No doubt, X2 is your straightforward, simple fun, action-packed Summer blockbuster. Unlike another recent box office big deal, which aspires yet fails to be so much more. As the current email joking goes, the cross-dressing Larry Wachowski needs the money more for his soon-to-be due divorce settlement and half of $16 million doesn’t go as far as it used to, while X2 director Bryan Singer only has to deal with homophobia.
Simply put, I enjoyed X2 a lot more than Matrix Reloaded and I expect that’s true for many people who’ve seen both. Singer, his writers, and producers understood their mission–create something fun that’s true to, but not limited by, the comic book legacy–and they did it. Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Franke Famke, Anna Paquin, Ian McKellen, and even Patrick Stewart look and act bigger than life, punching and psychokinetically moving anything in their way, and the main new mutant, Alan Cummings as the blueskinned Nightcrawler is terrific. Cummings seems to have taken Joel Grey’s Master of Ceremonies character from Cabaret as his template, if Grey had been playing an exceedingly religious German with a tail.
The visuals, including the SFX, are also great. We loved the detail shown for the X-Men’s jet and the destruction of the dam was just…serious. Props to cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel, production designer Guy Dyas, and, hell, the entire makeup, special effects, and set dressing crews, I don’t know who to single out; for example, the attention to detail shown in Bobby Drake’s bedroom had an attention to detail I just didn’t expect.
Definitely recommended
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