Venusberg | That's not your heart, it's a piece of helicopter casing

Saturday, May 17, 2003

Remember how the first film had all that Story (= for gays) in the first part, and you were like, “How ‘bout some ass-kicking already?” and then finally they got to it? Not this one. It’s like okay, there’s the credits, and now here’s the ass-kicking and it starts and doesn’t stop and you’re all like, “Pants, meet shit”.

One thing I have done while I was not updating my weblog was to see X-Men 2, a review of which provides the quote above. Adn it was glorious. Glorious because the fundamentally useless Cyclops had almost nothing to do. Glorious because Haille Berry, if such a thing is possible, got to say "Oh my God" even more than in the first film, which is going some. Glorious, most obviously, because Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen's battle for the soul of mutantkind and thus by extension the fate of humanity supports the Blake's Seven model by which all good futurologists should steer, it stating that at some point between now and the distant future an apocalyptic struggle wipes out amost the entire human population, leaving only the plummy English and a couple of comedy cockneys.

But really. Despite the somewhat silly ending, the underutilisation of Brian Cox, and the brave attempt to cram three decades of characters into two hours, this film provided me with more gleefully grinning and squeezing the hands of my co-viewers moments than anything since Jules and Jim et le Matrix. When blue Alan Cumming went hardcore on the West Wing. When "John" went Colombine. When Colossus kicked booty in the mansion. And, sad and obvious though it may be, when Wolverine killed the Hell out of absolutely goddamn everyone.

Hugh Jackman impaling people is the closest I have come to sex in a cinema when I haven't actually been having sex in a cinema.

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