X2: X-Men United (2003)

An assassination attempt on the president by the teleporting mutant Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming) gives General William Stryker (Brian Cox) the power he needs to carry out his attack on the X-Men mansion, kidnap Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and Cyclops (James Marsden), and set in motion his genocidal plans. Countering him is Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), Storm (Halle Berry) and several young mutants working together with their previous enemies, Magneto (Ian McKellen) and Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos).

X2 is 2000’s X-Men, but better. If X-men had great fight scenes, X2’s are more exciting (The Nightcrawler attack is one of the best action moments ever filmed). If X-Men had interesting and complicated characters, X2 makes them deeper. The themes are more personal, yet larger. The relationships are more emotional. This is very much a sequel, so it loses a bit on originality, but it gains a lot on style.

X2 smartly reduces the importance of the teens, except for one scene, where Iceman (Shawn Ashmore) has to come out as a mutant to his parents. It is THE LGBT moment of the franchise and is moving and painful, but still manages a touch of dark humor. The rest of the time the metaphor leans more toward Jews and the holocaust, which works better when the film goes into action mode.

Again, the story focuses on Wolverine, and again, Hugh Jackman owns the part. Even in the weaker franchise outings, he has always given amazing range to what is a simple character, and this isn’t a weaker outing. Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey is the sentimental heart of the film and Janssen is radiant.

But what really elevates the film is Magneto. X-Men films work best when he—and Mystique—aren’t pure villains. It should be clear by now that his view of how humanity will react to mutants is at least as accurate as Professor X’s. Neither of them are right or wrong, but they have competing philosophies for how an oppressed group should deal with their oppressors. In X-Men, he was painted black, but here it is shades of gray. I was cheering him on as much as Wolverine or Storm. It’s hard to argue against Mystique’s reason for not hiding her differences when she so easily could: “Because we shouldn’t have to.” But the best statement of right and wrong is less dramatic.

Pyro: “So they say you’re the bad guy.”
Magneto: “Is that what they say?”

The man who survived a concentration camp only to see it happening again seems to have the right to smirk at the vague statements of others that he is the villain. And that ambiguity makes X2 much more than a summer action flick.