X2: X-Men United

X2: X-Men United
Image:X2 poster version2.jpg
Directed by	Bryan Singer
Produced by	Stan Lee Tom DeSanto Avi Arad Bryan Singer Ralph Winter Lauren Shuler Donner
Written by	Comic Book: Stan Lee Jack Kirby Story: David Hayter Bryan Singer Zak Penn Screenplay: Michael Dougherty Dan Harris David Hayter
Starring	Patrick Stewart Hugh Jackman Ian McKellen Halle Berry Rebecca Romijn-Stamos Famke Janssen James Marsden Brian Cox Alan Cumming Bruce Davison Anna Paquin
Music by	John Ottman
Cinematography	Newton Thomas Sigel
Editing by	John Ottman Elliot Graham
Distributed by	Twentieth Century Fox
Release date(s)	May 2, 2003
Running time	133 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$110 million
Gross revenue	$407,557,613
Preceded by	X-Men
Followed by	X-Men: The Last Stand
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X2: X-Men United is an action film and is the second part of the trilogy based on the X-Men comic books; following X-Men (2000), and preceding X-Men: The Last Stand (2006). It was directed by Bryan Singer, and starred an ensemble cast including Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, Rebecca Romijn, Famke Janssen, James Marsden, Anna Paquin, Brian Cox, Shawn Ashmore, Kelly Hu and Alan Cumming. It first released in the United States on May 2, 2003.

The film is loosely based on the 1982 X-Men graphic novel God Loves, Man Kills. In the film, William Stryker is a high-ranking army colonel who leads an assault into Professor Xavier's school to build his own version of Xavier's mutant-tracking computer Cerebro in order to destroy every mutant on Earth. The X-Men are forced to ally with Magneto and Mystique to defeat Stryker. X2: X-Men United, which introduced Nightcrawler to filmgoers, surpassed the initial film at the box office, earning approx. $215 million in North America compared to $157.3 million for X-Men, making the sequel one of the top ten movies of 2003.

Plot

A mutant named Nightcrawler attempts to assassinate President McKenna, but he fails. Jean is confronted by Cyclops, where she admits she has been having bad feelings about the future. Wolverine reappears after discovering nothing at Alkali Lake and is immediately asked to look after the children of the school. After some difficulty, Professor Xavier locates Nightcrawler with Cerebro and sends Storm and Jean to retrieve him. They find Nightcrawler who willingly leaves with them, explaining that he had no control over his actions in the White House. Cyclops and Professor X visit Magneto in his plastic prison to see if he had any part in the attack on the President. Reading Magneto's mind, Professor X discovers that a covert government operative, William Stryker, has been extracting information from Magneto. A trap is sprung and Cyclops and Professor X are captured. A military invasion of the school begins, with the soldiers sedating every mutant they find. Siryn wakes everybody up with one of her sonic screams and Colossus and Wolverine round up a number of the students. Wolverine stays behind to confront the attackers, and finds them led by William Stryker. Stryker offers Wolverine the truth about his past, but before Wolverine answers, Iceman is able to create an impenetrable wall of ice between them.

In personating Senator Robert Kelly, and Stryker's assistant Yuriko Oyama, Mystique gains information about Magneto's prison and provides a means for him to escape. Wolverine, along with Pyro, Iceman and Rogue, heads to Iceman's home in Boston. The police arrive just as the group is about to leave, and Pyro begins using his abilities to attack the officers and destroy their cars. Rogue manages to stop him just as the X-Jet arrives to pick them all up. The X-Jet is targeted by two Air Force fighter jets who attempt to force a landing. After the X-Jet refuses to land, the pilots fire missiles. Jean is able to destroy one of the missiles, but the other detonates directly behind the jet. The jet, en route to a crash landing, is stopped at the last moment by Magneto, who is standing on the ground. Magneto has learned that Stryker orchestrated the attack on the President, and has been experimenting on mutants. Jean Grey reads Nightcrawler's mind and determines that Stryker's base is located at Alkali Lake, inside the dam. Stryker has been using a drug, injected directly into the back of the neck, to control mutants. He has also stolen enough equipment from Xavier's own Cerebro unit to build a second Cerebro; he plans to use Professor X to kill all of the mutants in the world. The X-Men and Magneto join together in an effort to stop Stryker. On the way to Alkali Lake, Pyro has a conversation with Magneto about how the world perceives them.

