New York Times
"...A symphony of crescendos and pauses, orchestrated toward a big seat-rattling climax, during which an enormous dam breaks, veins bulge on both villainous and heroic brows, and a lot of computer-generated images pop, wiggle and shimmy to the throb and roar of John Ottman's music..." 05/02/2003 p.E1USA Today
"...The cast is full of actors who are fun to watch..." 05/02/2003 p.11D Chicago Sun-Times
"...It lives in the present, providing one amazing spectacle after another..." 05/02/2003 p.29 Rolling Stone
"...Hugh Jackman is again in fierce, lupine form as Wolverine..." 05/29/2003 p.70 Sight and Sound
...No other film-maker has better dramatised superpowers in action and yet remembered the human cost of all the trickery. X2 is full of double-edged power fantasies that manage a frisson of awe amid the excitement..." 06/01/2003 p.59-60 Los Angeles Times
"...X2 is 2 good to be 4-gotten. Brisk and involving with a streamlined forward propulsion....One of the unexpected aspects of X2 is the way its concerns seem to be uncannily relevant today..." 05/02/2003 p.C1 Movieline's Hollywood Life
"...It's shiny pop art with an arch, cultured heart underneath..." 11/01/2003 p.120 Total Film
"...It's in the quieter, more dramatic moments that the sequel really gets under the skin..." 12/01/2003 p.110 Uncut
"Full of incident..." 12/01/2003 p.160 The Onion A.V. Club 8 of 10
Like the first Tim Burton-directed Batman movie, the original X-Men was the rare comic-book adaptation that satisfied the needs of both summer-movie audiences and all but the most Mylar-addled comic-book fans. Directed with depth, efficiency, and wit by Bryan Singer, the film suffered only from a tendency to seem like a setup for an even bigger movie. And here it is. Significantly longer and stuffed with new mutants, unresolved old business, new subplots, and many more fights, X2: X-Men United suggests that Singer's gaggle of screenwriters received script notes reading "More, more, more."...With their expansive casts, tangled plotlines, and overheated passions, the X-Men comic books have always been as much about soap operatics as laser beams. So far, the film series has not just understood that notion, but run with it. Singer sandwiches melodrama within eye-catching, comics-inspired compositions, allows time for characters to interact with (and often annoy) one another, and, whenever the situation gets too grim, lets Hugh Jackman's anti-heroic Wolverine or some other witty business deflate any pretensions. Aside from a couple of duds in the ensemble, the film also benefits from its gifted cast, with Ian McKellen once again standing out as Magneto, the pitiless, radical mutant whose escape from prison leads to the uneasy alliance suggested by the film's subtitle. With all the talk of government crackdowns in the name of national security--the president even shares George W. Bush's habit of wearing an American-flag pin, lest anyone question his patriotism--the story also boasts a muted contemporary resonance. Only in the finale do the special effects start to overwhelm the plot and characters, but by that point, the film has long since begun to coast on its own momentum toward the inevitable, and welcome, setup for the presumably even bigger X3. - Keith Phipps
Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
"X2: X-Men United" is the kind of movie you enjoy for its moments, even though they never add up. Made for (and possibly by) those with short attention spans, it lives in the present, providing one amazing spectacle after another, and not even trying to develop a story arc. Having trained on the original "X-Men" (2000), i tried to experience the film entirely in the present, and the fact is, i had a good time...Like the comic books that inspired it, "X2" begins with the premise that mutant heroes with specialized superpowers exist among us. Name the heroes, assign the powers, and you're ready for perfunctory dialogue leading up to a big two-page spread in which sleek and muscular beings hurtle through dramatic showdowns...Since the earliest days of "Spider-Man," Marvel heroes have had personal problems to deal with, and there's a classic Stan Lee moment here in the scene where Iceman breaks the news to his parents that he is a mutant. The movie treats the dialogue as a coming out scene, half-seriously, as if providing inspiration for real-life parents and their children with secrets...There's a romance in the movie between Rogue and Iceman, but it doesn't exploit the possibilities of love between mutants with incompatible powers. How inconvenient if during sex your partner was accidentally teleported, frozen, slashed, etc. Does Cyclops wear his dark glasses to bed? "X2: X-Men United" lacks a beginning, a middle and an end, and exists more as a self-renewing loop. In that it is faithful to comic books themselves, which month after month and year after year seem frozen in the same fictional universe. Yes, there are comics in which the characters age and their worlds change, but the X-Men seem likely to continue forever, demonstrating their superpowers in one showcase scene after another. Perhaps in the next generation a mutant will appear named Scribbler, who can write a better screenplay for them. - Roger Ebert
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