What a way to continue the X-Men franchised after a successful hit in the cinema. X-Men 2 brings two warring factions together against a threat even bigger than the dreaded Mutant Registration Act. Senator Kelly is dead, and the new threat is in the form of an ex-black ops commander who has hatched a sinister scheme to wipe out the mutant race. This sort of plan sounds familiar, but the last movie was all about forcing mutants to disclose their capabilities.
Nightcrawler is under some kind of mind control. He attacks the White House, disarming and immobilizing security there without taking a break with his teleporting. Just after the anti-mutant frenzy from the last film, this film continues to brew the storm with this film just to gear up the plot.
Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) visits a site of his nightmare past. One subplot revolves around him trying to discover his past that has been plaguing him in his sleep. Somehow he still does not find any answers.
The opening prologue tells us something we could remember easily: humanity has never been the type that would ever share the entire planet with another race of humans, mutants. So genocide is the key plot point in this movie, and someone has deduced that a large population of mutants would require swift blow to be annihilated worldwide, so he has to hatch several schemes to make it work. So what has he done to do this? He has driven a mutant under his control with a serum he injects (or rather drops into a laceration on the back of their neck) as a means to control their mind. A man named William Stryker hates mutants so heavily that he would use them and dump them after they serve his purpose. He obtains the information he seeks to build and engineer his own cerebro to target mutants.
If you also watch this movie, you will acknowledge why Stryker of all people would launch his own mutant-hate campaign: his own son Jason has the power to create illusions in people's minds. His mother killed herself with a power tool to "bore the images out of her head." Jason blamed his parents for his condition, and caused so much pain for them. However, I still could not tell if Stryker himself killed or maimed his own son or something. Either way Jason is now wheelchair-bound and is reduced to secreting that same fluid for controlling mutants. How that works still eludes me.
We have new mutants to the mix: Iceman a.k.a. Bobby Drake, Pyro, Shadowcat (whose name is not mentioned except Kitty), Colossus and Nightcrawler to mention but a few. There are other mutants whose powers are so dangerous they are useless, like a girl whose scream reverberates endlessly unless she is sedated. I wonder if her parents had to carry sedatives to silence her from birth, though mutation does manifest from puberty. More mutants with less than beneficial powers are revealed.
The next thing to look out for is Jean Gray. Her powers are growing erratically. Telekinesis is now accompanied by other powers that distort electronic signals, and enhance hearing range. For some reason I would not even note this regularly as this occurs less frequently throughout this story and is not fully addressed.
We can now explore the facility where Logan was experimented upon. The adamantium is a very indestructible metal at room temperature; it has to be continually kept hot to be used every time. But it is never addressed as to what or who is keeping it hot perpetually, or how it is made in the first place.
You would have more reason to be engaged with the characters and the main plot, but subplots here are just evasive. Fast-paced action scenes and the main story arc revolving around the main characters could just be enough to keep you engaged with the movie. You might remember the visual effects from movies memorable for their visuals, such as The Matrix (1999). But you do have to watch out for any religious connotations as shown by the blue mutant Nightcrawler.
Professor Charles Xavier is being bound by Stryker with a neural inhibitor so that he cannot enter people's minds. This gives Jason a chance to create an illusion to trick Xavier into concentrating hard enough to kill every mutant connected to the cerebro. I know you will be baffled by the continuity errors regarding the illusions generated by Jason. Nothing makes sense when Jason himself disappears and the little girl appears, and vice versa. And how Xavier continually falls for his illusions beats me all the time.
Fifteen years. Logan has been amnesic for fifteen years. The story must have resumed a few months after events of the last movie, according to Stryker and Xavier both of whom recall the time span in question.
Yuriko (a.k.a. Deathstrike) is The Wolverine's new adversary after Saber-Tooth. She has retracting claws and the ability to regeneration, a perfect match for a mutant without definable age. A fight between the two renders the last fight against Mystique and Saber-Tooth less momentous.
Mystique flips a birdie to the audience (Stryker's soldiers, actually). She has the ability to change size, weight and voice. However, there have been some discrepancies regarding her decision to impersonate a dead person, particularly Senator Kelly. Since his death she assumed his position without acknowledging that his presence is required round-the clock, yet nobody questions his absence under any circumstance. It would be sensible to think about impersonating someone of high authority before doing so especially if they are deceased. With that aside, she seems to know how to operate any machine and computer in place of her subjects. How she spends the time we do not know she has is beyond anyone's imagination.
If you enjoy watching a roller coaster ride of fights, raids, visual effects and mutant powers, this movie is for you. However you will often find the plot devices evasive and never fully explained, but you could relate to some characters in the story who are just there to demonstrate their capabilities in rough situations that come before them. By the way, if you hate N*Sync so do Wolverine and his companions. Boy bands are so 1990's and anyone growing up in the 2000's would not want to listen to that annoying trash.
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