Stryker gains control over Professor Xavier through his son, Jason Stryker, who is able to project powerful visions in the mind, blinding a person to reality. Professor X is instructed to use Cerebro to find and kill all existing mutants. Mystique infiltrates the based disguised as Wolverine. Mystique manages to take over the control room, opening up the main gates for the X-Men. Storm and Nightcrawler pair off, searching for the kidnapped students. Jean, Magneto, and Mystique are attacked by a brainwashed Cyclops on their way to rescue Professor X. Cyclops' optic blast causes damage to the generators that keep the dam from collapsing. Wolverine finds Stryker in an adamantium smelting room along with Lady Deathstrike. Wolverine and Lady Deathstrike begin fighting, which ends with Wolverine pumping Deathstrike full of molten adamantium metal, killing her. Wolverine finds Stryker on a landing pad and stabs him in the stomach. Stryker attempts to bargain with Wolverine, telling him that if he comes with him he can tell him about his past. Wolverine refuses and straps the wounded Stryker to the helicopter wheel. Mystique, disquised as Stryker, uses Jason to convince Professor X to kill all humans. Magneto and Mystique escape on the helicopter, alongside with Pyro who has decided to join them. Meanwhile, Nightcrawler teleports Storm inside of Cerebro, from where she frees the Professor from his telepathic illusion. A malfunction aboard the X-Jet prevents it from taking off and the dam finally bursts. The flood gets stronger, drowning Stryker. Jean leaves the jet and creates a telekinetic wall in order to stop the wave, and at the same time raises the jet above the flood waters; all the while surrounded by a corona of fire. Jean activates the X-Jet's primary engines, before lowering her telekinetic shield and allowing herself to be consumed by the flood waters.

Back at the White House, the President prepares to address the country on the perceived mutant threat. Just as he begins his speech the X-Men appear before him. Rogue gives him the files from Stryker's private offices while Professor X tells him about the events of the last few days. Then Professor X warns him that humans and mutants must work together to build peace, or they will destroy each other through war. The film ends with a voiceover by Jean Grey, on the process of evolution. The camera floats over Alkali Lake, showing a vague shape of a Phoenix in the lake.

Cast

Inspiration

The basic story elements, involving Stryker's plot to use Xavier's powers against all mutants, and the X-Men's resulting alliance with Magneto, are loosely adapted from the graphic novel God Loves, Man Kills by Chris Claremont. In that story, Stryker has a military background, but is currently a religious leader whose wife gave birth to an obviously mutant infant. In a fit of rage, he killed them both and decided that he had been chosen by God to destroy mutants. In the film, his military background is moved to the foreground, and the religious aspect of the character is eliminated. Instead of killing his wife and son in childbirth, the Stryker of the film sends his son (loosely based on the character Mastermind from the comics) to Xavier to be cured of his mutation. Unable to change his mutation, and resentful of his parents, he began tormenting his mother by projecting nightmarish images into her mind, causing her to commit suicide by drilling a hole into her head. Stryker responded by giving his son a lobotomy, and extracting his brain fluid, which he now uses to control other mutants.

Bryan Singer credited The Empire Strikes Back and The Wrath of Khan as his influences on this film. The latter film also features a voice-over at the end from a dead character, hinting at their resurrection in the next film.

Links to the Marvel Universe

In the scene where Mystique accesses Stryker's computer for the location of Magneto's cell, a list of mutants can be seen, many of which are from the comic books, including Remy LeBeau (Gambit), the Guthrie children Sam (Cannonball) and Paige (Husk), Kevin MacTaggert (Proteus, the son of Moira MacTaggert), Jamie Madrox (Multiple Man), the Maximoff children Wanda (Scarlet Witch) and Pietro (Quicksilver) (Magneto's offspring in the comics), Xi'an Coy Mahn (Karma) and Danielle Moonstar (Moonstar); the latter two are part of the New Mutants group of the X-Men. Of these, only Multiple Man appears in any of the films, playing a small role in X-Men: The Last Stand. Also on the list was Arthur Maddicks, a Morlock in the comics; it is generally assumed that the child with the forked tongue, called 'Artie' by Storm is Arthur Maddicks in the film's universe^{[citation needed]}.

Also in that scene, Mystique sees a computer file on Omega Red; there is a folder called Franklin Richards, the mutant son of Reed Richards and Sue Storm of the Fantastic Four; a folder on Project Wideawake, an operation that called for the construction of giant, mutant-hunting robots known as Sentinels; a folder on Muir Island (Moira MacTaggert later plays a minor role in the third film) and a folder on Gamma Flight, assumingly Alpha Flight's junior level training squad.

In the scene where Mystique confronts the guard to Magneto's plastic cell in a bar, a news broadcast is on the TV by the bar. It shows an interview with a Dr. Hank McCoy, who in the comics is the X-Men member Beast, debating Dr. Sebastian Shaw, the Black King of the Hellfire Club.

