X2 - afraid of spoilers? stay out of the thread

Darren Peter Oswald?

Who's the big bullet proof guy who helps the kids escape?


You didn't spot the potential for X3

Why does Jean Gray have a "regular" name? Something called the Phoenix brings her back in the comic...\

Yeah, the Phoenix "Saga" --- I remember racing home to catch that on afternoon cartoons; never really saw the whole sequence it in its entirety (always managed to get in halfway and had no idea what was going on). That cartoon was a testament to artistic ability and imagination, though.

Oh man, the action sequence between Lady Deathstrike and Wolverine- at one point in the action they just pause to look at each other... professor xavier is one scary mofo... genuine sense of dread during certain parts of the movie.

I wish it was rated R like the matrix.

I can't think of a sequel that surpassed its' original for me more than this movie, and I liked the first one.

MUCH more in-depth plot and character development, great choice of new major players. They could really spin-off the younger members of the team if they wanted to.

Rouge would be more useful if, like in the comics she flew and had super-strength. I love Anna Paquin in the role, I wish they used her more.

The whole Jean Grey/Phoenix/Dark Phoenix saga was sort of a clusterf**ck in the comics, from what I remember. And it started in space...

Jeff

Well first off the tounge boy is artie.he has the ability to create holograms to show what he's thinking (to make up for the fact that he is mute). the jean grey thing is definantly dark pheonix. you can check www.marveldirectory.com for more info. the Guy on tv in the bar is the beast but (pre beast days).

Gambit's scene for the film was actually filmed but may show up on the DVD. scroll down the page and you can the guy's credit for the film http://www.stuntscanada.net/james_bamford.htm



Buy the way anybody remember the names of the other mutants on strykers computer. im sure i saw lance alders( avalanche)

I generally agreed with the review over at salon.com.

Big thing though ---





SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!




(I know it's in the thread title, I just thought I'd give you a second chance...)





-- Why didn't that freezo boy just freeze the water in the lake? Would have simplified things a lot!


P.S. Wolverine needs his head read. What heterosexual male in his right mind would kick Rebecca Romaine-Stamos out of bed?

I thought that too. I guess that would have killed the whole suspense of the end of the movie.

two things.

1. probably to much water to freeze it all. it was a huge lake behind there.

2. when water freezes it exapands. if he'd frozen the water right by the dam, it would have just expanded and made things worse.

Buy the way anybody remember the names of the other mutants on strykers computer. im sure i saw lance alders( avalanche)

I thought I caught Warren Worthington, but I may have been looking too hard.

Jeff

Yes, cut scenes do smell strongly of DVD extra .


See the DVD version!

Iceman probably isn't powerful enough to freeze a lake in transit. The X-Men's powers (along with most superheroes' powers) are limited.

Well, he created a wall of ice inside the Mansion. Why couldn't he have made a "dam" of ice while Jean was holding it off? Boom. Problem solved, they fly away, the youngster gets a star for helping out, and everybody's happy. \

The Phoenix saga was basically;

Jean Grey was flying the Black Bird with all the other X-Men in it back from some jam on outer space, something crazy happened and everybody got all funny. Jean almost died, but a cosmic entity called the Phoenix took hold of her body in order to fly the rest of the X-Men to safety. Jean's body was weak, so the Phoenix put her in some cocoon deal in the bay off NYC. While she was in there, the Phoenix took her place, in the form of Jean Grey. There is also some weird ass side plot that happens, something about Phoenix and Scott Summers' child from the future coming back to then, it gets real messy towards the end.

***some spoilers, but if you're still reading the thread, then you've already asked for it.****

you got pretty much all of it. basically, the phoenix/dark phoenix saga was used to introduce a LOT of extra characters into the storylines in chris claremont's head (the best writer that x-men has ever had).

basically, he was saddled with the task of taking the old 50's/60's era mutant teams, and make them more interesting. he couldn't do it with the old "alien bad guy per month" motif, so he started sewing in the likes of the inner circle, mr. sinister (awesome character, terrible name), the reavers, the morlock massacre, etc. then nimrod, master mold and the sentinel program lead into the very short but incredible "days of future passed" story arc, which showed the world as it might be if the mutants failed, and the sentinels were allowed to run rampant. but let's hope they stay away from time travel in these movies. trust me, the character known as cable is such a mish-mash of time-travel nonsense that i got really tired of readin the x-titles. don't believe me? just TRY to follow along on Cable's convoluted, cloned, time-dsiplaced past.

