Watched on Blu-Ray

X-Men Sunday
Rewatch Road To Dark Phoenix Step 2 of 9

I've been looking forward to this all week. X-Men 2 is a sequel as it should be: bigger, more elaborate, more complex and more epic.

In the first installment, the characters were carefully introduced and the themes that characterize the whole series were scratched, but for obvious reasons the potential has not yet been fully exploited.

In the second part, this potential is fortunately being used to the full: the already established characters are further expanded and the relationships between them intensify.

Especially the further development of Wolverine has been remarkably successful. With the introduction of William Stryker as the villain, whose shared past with Logan adds to the explosiveness, the best villain of the whole franchise is presented at the same time (apart from Magneto). Of all the actors who embodied the person responsible for Wolverine's adamantium skeleton and therefore beeing Logan's nemesis, Brian Cox also manages best to express the dangerous threat posed by the character. Being absolutely convinced of what he is doing, he doesn't shy away from anything, not even from instrumentalizing his own son. This has a moral dimension, which in my opinion no other X-Men movie can achieve.

But also other new characters like Nightcrawler and Lady Deathstrike with the same abilities as Wolverine, contribute to a clear improvement compared to the predecessor. The intro with Nightcrawler in the White House and the fight between Wolverine and Lady Deathstrike are staged absolutely fantastic and with a formerly unknown epic vibe.

But the coolest moment in the movie belongs to Magneto. I mean the escape from the plastic prison, of course. It's so perfidiously and cleverly planned, evil and badass at the same time, that those who think the slow-motion scenes with Quicksilver in the new trilogy are the best thing under the sun should take another look at this one again.

Today, 16 years after its release, X-Men 2 is still one of my absolute favorite comic book adaptations and definitely has one of the first 3 ranks in the entire X-Men universe.