In the scene where William Stryker's troops raid Charles Xaiver's school for mutants, the panicked students include Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat), Theresa Rourke Cassidy (Siryn) and Piotr Rasputin (Colossus). Theresa is the girl whose blood-curdling scream wakes everyone up, and Kitty is the girl who becomes intangible, falls through the bed, and jumps through several guards. Colossus is the muscled student whose body becomes organic steel armor.

In the lab where Wolverine's adamantium skeleton was implanted, there are X-rays on the wall; one appears to depict a person's back with a wing. This may have been intended as an homage to a comics storyline in which the X-Man Angel lost his wings and was implanted with metal ones; however, the appearance of Angel in X-Men: The Last Stand had feathered wings . There are also X-rays of one of Deathstrike's forearms and hands, with her talons retracted and extended.

A bit more obvious amount of foreshadowing of the third movie is used. Whenever Jean's powers became stronger than usual, she was often depicted as glowing with fire, a sign of the Phoenix. The ending shot over the Alkali Lake shows the image of a burning object in the shape of a bird under the water.

Differences from the comic book

Longtime fans of the X-Men title will recognize that some liberties have been taken with the X-Men characters. While the movie need not follow all the conventions of the comic, they are interesting to note, and form their own separate fictional continuity.

• Iceman appears as a teenager and is much younger than many of the other X-Men. In the comics, Iceman was one of the original X-Men, and the youngest of the team (16 years old in 1964). If he were around at all, he would appear closer to Jean Grey's age and maturity. Iceman, Jean Grey and Cyclops are part of the original X-Men line-up.
• Colossus is in this movie but has only a very small part and is not part of the X-Men team, only an older student of the academy. While young in age when he began with the X-Men, he was a full-fledged member for many years in the comics. In addition, he does not speak with the expected Russian accent.
• William Stryker is a zealot preacher in the comics, while the film's version is the head commander of the covert black ops program Weapon X. His son, Jason, is a very loose incarnation of Jason "Mastermind" Wyngarde, who was a full-grown, mentally and physically able illusionist (with no relation to Stryker) from the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and Hellfire Club in the comics. In the film, Jason is mute, lobotomized and wheelchair-bound; his brain secretes a powerful chemical which is extracted through a tap in his spine and used by his father as a mind control agent on Nightcrawler, Deathstrike, Magneto and Cyclops. In his illusions, Jason projects himself as a young girl; both he and his illusory form have heterochromic irises (one blue, one green).
• Deathstrike, who in the movie appeared as a mutant under Stryker's control was the daughter of the inventor of the adamantium bonding process in the comic books. Also, in the comics she was a cyborg, not a mutant.
• Rogue, according to the comic books has the ability of flight and superhuman strength, whereas in the movie she lacks these abilities. However Rogue only possesses these abilities in the comic books because she accidentally absorbed Ms. Marvel's powers by touching her for too long. By changing her backstory, skipping her original villainous phase, she is closer to her original basic ability (absorbing lifeforce, superpowers and memories, although the last is only briefly mentioned in the first film).
• The role Rogue plays in the films - that of a young mutant who became a sort of surrogate daughter / little-sister to Wolverine - was originally established in the comic books by Kitty Pryde, and later Jubilee.
• There is no indication in the movie that Mystique is Nightcrawler's mother. Neither is there any indication in the movie that Mystique is Rogue's foster mother. However, as in the comic book, Mystique and Nightcrawler bear a strong physical resemblance. In the X2 DVD, they said that the scene between the two where Nightcrawler asks Mystique advice (asking why she doesn't just hide among humans) was a subtle reference to their relationships in the comics. It should be noted, however, that the story involving Mystique and Nightcrawler's kinship was not mentioned or elaborated upon in the comic book universe until long after both characters had been firmly (and separately) established.
• In the movie, Pyro is an American teenage student at the Xavier Academy who defects to Magneto's Brotherhood at the movie's climax. In the comics, he is a tall, blond, blue-eyed, Australian novelist in his 40s who always worked with the Brotherhood, though never under Magneto.
• The movie implies that Logan got his claws in the Weapon X program. In the comics, the claws are part of his mutation, although this was only added recently in comic books (During the Origin Story line and after X-Men #25); up to that point it was assumed in the comics that the claws were not part of his natural mutation.

In summary, characters from many different times, titles and lineups were selected and placed into a new lineup that had never before been seen in any X-Men comic.

Critical reaction and box office

As with the original film, X2 garnered praise from critics and won over most of the comic book community, and it earned more money at the box office, totaling $214.9M for North America and $407.5M worldwide[1]. The comic-book hobbyist magazine Wizard called it the best comic book movie of the year (2003). Empire magazine called it the best comic book movie of all time in 2006.^[1]

Movie tie-ins

Video games

X2 had a game tie-in on X2: Wolverine's Revenge which has nothing to do with the events of the movie.