the metal guy is colossus (aka piotr "peter" rasputin). cares for his sister (who he carried down the hall in the mansion) more than life itself. colossus and wolverine popularized the "fastball special" -- it involves colossus going metal, picking up wolvie, and hurling him at the enemy. THAT i would like to see in a movie.

the ethereal girl (the one who dissolves through her bed, the walls and the invading troops is catherine "kitty" pryde, aka "shadowcat."

the only name i caught in stryker's database was one
lebeau, remy aka "gambit"

the opening scene with nightcrawler was the bomb. damn, that boy can kick it when he needs to.

guess deathstrike is utterly, totally dead. you can't say that often in comics, but damn...

yes, they finally showed how deadly mystique can be (and how awesome her power is).

i think the kid who blinked and changed channels was cypher, one of the new mutants, but i'm not sure. plus, if you're going to try to kidnap Siryn (Banshee's little sis), for god's sake, stuff a gag in her mouth. ouch!

basically, all of the "teen-squad" mutants are supposed to not have their powers fully developed yet (mutant puberty). so in this storyline, jean's powers were far more developed to handle a small tidal wave than bobby's could. just like with rogue, yes, she's be more interesting witht he ability to fly and throw cars around, but the manner in which they gave her those powers int he comic would make no sense without about seven movies and a few crossovers.

yes, they have taken some liberties with the original stories (like bobby drake, aka iceman, is supposed to be as old as the senior mutants), but you had to in order to avoid how hokey some of those old stories were (plus, you've got to recap a heck of a lot history into a frachise that will probably only see one or two more movies).

here's hoping the "sentinel program" is used in the next movie along with phoenix.

as i told my friends, when i left the theater...
i felt i got my money's worth.
i would recommend it to friends.
i would see it again.
i would consider buying it on tape or dvd.

that is what i call a perfect score. well done!

totally. they decided about 4-5 years back to start developing iceman a lot, and used his powers in pretty cool ways. against the telepath "white queen," he partially froze the blood in her arteries near her brain to knock her out (well, almost). when battling professor x's son "legion", he froze him solid. not in a block of ice sort of way -- in a "stop every molecule in your body" sort of way.

a lot more impressive than his "ice roller coaster" riding old days.

Cool review, Rok...

Now take a breath!



Jeff

heh, that's what I meant by wierd ass side plot, it split off in so many directions. Around when they did the Phoenix stuff, the story lines jumped everywhere. But the sentinels were in other X-Men series too, I think in almost every episode of the cartoon show. I remember especially the first appearance of Jubilee when the sentilenls reigned hell down on her house.


The idea of a timeline, that's not in chronological order is just stupid, even for comic books. Trying to follow anything involving Cable was such a pain in the butt because you have a grasp on something, but then the next issue they could change anything and play it off as being because of time travel. Not only was Cable's ..everything.. too hard to follow, anything connected to X-Force wasn't worth the time in my opinion.



I haven't seen the movie yet, but that sounds like it.

Sometime in the last year and a half Marvel did a series called Origins that completely told all of Wolverine's past, childhood, connections to Sabretooth, etc. It was a series of 6 comics, truly amazing artwork, and an excellent story line. I waited until after all 6 were out and bought them all in one hard cover book, it's really nice.

What's with all the references to the book "Once and Future King"? I just got back from seeing the movie, and I noticed it in two places. First, Magneto was reading it in his prison. Second, at the end of the movie Professor X asked his students if any of them had read a book by T.H. White, called "The Once and Future King".

It's a book made up of four other books/stories kind of in a series. The first one if The Sword in The Stone, the other three aren't as popular. Well, I don't know what they are.

Yair, I gather it's a re-telling of the legend of King Arthur. I suppose that Professor X == King Arthur, Magneto == Mordred ...

I don't remember the reference from the comics.

The book was a retelling of the Sir Thomas Mallory version of Arthur's life, which is the movie "Excalibur" template.

Modred is Arthur's inbred nephew/son.

I don't see much relevance between the Art/Gwen/Lance downfall of Camelot to the plight of mutants.

The Grail Quest doesn't fit...

Anyone else?



Jeff

Ok, I thought the Phoenix saga ROCKED in the old cartoon series. It did get messy toward the end, but it rocked nonetheless.

