Wednesday, May 21, 2003
Movie Review: X2
Disappointing. I enjoyed the first film in this series, as I found it easy to get caught up in the characters and the action. This one felt like a clock-work movie: lots of gears and wheels whirring away, moving in a completely predictable way to a foregone conclusion. Oh look, there's an evil scientist's lab set into a dam/power station – how long will it be until it gets destroyed everyone has to get away from the flood? Hey, there's a device that can seek out and destroy all mutants – I wonder when it will be turned on everybody else? Plus cardboard characters with shallow motivations and drives (mad scientist out to destroy all mutants because his own mutant son 'went bad', Nightcrawler character tries to assassinate President but is brainwashed into doing so and has zero after-effects of the process afterwards, Cyclops loves Lady Jane but is similarly brainwashed and there's absolutely no apparent inner-struggle when they fight). Ugh. Felt very much like a TV movie with an over-the-top effects budget.
Disappointing. I enjoyed the first film in this series, as I found it easy to get caught up in the characters and the action. This one felt like a clock-work movie: lots of gears and wheels whirring away, moving in a completely predictable way to a foregone conclusion. Oh look, there's an evil scientist's lab set into a dam/power station – how long will it be until it gets destroyed everyone has to get away from the flood? Hey, there's a device that can seek out and destroy all mutants – I wonder when it will be turned on everybody else? Plus cardboard characters with shallow motivations and drives (mad scientist out to destroy all mutants because his own mutant son 'went bad', Nightcrawler character tries to assassinate President but is brainwashed into doing so and has zero after-effects of the process afterwards, Cyclops loves Lady Jane but is similarly brainwashed and there's absolutely no apparent inner-struggle when they fight). Ugh. Felt very much like a TV movie with an over-the-top effects budget.
Arguably too many characters with not enough time (despite the film's 2½ hours) to concentrate on any of them well, and so the film didn't seem "anchored" to me. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in particular largely wasted on this film. Best lines went to the actor who played Wolverine, who at least manages to make something of it.
Am not going to be in any hurry to see the inevitable X3.
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