Last night I watched 2003's X2 again, Bryan Singer's sequel to the first X-Men movie, still considered by many to be the best X-Men film. I think that's probably true, though I haven't seen all of them. I still haven't watched the third one because I hate Brett Ratner so much and I remember what a betrayal it was when Fox fired Bryan Singer. I remember listening to the DVD commentary and hearing Singer talk about how enthusiastic he was to make the next film after X2's cliffhanger ending, which was inspired by Star Trek II. Oh, what might have been.
X2 is at least one of the best superhero team movies for how it manages to achieve a good balance of various characters using their powers, each of whom is interesting in their own right. Alan Cumming's take on Nightcrawler feels different from any other portrayal of the character I've seen but he's very good. It's an unusually solemn take for the character but that makes sense given his backstory. The way his teleportation powers are portrayed influenced teleportation action scenes in many film and TV series afterwards.
And Storm gets plenty to do this time and actually comes off as a leader more than she did in the first film. I still think Halle Berry was miscast but at least she'd dropped the phony accent. Storm was my favourite X-Men character when I was a kid, She was one of those characters I'd often practice drawing when I was teaching myself how to draw comic characters. X2 is maybe her best live action portrayal though I hold out some hope that one day there'll be a better one, something closer to how she appeared in Chris Clairemont's classic run. I mean, those are the comics that they should be adapting anyway.
I think my favourite scene in X2, though, remains Magneto's escape from his prison. When he pulls the iron out of that guy's blood and gets away with just a couple of floating spheres he can fling like bullets, or use as floating platforms, you get a very good impression of just how powerful this guy is.
X2 is available on Disney+.
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