Storm was still way underused. Why didn't she summon a wind to let the Blackbird down gently when it was crashing, or another wind to lift it off the ground at the end? And having her solve the problem at the end by making the room really really cold wasn't terribly dramatically satisfying; it wasn't a good match of superpower to situation. The writers coulda done way better.
- I want to see more of Kitty Pryde! I know, I know, next time. (And I suppose I won't be able to have a crush on the character, now that I've aged and she hasn't. But still.)
- I also want to see more of Colossus. V. sad he didn't have a Russian accent—nor Logan a Canadian one, for that matter. (But Logan said "Bub"! Yay!) (Sometimes it takes very little to make Jed happy.)
- Yay for Hank McCoy on TV! I wonder if we'll see him as Beast next time, or if that was just a throwaway reference for fans. (I gather the guy he was debating on TV was named Dr. Sebastian Shaw; cute.)
- Naomi B. mentioned "a scene at the end that I swear should have been a kiss." :) Yup.
- I thought it was very unfortunate that they left Jason to die—he was a victim of his father's hatred as much as any of the others were, and I'd have liked them to acknowledge that.
- I found the very ending a little anticlimactic, esp. since from their urgent "must get to the President immediately" line I was expecting a fight scene in which they would save the President from Magneto and Mystique.
I'll close by mentioning something Kam pointed out as we were leaving the theatre: some of the seat arms in that theatre can be lifted up, and when they're lifted, the bottoms of the cup-holders form a perfect X-in-a-circle logo. I immediately got out my compact digital camera to take a photo, but before I could take the picture, the cleaning staff arrived. I didn't want to have to explain to theatre management what I was doing with a video-capable recording device in their movie (though my camera is only capable of recording maybe thirty seconds of video), so I hid the camera and we left. But at some future point I hope I can take a photo of those seat arms.
