About Nightcrawler being afraid to teleport blindly and the opening sequence, remember that he was under mind control at the time.
Probably that one scene in the Blackbird where Cyclops says, “Where’s Jean?” and Wolverine says, “I ate her liver, with fava beans and a nice Chianti, fsshssshsss.”
KHAAAAAAAAAAANNNN!
Really? Why?
Yeah. But wasn’t she COOL?!
Xavier is a pretty calm guy. He’s been through a lot, and he knows the others need him. But anyway, I thought this scene was suposed to go off a few days later.
Xavier doesn’t casually invade other peoples minds. He does look at them regularly from the outside, via Cerebro, but he doesn’t actually go inside all the time.
First, Magneto knows there are a lot of mutants out there. Second, he’s quite capable of maintaining a very large technology base all on his own. The man in the comics has had at least two giant asteroid bases an nearly destroyed New York with his power. And as for the genocide, he has been known to consider it carefully on several occaisions.
One of the strange things is that Magneto seems to bounce back and forth from almost-hero to villains. In at least one alternate possibile future (Age of Apocolypse, caused by someone screwing up recent history) Magneto became a great hero. In the end he’s terrified of humanity more than he hates anyone.
I could buy Stryker using drugs to force Magneto to spill the beans in prison. I could accept the story that he could similarly drug another mutant, Deathstrike, into becoming his bodyguard. This situations have real-life parallels. I could it more difficult to believe that he could capture a teleporting mutant and somehow convince him to hatch a plan to infiltrate the White House and attempt to kill the President (and then forget the whole thing).
With regard to Cyclops, it also seemed unlikely to me that within the space of a few days, Stryker had influenced Scott so much that he felt comfortable leaving him to roam the premises, where he would attack his girlfriend. It just seemed so weak and contrived.
**Yeah, I guess this is where some more comic book background would be useful. To an uneducated audience, we would expect a character coming to grips with the sheer enormity of almost killing billions to at least express some self-doubt and guilt. Not calmly delivery a high-handed lecture to the President (in which he takes the moral high ground!)
**Oh, I see. I guess I just expected someone who could freeze every person in a large exhibition hall earlier in the movie to a little more aware. (Also, I could be reading this wrong, but doesn’t he read the emotions of another character earlier in the movie?)
Ah. Thanks for the back story!
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I thought of another little thing I liked about this movie. In the final scene, Bobby and Rogue are wearing proper X-men costumes (I noticed Bobby had the high collar with the white “X”), after being told by Wolverine earlier in the piece that they would have to wait. Nice poignant touch.
Something else – the product placement in this movie was pretty obvious (not that that really bothers me). I spotted prominently placed Dr Pepper, Millers Beer and a lingering look at a Mazda.*
- Which I think is called something else in the US. Miata?
I thought it was pretty good…still trying to decide if I want it on DVD…For some reason, I liked the first one more.
What I did like-
The fact that everyone had mostly realistic reasons for being ‘bad’. This was done especially well with Magneto.
They let Wolverine slice and dice. Granted, they had to cut all the gore that would result, but its nice to see him use them blades.
The Wolverine vs. Deathstrike fight. I haven’t winced that much since seeing ‘The Hunted’…lots of cutting in that movie as well.
What I didn’t like-
With such a huge cast, characters don’t get to develop alot. Oh well, its worthwhile to see all the powers and such.
Suddenly everyone is ‘suited up’ at the end there…
And finally, a question…can someone point me the way to a synopsis of the Phoenix story, which it seems they’re setting up for the next installment?
Some thoughts:
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Yeah, the ending was too protracted. It was badly written. Nonetheless, the movie as a whole was very good, and was better than the first one.
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Magneto’s desire to wipe out the human race is perfectly logical in an evil way; he obviously assumes mutants (of which there are several million, apparently) can do just fine on their own. The sudden drop in available plumbers and farmers is presumably not high on his list of concerns.
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I thought Nightcrawler was done AMAZINGLY well. The effects were first-rate, and the sound effect for his teleportation was as close to “bamf!” as you could expect (would you rather have some comic book nerd yelling “bamf!” in the background?) The character was not precisely the same as the comics, but I thought it was a well-drawn character and a nice contrast to the existing cast.
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For the second movie in a row, they did a very good job of inserting some more X-Men we’re going to see in the next movie. Last time it was Iceman and Pyro, who were well slotted in to this film and set up for many movies to come. The next movie will apparently include Colossus, Shadowcat, and possibly Jubilee. They managed to fit them into the script while making it look incidental. Well done. Who was the kid who didn’t sleep and could control the TV with his eyes?
