So I finally saw X2…

On Monday I went out and saw X2 (a matinee) and I was the only one in the theatre. It was great. I had footrests galore and cupholders for the entire 101st Airborne!

How was the movie you ask? Well, honestly, it wasn’t phenomenal but it wasn’t horrible either. I think that putting the X-Men on the big screen is an enormous task and so far the film makers have done pretty well with it, from a special effects and cinematic perspective. However, what the hell is up with the scripts? I understand it’s hard to translate such an enormous universe into a series of 2 hour movies but can we have some respect for the timeline of the comics and the bloody inter-character relationships? What’s the deal with smooshing 10 years of a comic into two movies? I don’t know if that’s a precise number but it felt that way to me. Let’s take a running leap from Wolvie finding about Stryker and the Weapon X stuff to the Phoenix Saga in how many minutes was this movie? It’s enough to make your head spin!

Now here are the little things that I don’t like about the movie:

• Bobby “Iceman” Drake is from Long Island, not Massachusetts
• The Father-Daughter dynamic between Rogue and Wolverine in the movies was actually the relationship that Kitty Pryde (”Shadowcat”) in the comics, as far as I understand. After Shadowcat got all growed up and left, Wolvie became Jubilee’s big daddy type.
• The Phoenix stuff doesn’t start this early in the timeline.
• Nightcrawler, even though they did a great job with his Bamfing, is just a shell of what he was in the comics, AND he’s not furry in the movie? Maybe he’s a little blue and fuzzy but not furry.
• Colossus deserved a bigger part, but they did a great job with him.. KUDOS!
• Kitty deserves speaking parts! And for the love of Pete, where’s her computer?!
• Halle Berry is ruining Storm. She can’t play Storm. She doesn’t even try to do Storm’s accent! Like I said after the first movie, Storm should’ve been Vivica A. Fox
• Uhm.. Beast?

Anyway, aside from the obvious foul-ups in the scripts and the lacklustre performances by everyone but Ian McKellen, Anna Paquin, Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman (who does an AMAZING job with Wolvie), it wasn’t horrible. I think the rest of the cast needs to raise the bar on their performances for the next one. James Marsden’s Cyclops and Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey are pathetic at best and Halle just stinks up the screen (if I haven’t said it before). I think that the next script will be just as messed up as this one, but providing the dismal portrayals of Storm, Cyclops and Jean Grey can be patched up for the next one, we might have a halfway decent movie on our hands.