X-Men (2000) co-written and directed by Bryan Singer
The movie opens at a German concentration camp where a young boy is separated from his parents. The boy resists, showing power over metal when he almost pulls down a gate separating him from his family without touching the gate. The story then jumps to somewhere "in the near future." A teenage girl named Rouge (Anna Paquin) is hanging out with her boyfriend planning a trip to Alaska. They wind up kissing which hurts him. Her mutant power is to absorb other people's life force temporarily when she touches them, leaving them weakened, sometime in a coma. She panics and flees. In Washington, D.C., Dr. Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) testifies at a congressional hearing on a mutant registration act. She is argued down by Senator Kelly (Bruce Davison) who wants mutants registered as lethal weapons. In the gallery, Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) watches thoughtfully. He spots his old friend Eric Lensherr/Magneto (Ian McKellen), who was the boy in the opening scene. They talk about the situation of mutants. Magneto will do whatever it takes to keep mutants free and says they are the future of humanity, not regular humans.
Rogue has hitchhiked as far as Canada on her own. She is in a small town where the local bar features cage fights between tough mountain men. One man is unbeatable--Wolverine (Hugh Jackman). He drinks and smokes and takes no guff from anyone. One of the defeated man tries to make trouble afterward, forcing a confrontation where Wolverine shows his claws. No real violence happens and he leaves in his camper truck. Rogue hides inside the truck. She's discovered by Wolverine and they have an awkward conversation in the cab. That's interrupted when they are attacked by Sabretooth (Tyler Mane) and Toad (Ray Park). The attackers work for Magneto and want to kidnap the mutant. Cyclops (James Marsden) and Storm (Halle Berry), who work for Xavier, come to the rescue. They bring Rogue and Wolverine back to the Professor's school in Westchester, New York.
Wolverine is brought in unconscious. When he wakes up, he roughs up Dr. Grey (who is treating him) and wanders through the school, which is more like a mansion. He meets Xavier who tells him about his efforts to help mutants like Wolverine. He shelters mutants at the school and prepares them to live in the world. A few of the students, like Cyclops and Storm, stay at the school to teach and to go on assignments like the Canadian rescue mission. Wolverine is more of a loner and not so interested in joining up. Xavier offers to help Wolverine investigate his past since Wolverine can't remember anything before getting adamantium (a mostly unbreakable metal) attached to his skeleton and claws. Wolverine sticks around. He has a nightmare; Rogue comes to wake him up and he accidentally stabs her. She absorbs his healing power to heal herself. The next day, she's convinced to flee the school by a fellow student who is actually one of Magneto's operatives.
The operative is a shapeshifter called Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos). She went on an earlier mission to kidnap Senator Kelly. Taken back to Magneto's island lair, Kelly is subjected to a machine that causes him to mutate. The machine requires Magneto's power but nearly kills him. Magneto thinks it is worth the risk because he hopes that Kelly will change his tune once he's also a mutant. Kelly manages to escape and return to the mainland, where he flees to the school. He hopes they can help him because he's afraid of the regular hospitals. They try to treat him but the mutation is too severe and he dies.
The X-Men discover Rogue's absence and Xavier uses a special mutant-finding machine called Cerebro to find her location. She's at a local train station. Wolverine immediately goes after her; Cyclops and Storm are not far behind. A big battle at the train station results in Rogue being kidnapped by Magneto, who plans to use her to power his machine by forcing her to take his power temporarily. A large gathering of world leaders on Ellis Island will happen the next night. Magneto plans to turn them all into mutants, making them sympathetic to his cause. Magneto's crew brings the machine to the Statue of Liberty, using that to broadcast the radiation to Ellis Island.
The X-Men figure out the plan and mount an attack on Liberty Island, hoping to rescue Rogue and capture the bad guys. Magneto's lackeys battle the X-Men for a while, then Magneto steps in and traps them. He then starts the machine with Rogue inside. Wolverine breaks free, frees the other X-Men, and rescues Rogue just in time. A careful blast from Cyclops disables Magneto and the machine. Rogue is almost dead, so Wolverine touches her to give her his healing power.
Back at the school, Xavier give Wolverine some new leads on his past, specifically the location of an abandoned military base in Canada. Xavier goes to visit Magneto in his plastic jail where they have another sparing match over what should be done to improve mutantkind's situation.
X2: X-Men United (2003) co-written and directed by Bryan Singer
Set shortly after the first film, this movie opens with an assassination attempt on the President of the United States by Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming). He looks like a blue devil, teleports, and is an acrobat, so the infiltration and fight with Secret Service is exciting and tense. Nightcrawler fails at the last minute. Anti-mutant sentiment goes high. The president meets with military scientist William Stryker (Brian Cox) and Senator Kelly who is Mystique masquerading as the senator. The president encourages Stryker to go ahead with an operation against Xavier's school. Kelly/Mystique asks about Magneto's prison, which Stryker designed. Stryker tells the senator to leave the war (between mutants and humans) to him. Stryker visits Magneto to get more information out of him by drugging him.
Mystique infiltrates Stryker's offices and gets information on the prison and on Stryker's secret base where he plans to set up another Cerebro. She idenitifies one of the guards and surreptitiously injects him with more iron, so that Magneto will have some metal with which to escape.
