X-Men 2 (X2) - 2 Disk Special Edition
Plot
After an assassination attempt on the President of the United States by an unknown mutant, the military leader William Striker is given authority to raid Xaviers School for gifted children. With Xavier kidnapped the X-Men find themselves with unexpected allies in the form of Magneto and Mystique. We soon discover that there’s more to Striker than meets the eye, as he....
Plot
After an assassination attempt on the President of the United States by an unknown mutant, the military leader William Striker is given authority to raid Xaviers School for gifted children. With Xavier kidnapped the X-Men find themselves with unexpected allies in the form of Magneto and Mystique. We soon discover that there’s more to Striker than meets the eye, as he has a direct link to Wolverines past and is developing a copy of Cerebro to use against the mutants.
Review
I really liked the first X-Men film as my review available here will demonstrate. However now that I look back upon it I can see that it did have a few problems. It made the same mistake that many of these films do, by spending more time introducing characters than moving ahead with a plot. That’s probably one of the reasons why X2 is a so much stronger film, all the character development is not necessary.
Everything here just seems to be handled better than the first time around. Directorially, it’s a much slicker and more polished movie. Characters seem much deeper with clearly defined roles and personalities. The plot is very strong, well paced and gripping from opening to ending credits. I would go as far as to say that this is the best fantasy / sci-fi film released so far this year and certainly the best comic book adaptation to date. I’ll even say that it’s a better film than the slightly disappointing Matrix Reloaded.
As with any film that contains so many characters some get much better plot lines than others and some actors have stronger roles. Although Magneto has a smaller role than in the sequel, Ian McKellen still manages to give the role his all. Brian Cox is excellent as the mutant hating villain of the piece William Stryker. Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) has become a much more central character to the X-Men world and as in the original Mystique is a real strong character superbly acted by Rebecca Romijn-Stamos. On the other hand Cyclops (James Marsden) is once again made to look like a bit of a wimp and Storm (Halle Berry) is under utilised. The major new character here is of course Nightcrawler and Alan Cumming easily makes the character his own.
Given the box office success of this film, there will undoubtedly be a third film. The X-Men universe has a wealth of storylines that can be used for any number of sequels. If they get a good enough script and Bryan Singer continues to develop as a director as he’s clearly done here, then I’ll definitely look forward to a third film and possibly even beyond. I think they’ve now found a good balance of characters who are certainly less one-dimensional than in the original and I hope they’re all still around in any sequels.
Video/Audio
I’ve seen one or two others comment on the video quality being not quite as good as it could be. Well from my untrained eye the quality of the disk was superb. Absolutely zero film problems, not a scratch or grainy image in site. From many rich deeply coloured scenes to the cold shiny steel of Cerebro every frame looks wonderful. Retaining the theatrical aspect ratio of 2.40:1, fox have done a wonderful job here.
On the audio side we have a choice of Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1. Neither track fails to deliver and to be honest I could detect little difference between them. The video quality isn’t let down by the audio quality here, great surround effects, crisp and clear dialogue and plenty of deep rumbling base.
Extras
Disk 1
This disk comes with two separate audio commentaries, one from director Bryan Singer and cinematographer Newton Thomas Siegel and the other is from writers Michael Doherty, Dan Harris, David Hayter and producers Ralph Winter and Lauren Donner. I’m afraid that the Bryan Singer commentary isn’t as interesting as I hoped it would be, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with it particularly. It’s just that it’s delivered in such a dry humourless way that it’s just hard to keep yourself interested.
The second commentary is a little more interesting although only just. It’s not quite as dry but I personally wouldn’t recommend that you bother unless you really want to absorb everything you can about the film. I personally found that I could only handle them by breaking it up into smaller sittings.
Disk 2
Disk 2 of the set is the extra features disk and boy is there a lot here, it’s split into seven separate sections. These are History of the X-Men, Pre-Production, Production, Post-Production, Deleted Scenes, Galleries and Trailers. I’ll briefly run through each of the sections in order now.
History of the X-Men, this is broken into two features the first of which is called Secret Origin of the X-Men a 15 minute or so feature that is essentially split into two ports. The first half focuses on the history of the comic book and features interviews with Stan Lee and other writers from Marvel Comics. The second half discusses the history of the film, but essentially talks about X-Men 1 rather than X-Men 2 and I got the distinct impression that this feature was made around the release time of the first film. Nightcrawler Reborn is an 8 minute feature in a similar style that discusses the history of the Nightcrawler character, the interview clips are with Marvel writer Chuck Austen.
Pre-Production is broken into three sections. Nightcrawler Attack: Multi-Angle Study, is unsurprisingly a multi angle feature. To be more precise it’s a breakdown of the Nightcrawler in the Whitehouse scene. By changing the angle on the DVD you can see animatic, wire work and finished versions either full screen or in split screens. Evolution in The Details: Designing X2 is a feature hosted by production designer Guy Dyas. Guy gives us a personal tour of many of the sets featured throughout the film including Xaviers school, the plastic prison and the whitehouse amongst others. This feature gives a real insight into the workings of these sets and the level of detail they go into when building them. United Colors of X, is a feature hosted by Costume Designer Louise Mingebach. While the feature is interesting enough itself, it’s not helped by the presenters unconformable and unrehearsed delivery in front of the camera.
The Production section features six different features. Wolverine / Death Strike: Fight Rehearsal is a short but impressive rehearsal reel featuring Kelly Hu and a stunt co-ordinator. The Second Uncanny Issue of X-Men is the longest extra feature on the disk. At just over an hour long this is an in-depth making of feature hosted mainly by director Bryan Singer. Unlike most cheesy self-praise making of’s this is a quality feature and well worth watching. Introducing The Incredible Nightcrawler features interviews and footage with both Alan Cumming and his movement coach Terry Notary as well as a look at the make up process and some concept drawings. Nightcrawler Stunt Rehearsal is very similar to Nightcrawler Attack: Multi-Angle Study[/b] and not really worth inclusions. Nightcrawler Time Lapse is a time lapse film showing just what Allan Cumming had to go through every day in the make up process. Finally for this section FX2: Visual Effects is a 25 minute or so feature on the many visual effects in the film including a scale modelled dam collapse and many of the CG effects.
After the heavy production section Post-Production is considerably lighter, consisting of just two extras. Requiem For Mutants: The Score of X2 is a feature on the music of X2 featuring composer John Ottman. X2 Global Webcast features highlights from some webcast interviews with various cast & crew and runs for around 17 minutes.
Next up we have a collection of 11Deleted Scenes, although most of them are actually extended scenes rather than deleted scenes. Galleries, contains a selection of six different photo galleries. Normally I would not even bother with a feature like this however some of these galleries are quite interesting. In particular the Nightcrawler poster gallery and the characters gallery.
Finally the disk is finished off with a selection of three Theatrical Trailers. Quite a selection of extras I think you’ll agree. Subtitles for the film are available in English, strangely though on the preview disks we received the extra features disk has subtitles in English, French, German, Dutch, Italian and Spanish. The film is broken into 40 chapters and I’m afraid disk 1 has those annoying trailers on start-up but you can at least skip past them if you wish.
Overall
X-Men 2 is a great film and certainly superior to the original. There’s also very little to fault with this superb 2 disk release. Video and Audio quality are worthy of being called reference quality. Not only is there a wealth of extras, but they’re of a very high quality and all worth watching. If I have to find anything wrong with them then I guess the commentaries are not as interesting as they could be.
This is a must buy release and deserves to be given pride of place on anyone’s shelves. One of the best DVD’s of 2003 so far.
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