Did anyone else see that silhouette underneath the lake at the end? Was that Jean/Phoenix? What was up with the fire imagery and Jean's telekinetic powers? Was that just creative license or was it alluding to possible Phoenix conjoinment?

Storm should have totally whipped up a hundred tornadoes to suck up that lake.

Lady Deathstrike's character totally got used. She didn't say more than 10 words in the whole movie, and what's up with her healing powers?

Mystique KICKED ASS. Also, is she Nightcrawler's mom in this movie? The visual clues are obvious, but I guess they didn't feel like they needed to dwell on such details.

I haven't seen the movie so I don't really know what this talk about this book is, so the only connection I could think of (without getting all metaphorical) is the Excalibur comics that sometimes crossed into X-Men. Actually, now that I think of it, wasn't one of the members of Excalibur Jean Grey/Phoenix's daughter or something? I don't remember the name of who I'm thinking of, she wore all red.


So did I, I think it was one of the best storylines they ever had. If there was a silhouette under water and there was a lot of fire imagery I'm guessing that it was supposed to be Jean Grey and/or hinting at Phoenix in the next one. In the comic book series, the Phoenix replaced Jean Grey for quite some time before the rest of the X-Men caught on, while Jean Grey was healing from that almost dying thing in the bay. As time passed the Phoenix started to get more and more restless/powerful and got out of hand. During intense battles she would have weird flashes of fire and the Phoenix would take control for a little bit, but this became more and more frequent and stronger. Eventually the Phoenix got so powerful that it took control completely, becoming the Dark Phoenix. To "save Earth" from the possibility of her destroying it on a random rampage, she flew into space and blew her self up, destroying an entire universe.

Is Lady Deathstrike the one with huge-ass fingernail claw things? If so, her healing abilities are similar to Wolverine's right? Because if that is who I'm thinking about, I had an issue (don't think it was X-Men, it was either a Wolverine or Sabretooth comic) in which her, Sabretooth, and Wolverine got involved in some huge 3 person battle, and it was weird because they all had very similar abilities.

Man, I never realized how much I liked X-Men. That's kinda sad I remember all that.

pitty angel keeps getting cut. i remember reading an interview with david hayter(screenwriter for 1 and 2) that angel was meant to appear in a basketball sequence in 1 when a young rougue would walk buy and a handsome guy would open his wings and slam the ball. however this scene was to have cost $ 400,000 and instead bryan singer director hired the little teleporting kid on the basketball court. ive also read about possibly giving magneto his kids quicksilver and the scarlet witch, which would have enhance the
story.

looks like macs were used for witing X2 http://www.apple.com/pro/video/harris-dougherty/

That's better than anything I can come up with, but it seemed to be put out there as something more significant. There were other knowing winks to the fanboys in the crowd, as mentioned above, though.

Jeff

I read in Entertainment Weekly that Angel's X-Ray appears in Strykers lab, I think on a computer but I didn't catch it.

Dang, looks like I'll have to go see it again!
8)

Jeff

In the cartoon, I don't think she was a mutant at all. She was a human who had adamantium claws grafted onto her.

this will probably be the first movie in over a year that i'm willing to pay to see twice.

Well being as I watched in on my computer i had the ability to pause at that point. The names were:

Paige Guthrie (Husk)
Samuel Guthrie (Cannonball)
Keniucho Harada (Silver Samurai)
Garrison Kane (one of the Weapon X's?)
Remy LeBeau (Gambit)
Eric. M. Lensherr (Magneto)
Artie Maddicks (he was in new mutants i think)
Jamie Madrox (Multiple Man)
Xi'an Coy Mahn (another new mutant)
Maximoff (2) (scarlet witch and quicksilver)
Kevin McTaggert (??)
Danielle Moonstar (Mirage)
Ororo Munroe (Storm)

I thought Lady Deathstrike was a cyborg rather than a mutant in the comics. Then again, admantium claws and mutant healing factor do seem to go together.

my understanding was that only mutants with the healing ability could survive the adamantium process

If Wolverine didn't have his healing factor, not only would he not have survived the Weapon X project, but (since is the world of comics, let's say he did) he would not be able to live at all since people's skeletons provide the body with (shit man, I don't know) that Wolverine's couldn't produce because it's laced in adamantium. So, given that, Wolverine's healing factor is always working just to keep him alive. I think I remember something like his body is always trying to reject the metal in him and it's the healing factor that's coping with this. .... Ahhh, I don't know. It's been a while.