Meanwhile, Wolverine has gone to the Canadian base and found nothing. He returns to the school just in time to babysit the students. Xavier and Cyclops will meet with Magneto to find out if he was behind the assassination attempt; Storm and Jean Grey will go after the assassin. Xavier and Cyclops are kidnapped by Stryker after the interview; Storm and Jean find Nightcrawler and convince him to come with them. The school is attacked by Stryker's forces They kidnap a few of the children and steal some key components of Cerebro. Most of the mutants escape, with Wolverine, Iceman, Rogue, and Pyro fleeing to Boston to catch up with Storm and Jean. Iceman's family lives there, though they think he's at a prep school. His family knows nothing of his mutant abilities. The visit is awkward and goes bad when Iceman's brother calls the cops. Pyro lets loose, confirming the bad feelings about mutants. Storm and Jean show up in the jet and get all the mutants out of there.
The jet is pursued by military planes and eventually shot down. They almost crash but luckily are right near Magneto (who did escape from the plastic prison) who uses his power to catch the plane. They form an alliance to go back to the Canadian base because Wolverine missed the underground lair of Stryker. Stryker gave Wolverine his adamantium during his earlier experiments on mutants. Stryker's mutant son went to Xavier's school many years ago. Stryker had hoped for a cure but Xavier doesn't do that. When the son came home, he drove his mom crazy by causing hallucinations. She committed suicide; Stryker never forgave his son and that's why he thinks all mutants are dangerous. Now, he will use his son to trick Xavier into using Cerebro 2 to kill all the mutants on earth (the drug he used to force Nightcrawler to attack the president and to get information out of Magneto doesn't work on Xavier).
The allies make it to the Canadian base and mount an attack to save Xavier and stop Stryker. Wolverine has lots of flashbacks to the horrible surgery that caused his amnesia (maybe?) and gave him the unbreakable bones. He fights Lady Deathstrike who has similar regeneration powers and unbreakable claws (and is under Styker's mind control). The other mutants fight mostly soldiers, though Cyclops fights on Stryker's side until the mind control drug wears off. Stryker flees the base when Magneto infiltrates Cerebro 2. Magneto convinces the son to switch plans and have Xavier kill all the regular humans instead of the mutants. He pursues Stryker, chaining him up and stealing his helicopter (Pyro joins him because he's been steadily turning bad). Storm and Nightcrawler free Xavier just before he kills all the humans.
The base is badly damaged and the dam under which it is built breaks. The mutants flee to their jet. Jean Grey uses her power to stop the flood waters from hitting the jet but is killed while saving her friends. The X-Men visit the president to reassure him that they are not a threat and return to the school.
So is the sequel better? Let's look at some points of comparison.
- SCRIPT--The first movie's script is an amalgamation of a lot of the intro stories of various characters. The story is enjoyable and sets up some of the classic issues from the comics--what is it to be human, how to deal with the new powers you get growing up, can people live together peaceably in spite of their differences, are the differences really significant enough to make some people better than others. The second movie takes on these issues but spends less time with character intros and more time dealing with them in multifaceted ways. The story is based on Chris Claremont's God Loves, Man Kills graphic novel, though they make a lot of improvements and adjustments for a cinematic experience. X2 definitely has the stronger script.
- ACTING--The cast is mostly the same, with some new characters added in the sequel. Most of the actors give top-notch performances, especially Stewart, McKellen, and Jackman. I'm sure it was fun too for the actors to have turns playing Mystique as she morphed into in the sequel. This is a tie.
- ADVANCES THE STORY/MYTHOLOGY--The second movie expands on the themes of the first. The conflict between Xavier and Magneto, who had been friends, plays out in the action and in the ideas. The addition of Styker fills out the moral spectrum of the story. Stryker is pro-human and anti-mutant; Xavier is pro-human and pro-mutant; Magneto is anti-human and pro-mutant. The other characters provide the shades of grey between those points. Advantage X2.
- SPECIAL EFFECTS--The special effects in both films hold up fairly well twenty years later, though the occasional flying body looks wrong in the first film. The second film has more elaborate characters like Nightcrawler and Lady Deathstrike. The Cerebro effects are a little bit better in the second film. Minor advantage X2.
- VISUAL STYLE--Both movies have the same director and his style is consistent. The opening sequence in X2 is still amazing to see and rivals the Quicksilver slow-motion scenes in the much later films, the X2 this scene is played for drama and the Quicksilver stuff has a humorous tone. This also is a tie.
- THE BIG FINALE--Both movies have big battles at the end which have both physical and moral stakes for the characters and the world at large. There's a bigger price paid in the second film, but the last scene has a Jean Grey voiceover as the camera pans over the flood water and the shape of a bird can be seen on the water. For comic book readers, that's a pretty big hint that she will be back as Phoenix and/or Dark Phoenix, which she did come back as in X3. Slight advantage to X2.
After two great movies (with the second being slightly better), the X-Men franchise became very hit-and-miss. Logan and Deadpool are the outstanding later films, the rest are in the mediocre-to-bad range. Maybe with the franchise coming into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, they will mutate into a higher entertainment form?
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