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I didn’t see anything wrong with Jean Grey’s leaving the plane. It’s very clearly shown that she’s afraid of her own power and that she can have a destructive effect on anything close by. Made sense to me.
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I also thought they did a good job of refocusing the chaacter emphasis.
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Wow, Wolverine killed a LOT of people.
All in all, an excellet step on the way to a long and successful franchise, although they need to get working on getting some more done before Ian McKellen croaks.
Yes, they’ve only got 30 years or so… 
Wasn’t it Jean’s blast towards Scott that broke the dam? I thought that was a nice way of foreshadowing her powers at the end of the movie, sort of showing that when she gets upset she can really do some damage. Great movie; will see again.
I found this site from another thread on this message board. I have to warn you that it seems quite different from the cartoon series (never read but one or two X-men comics), but if it is wrong I am sure somebody will pipe in and correct it. Linky-
Just an aside…Narrad, the car is an Mazda RX8. Love that car A Miata is just another type of Mazda (a convertible, which is also pretty nice) Just in case you cared
I have never read the comics, so I don’t catch as much of the little things that you x-men buffs do, I but I really liked that movie. Nightcrawler’s opening scene was really well done.
Get used to James Marsden. He’s lined up to play the role of Jesse Custer in Preacher.
Interesting thread. But I’m still confused about why Rogue moved the plane. Did I sleep through the part where someone asked her to move it? Was she forced to because of fire-boy’s exit? Would someone give me a brief explanation for that part?
She moved it, Pablito, because it was waaaaay on the other side of the damn, at the entrance to the spillway, which was flooded. It would take a while to get to where the plane was from where they exited the damn, too long, seeing as the damn was a couple minutes from bursting. My guess is that the plane had a “X-Men locator” on it and told Rogue and Iceman that the other X-Men were where they were. Of course, why she flew it and not Bobby is beyond me, she always seems to get to tense or scared in situations to do anything, as evidenced by the fact that she would not let go of the controls.
Thanks for clearing that up for me, bouv.
And coincidentally, I saw ‘I, Spy’ the other night on satellite and realized that the Jean actress is also in that movie. What a gorgeous cast of women in ‘X-2’. Between Jean, Storm, and Mystique, I don’t know who to pick as the principle object of my fantasy. Clearly, Mystique has the best costume among those three–talk about skin-tight!, it’s painted on. I can’t imagine trying to do a scene with her in it and not staring the whole time.
The “ricochet” comment was somewhat fascetious - I didn’t actually expect it to just bounce off. But even so, the bullet, when it popped out, was undeformed, implying it penetrated his skull. Which it shouldn’t (couldn’t) have.
Just a minor continuity error, probably. But still a rather obvious one, I would think.
tracer: Thanks! I knew I had heard that line before.
Just FYI, bouv:
When discussing a natural or man-made barrier that holds back water, it’s called a dam, not a “damn.”
Unless it’s a really crappy dam, of course.
Are you sure? I remeber the bullet popping out and being squished into kind of like a disk. Just what you would expect if a bullet hit an inpenetrable object.
I remember the bullet popping out un-deformed, just like Darwin’s Finch remembers.
However, this is a Hollywood bullet we’re talking about here. It retains its original shape after impact so that we in the audience can tell it’s a bullet.
Its not as if he had a choice in the matter. Jason Stryker was very persuasive…
[spoiler]I could it more difficult to believe that he could capture a teleporting mutant and somehow convince him to hatch a plan to infiltrate the White House and attempt to kill the President (and then forget the whole thing).[spoiler]
The only hard part would be realizing Nightcrawler was there. One quick sniper + a tranq dart later and you have a new servant. Once on the “the sauce”, Nightcrawler couldn’t have done a thing.
And it seems that Stryker and his son were very good at messing with people’s minds
I thought I saw it partly deformed.
I really enjoyed this movie, I’ll be going back to see it again!
Things that stood out for me:
Nightcrawler was very good, he was nicely portrayed, he looked great, and they managed to convey a little of the characters complexity and kind heart despite having so many characters competing for screen time. (I also loved the Bamf!)
Wolvie cut loose and killed in self defense, and then a bit more, it was very consistent and it was good to see that they didn’t santitize him. (I saw a deformed bullet pop out of his forehead)
I despised Cyclops’ portrayal. What a vanilla biotch, imho.
I became extremely interested when I saw Remy LeBeau’s name listed. I can only hope that they introduce him in the next movie.
Mystique was great, it was nice to see her get more play…the finger bit was priceless. (I believe that she deliberately kept the scar as a souvenir of her encounter with Wolverine)