The movie kicked ass. I read a review on Ain't It Cool News that went something like this:

X-Men 2 should be renamed to "X-Men kick you in the balls so hard that you puke on your balls and also your ass."

Also in the same review: "X-Men is a movie that says 'I'm going to kick you in the balls' and before you can say 'What did you say?', it kicks you in the balls and eats out your girlfriend."

It was a pretty funny review.

didn't it turn out his claws were bone too?

It does make sense that they would go together. Later on, Wolverine somehow loses his healing power and dies off adamantium poisoning in the comics (or some spin-off).

Lady Deathstrike, however, before she was Lady Deathstrike, was Wolverine's lover. The cartoon never made any mention of her having mutant powers, so she was (for all we knew) human. Later, enraged that Wolverine killed her father (or something), she underwent a procedure to graft adamantium onto her limbs. It was a different procedure than what Wolverine went through, and there was no suggestion that she only survived it because of some healing power. In fact, she has a bunch of other cyborg friends who evidently underwent similar self-mutilating procedures.

Kevin McTaggert was Proteus, an awesome mutant who took people's bodies as hosts. He was the son of a Scottish woman who Xavier was friends with.

yes, and several years back (i think about '95?), magneto decided to rip the adamantium straight out of wolvie's body through every pore all at once. let's just say this was a bit graphic for its day.

once they finally got all of the metal out of his system (it was kinda in a sick "halfway point" jutting out of every orifice and joint), his healing mode went into overdrive, and he got increasingly feral and freakin' enormous as his body over-compensated for the lack of metal in his body.

and yes, unfortunately, they decided to make his claws out of real bone (this was revealed once his metal was removed, yet bared his claws in one battle, much to everyone's -- including his own -- surprise). i say unfortunately because, as was the style back in those days of comics, everything was being written for maximum soap opera "shock value," whether it made a lot of sense or not. comic sales were tanking badly after their metoric rise in the early-90's, and marvel was especially bad in trying to cash in on their hot mutant titles. (chris claremont wrote a funny tongue-in-cheek issue called "too many mutants" to call attention to how ridiculously crowded the editors and management were making the mutant universe).

thing is, my friend who was a long time x-man reader had told me that waaaay back when wolverine was first introduced, he had bone claws then too.

i'd have to double check with him on it though. i think he said it wasn't talked about, but what pictured. something to that effect.

Not too much to add, other than to repeat that this was an awesome movie and totally kicked ass. Completely beat the first one in almost every way, story line, character development, action etc. Was the director the same for both movies? I seem to remember reading that when the director was chosen for the first movie, he admitted that he'd never read an X-men comic and I got the idea that he had based the movie on the lame ass saturday morning cartoon of the mid-90's. X2 seems to return to actually being based on the comic.

The fire under the water at the end was supposed to be Pheonix, and Jean's fire like aura was an allusion to the power of the Phoenix within her. Others here are right when they say that the whole Jean Grey/Phoenix story line in the comics got really messed up. When first introduced, Phoenix was a killer character who was extremely popular. They started to based almost everything in the XMen storylines around her. Dark Pheonix, the crystal with the galaxy inside, Cable, the return of Jean Grey.

XMen and Marvel in general really started tanking as a creative enterprise when all those top tier artists left to create Image comics, which became one of the most popular labels around. Image soon suffered the same fate and their stable of characters grew and grew and became unwieldly, just as Marvel had done before.

Anyway, back on topic, once again, probably the best comic book adaptation movie I have seen.

Tiny rant re-Phoenix:

I don't know when comic writers will realize they paint themselves in a corner when a character becomes powerful on an omnipotent, cosmic scale.

The current Green Lantern, Kyle Rayner went through it in the last couple years, as did Hal Jordan before him.

Eventually they end up the same beloved, limited hero.

Jeff

Actually, the Pheonix saga has the potential to make a lot of people happy. If Jean Grey becomes too powerful, they could use Rogue to absorb most of Pheonix's powers and granting Rogue the abilities that she has in the comic like flight and invunerability, and at the same time giving them an excuse to bring Jean Grey back to normal. <shrugs> It wouldn't exactly be a strict comic book adaptation, but it might work.