Action, adventure, and effects

This was a wonderful adaptation of the beloved comic books. I enjoyed the first film a lot, but this was more up my alley... darker, more emotional, awesome effects and really cool characters. Nightcrawler was AMAZING, and I really liked Iceman too. The effects were definitely heightened for this flick, and Mystique actually had lines! I enjoyed the sequence between Wolverine and Lady Deathstrike immensely, I kept thinking "I want her fingernails!"
The only thing I really didn't like was the ending... it didn't seem to fit in my mind, but I suppose they had to set up for X3 somehow. It was a fun ride!

"Sometimes the mind needs to discover things for itself."

2000's smash hit X-Men certainly deserved a sequel (or two, or three), especially with all the cash it made and how the first one ended. Now the X-Men are back together once again, and this time they've got some new friends, including Nightcrawler and Pyro, and as well as some new enemies like William Stryker and Lady Deathstrike (his personal mutant "assistant"/slave). This time the X-Men find themselves locked in an unlikely alliance with Magneto and Mystique (their nemeses from the first film) against an evil military scientist named William Stryker, whose main goal is to eradicate the world of mutants once and for all.

X2: X-Men United is in many ways an improvement over the first film. It's more psychological, it's longer, there's more action, more mutants, more of Wolverine slicing it up and like the first film it's never boring or drags, right from the get-go X2 is fierce and exciting. In fact, X2 is almost the perfect comic book film... almost. The one little, weak link in X2, for me at least, was Nightcrawler. Now, I like the character of Nightcrawler, but I honestly didn't care that much for Alan Cumming, he came off as a bit weak, and kind of "dorky". The character of Nightcrawler really just seems like a huge convenience to the plot; like the scene where he rescues Rogue in the X-Jet, which was oh so very convenient. But the one thing I liked about Nightcrawler, besides that awesome opening sequence in the White House, was his religious side, which I thought was interesting and made me sympathize with the character a little more.

Pretty much everything in X2 works perfectly fine, which I attribute all that success to the amazing cast (Jackman, McKellen, Stewart, Marsden, Janssen, Berry, Paquin, Cox, Romijn), and the fact that the film was written and directed by the same people who clearly knew what they were doing back in 2000, and here they show us once again they still know what they're doing, and they aren't afraid to up the ante and take it up a notch. If you liked the first X-Men there's really no reason at all why wouldn't enjoy or like X2 as much, or maybe even more than the first film. It still has those surprising moments of humor, and plenty of action, maybe even more so than the original. And like the original, X2 sets itself up for a third film; let's just hope it turns out (at the very least) as good as the first two films, if not better.

Below Average Sequal

I thought this was going to be a great movie. I was wrong. The first X-Men was very good but this just seemed to go all over the place with the plot. I also thought the villain was boring. Why not have a strong mutant bad guy? There were some good scenes though. The opening was the best I've ever seen and the invasion of the mutant school was cool. I just didn't like the rest of it.
If you have not seen this rent it, just to get caught. Maybe skip the middle of it. Because X-Men 3(comes out in May) looks great. Bryan Singer is still a great director and he is the only reason to see Superman Returns(June).