Before delving into the second season of X-Men: The Animated Series, our periodic explorations of the X-Men on film continues with another special episode! Up next for the burgeoning 20th Century Fox franchise is fan-favorite sequel X2: X-MEN UNITED. Jenny and Tim are joined by Keith Langston for a retrospective on the 2003 summer spectacular that in many respects established the template for big budget superhero blockbusters. As a paltry $75 million production, 2000's X-MEN was very much a story of managed expectations. However, by achieving the rare hat trick for a comic book movie of being faithful to the source material, receiving critical acclaim, and (more importantly) making money, a sequel was all but assured. Time had only been kind to the principal players: director Bryan Singer saw his stock rise considerably on the back of the film's success, and Hugh Jackman's performance as Wolverine proved to be a star-making role. Halle Berry, meanwhile, had since gone on to win a historic Academy Award for Best Actress in 2002. Producer Lauren Shuler-Donner cemented her reputation as a hitmaker, and was rewarded with a vastly increased budget to do the same - but more! - with X2: X-MEN UNITED. Suffice to say, everything is a little more polished this time around. The costumes, the props, the make-up, the sets, the effects, and particularly the action, are all a cut above X-MEN's modest trappings. X2's set pieces are grand and memorable individually, in ways its predecessor's are not. And while the fight choreography stands out for its jarring and dated generous use of "wire-fu," this was very much in keeping with the style at the time. Other early 2000s aesthetics threaten to date the film, but instead have a grounding effect - anchoring the fantastic elements in a reality that feels tangible and familiar. From Bobby Drake's domestic troubles to Jean's unfortunate triangle hair, it feels like these charactergs and conflicts occupy the world outside your window (or at least that of 2003). The overall result is incredibly important and effective in selling the metaphor of mutants as a real-world persecuted minority. All told, it's tempting to look back on X2 and call the film dated. A fallacy that implies it has aged badly. On the contrary, X2 simply remains both as good and as bad as it ever was. What stands out as glaringly messy today - in terms of plot, characters, and pacing - didn't work in 2003 either. But what the picture gets right - the cast, the performances, the effects and action scenes - still holds up remarkably well. Though once considered the gold standard in superhero filmmaking, the reality is that X2 has always been characterized by high peaks and low valleys. It's to no great shock that it has since been surpassed in prestige by subsequent efforts; after all, X2 is competing with another 21(!) years worth of genre films. Uneven though the movie may be, X2's reputation isn't sustained merely on the strength of nostalgia. It truly cashes in on the inherent, restrained potential of the first film, taking the franchise to new heights. In that sense, it can be said that X-MEN walked so X2 could fly.
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