X2: X-Men United (2003)
The template every sequel had to beat for a decade: White House breached, the church flood, not one weak character thread. 85% on RT. The Fox era's peak.
Cast & Key People
Our Review
For a decade this was the template every sequel had to beat: the X-Men film that understands ensemble, opens with the White House literally breached by Nightcrawler and spends two hours raising the stakes on the mutant metaphor until the last frame ends on a newsstand screaming about it. The brainwashing plot, the Magneto/Xavier jailbreak, the world government hearing: Singer at his most confident.
Kelly Hu’s Lady Deathstrike is a villain of one perfect scene, the cookoff, the nightcrawler reveal is the best twist in the franchise, and the church climax with the lake flooding is real cinema, a genuinely operational sequence with real weather in it. The 7.4 on IMDb undersells how complete the film is. It is the only X-Men film without a weak character thread.
85% on Rotten Tomatoes from 249 reviews. On Disney+ and Hulu. If the Doomsday lineup gets the Fox cast trending again, this is where the Fox era peaked. Eight out of ten.
Seasons
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