There is also another game, X-Men: The Official Game which bridges the gap between X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand. Specifically, it explains Nightcrawler's absence from the third X-Men movie. However, X-Men: The Official Game is not truly X2's game, but the third X-Men movie, as this game came around in the same year as the third film.

Comics

The comic adaptation of the film was written without its writers knowing the actual ending of X2 as it was kept under wraps and therefore the comic's ending is different from the finished film.

Trivia

• In the scene where Xavier visits Magneto, director Bryan Singer can be briefly seen wheeling in Xavier to the outer room. (See images)
• Colonel William Stryker (Brian Cox) is referred to in dialogue as being up to 20 years older than Senator Robert Kelly (Bruce Davison). However, in real life, Cox and Davison were born only 27 days apart.
• In the first movie Mystique's yellow eyes were created by contact lenses In the second, computer-generated imagery was used.
• The car that the X-Men drive in this film is actually a modified Mazda RX-8, not a concept car.
• Just before the assassination attempt, Nightcrawler is shown in the White House with head cast downwards, mimicking a pose of a painting of John F. Kennedy, which hangs in the background (Oil Portrait of John F. Kennedy by Aaron Shikler).
• When Nightcrawler tries to scare away Storm and Jean Grey, he speaks German phrases: Ich bin der Bote des Teufels. Ich bin die Ausgeburt des Bösen! The translation is: I am the messenger of the Devil. I am the spawn of evil!
• In the scene where Mystique takes the information out of the computer, she looks at a list of names of mutants. Included in the list are:

• Samuel Guthrie (Cannonball)
• Paige Guthrie (Husk)
• Keniucho Harada (Silver Samurai)
• Garrison Kane
• Remy LeBeau (Gambit)
• Eric M. Lensherr (Magneto)
• Elizabeth Braddock (Psylocke, who briefly appears in X-Men: The Last Stand)
• Lorna Dane (Polaris)
• Roberto DaCosta (Sunspot)
• Angelo Espinosa (Skin)
• Sean Cassidy (Banshee)
• Theresa Rourke Cassidy (Siryn, is briefly in X2: X-Men United and X-Men: The Last Stand)
• Alison Blaire (Dazzler)
• Bobby Drake (Iceman)
• John Allerdyce (Pyro)
• Artie Maddicks
• Jamie Madrox (Multiple Man, who appears in X-Men: The Last Stand)
• Xi'an Coy Mahn (Karma)
• Pietro Maximoff (Quicksilver)
• Wanda Maximoff (Scarlet Witch)
• Kevin McTaggart (Proteus, though his last name is misspelled)
• Tom DeSanto (Executive Producer of the film)
• Danielle Moonstar (Psyche / Mirage)
• Ororo Munroe (Storm)

Folders on another screen carry the names:

• Omega Red
• Project Wideawake (Sentinels)
• Muir Island and Cerebro.
• Franklin Richards

Many of these are spotted only by pausing and possibly zooming the screen.

• In the scene where the channels change on the television, an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation from 1987 is seen, starring Patrick Stewart, the actor who plays Professor Charles Xavier in this movie.
• In the scene where Stryker uses the serum to interrogate Magneto, we see Magneto reading The Once and Future King by T. H. White. At the end of the movie, Xavier begins to teach his English class, asking if any of the students have ever read "The Once and Future King". According to the commentary, Bryan Singer chose the novel because the title is indicative of Magneto's situation while imprisoned: previously a leader, and a leader-to-be.
• In the beginning of the film when Jean's telepathy is acting strangely, the "thoughts" that are seemingly being thought by the people Jean looks at are actually bits of audio taken from different parts later on in the film.
• In the movie there are hidden signs that foreshadow the Phoenix; at the museum, Jean is wearing a necklace and earrings that resemble the comics' Phoenix "firebird". When Jean is using her abilities at their peak, her eyes flame, or a flamelike aura appears. When Jean and Storm go to get Nightcrawler from the church, there is a blue bird on the back of her coat. At the end of the movie, a glowing bird shape is seen moving under the waters of Alkali Lake.
• Storm has lost her accent in this film. It was written out due to Storm taking on a much larger role than in the first film.
• The words "No more mutants" uttered by Stryker to Jason instructing Xavier to kill all the mutants in the world was later used again in Marvel Comics House of M storyline in 2005 where Magneto's daughter Scarlet Witch, who has reality-shifting abilities heard her brother, Quicksilver utter "No more mutants"...thus causing her to utter it as well and de-powering almost all the mutants in the X-Men universe.
• This was the third time Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry worked together on a movie, the first being X-Men and the second being Swordfish (film).

Notes

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