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Synopsis: A mutant assassin makes an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the President of the United States, triggering a black ops invasion of Xavier's School for Gifted Children as part of a crackdown on what rabidly anti-mutant Colonel William Stryker calls a "mutant training center." Meanwhile, Wolverine returns to the school after a fruitless search for his origins. He is asked to look after the students while Xavier and Cyclops go to visit the imprisoned Magneto and question him about the assassination attempt. Jean Grey and Storm are dispatched to find the assassin himself, who turns out to be the blue-skinned teleporter, Nightcrawler, who has no memory of the attack. In Washington, Mystique, who has disguised herself as deceased Senator Robert Kelly, moves in the circles of power, making her own plans--including the escape of Magneto from his plastic prison. Xavier and Cyclops are abducted by Stryker at the prison; the attack on the school proceeds; and Magneto makes a ghastly escape from prison: all setting in motion a three-way conflict that tilts towards a genocidal war between humans and mutants, unless the X-men can stop it....

All New, All Different!: Okay, we have some new characters to play with, as well as cameos galore picked from a vast river of characters from the storied history of the comics. The first film suffered dramatically from having too many characters for the time allotted, and the second film, though longer, suffers a similar fate: it's longer, sure, but the number of characters is larger, too. For instance, instead of having a single angst-ridden teenage character in Rogue, we now have three with the addition of Iceman and Pyro. Fortunately, the characters who remain from the first film are able to build on that film, while at least two of the new additions are absolute scene stealers. Alan Cummings is, perhaps, the best actor available to play Nightcrawler. Nightcrawler in this movie gets the best display of his super powers (including an adequate sound-effect that corresponds to his beloved "bamf" from the comics) and gets the most sympathetic character to play. He's the most human character, for want of a better phrase, in the freakshow. The flipside is Brian Cox as Stryker. Stryker is an all too human monster, and Cox gives him all the menace and charm he brought to his stand-out role as Big John the pedophile in L.I.E. Of the returning characters, the one who benefits most from an expanded role is Rebecca Romijn-Stamos as Mystique, who is STILL the most visually arresting thing in the movie in her naked-but-for-the-body-paint costume and the interesting intimations about her relationship with Magneto. She also gets to perform an hilarious send-up of her bathroom scene in Femme Fatale.

All well and good, but the film is still more or less a showcase for three actors: Patrick Stewart as Xavier, Ian McKellen as that most complex of megalomaniacs, Magneto, and Hugh Jackman as fan-favorite Wolverine. These three are the stars of the film, and everyone else is support, no matter how generous director Singer is with the screen time for other characters (or not). Some characters--most notably Cyclops and Stryker's henchwoman, Lady Deathstrike--get shortchanged in the equation. But you can't satisfy everyone, I guess, which is doubly true with notoriously nit-picky fanboys.

Pedigree Part II: In his memoirs, Stan Lee notes that the idea for the X-Men came from a desire to sidestep the obligatory superhero origin story. "What if these characters were just born with superpowers?" he postulated. This was fairly opportunistic on Lee's part, because the first publication of The X-Men coincides roughly enough with the thalidomide disaster that one wonders about the good taste of the comic, though I don't think I've ever seen any connection made with the two events. As with many of his other creations, the allegorical power of Lee's set-up turned out to be more apt than he could have imagined. The eerie similarities between the events in the new movie and current events troubling the nation and the world haven't been lost on critics who normally dismiss this sort of movie as escapism. There is always an "other."

Ian McKellen has stated publically that the X-Men films are about being gay. Certainly, the leather fetish outfits our heroes wear would not be out of place in a gay nightclub and X2 even provides an awkward, afterschool special-style coming out scene ("Couldn't you try NOT being a mutant?" Iceman's mom asks him). These are the most overt signifiers. A more subversive queer subtext can be derived from Mystique, whose character suggests a polymorphous transgendered sexual revolution. She's the ultimate genderbending mind-fuck; the perfect sexual object, one that can take the shape of your heart's desire. Furthermore, she likes it and is unrepentant about it. Of course, she's ostensibly a villain, but still...

Quick impressions: X-Men 2 throws so many morsels to longtime fans of the comics that it's difficult to wade through all of them without a second viewing of the film (I've seen the film once at this writing, and don't plan to see it again soon). It's very careful in the way it throws out these morsels. Some of them only appear as names on computer screens (and names like Jamie Maddrox, Franklin Richards, and Sebastian Shaw will be meaningless to most viewers, but are golden to the faithful reader of the comic). It uses this approach, too, in the development and expansion of Famke Janssen's character, Jean Grey. We have hints that her powers are expanding beyond her ability to control them, we see flames in her eyes, and there is an image near the end of the film that points the way to the future. Interesting. Also interesting is the unheralded villain in the cast, one Jason 143. He's the guy that Stryker uses to manipulate Xavier. The character has another name in the comics, but the actor who they got to play him is a closer physical match to the character than I would have imagined possible. The most crowd pleasing of these morsel's is probably the brief appearance of Colossus in the film. Conspicuous by its continued absence is the X-Mens' high-tech gymnasium, the danger room. The sheer density of these images and referrences is an exact match to the early days of the "new" X-men as drawn by Dave Cockrum and John Byrne. The panels of those comics--primarily Cockrum's--were cluttered with characters and word-balloons (Byrne, a more elegant comics storyteller, began to reduce the clutter when he started co-scripting the book with Chris Claremont). These comics were busy with waaaaayyy too much going on in them. This movie represents that stage of the development of the characters.

The Suck Factor, part II: Once again, the film did not, in fact, suck. Once again, this was a relief. Summer movies have a tendency to suck after all, and that this one doesn't suck is a minor miracle given the number of elephants it has to juggle. Unfortunately, like the first film, it doesn't overreach the fact that it does not suck. It is adequate entertainment, but nothing more. Like the first film, nothing in particular is resolved. Magneto and his accomplices are at large once again at the end of the film. Wolverine still knows nothing about who he is. And there is one big plot thread left hanging that will surely form the basis of another sequel. That this film is AS unsatisfying as its predecessor is something of a fault, actually, because its resources were so much richer, its canvas so much bigger, and its ambitions so much grander. To an extent, it feels more like act two of a five-act drama than it does a self-contained whole. A tremendous opportunity, while not wasted with this movie, is squandered to an extent, and all of the praise I am willing to give it is of a back-handed variety...