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Birth defects are sexy. This
is the gleaming nugget of wisdom that I gained from watching
X2: X-Men United, the new intense action melodrama directed
by Bryan Singer. Any type of genetic abnormality has the potential
to spark hot, sweaty, monkey lust in the general public. It
doesn’t matter if a person has a clubfoot, hair lip,
or simple sickle-cell anemia. In the future, any one of these
maladies will be enough to get you through the door of any
of Miami’s hottest clubs. Take it from me, twenty years
from now, when teenaged boys are injecting their testicles
with silicone to imitate elephantiasis and flipper-limbed
Thalidomide Babies grace the cover of Vanity Fair, historians
will cite X2 as the turning point attitudes towards gender
and human sexuality.
X-Men 2:Electric Boogaloo, one of the few sequels in recent
memory that improves on an already competent original, wisely
eschews exposition and delves directly into the action, raising
the stakes of the first movie. The action sequences are brilliantly
staged, and the film deftly manages to juggle twelve characters
without any one getting lost in the fray. Just like in the
comic book the movie is based on, the story of the X-Men is
a parable for prejudice and oppression in our time. The world
that the X-Men inhabit is a paranoid and frightened one; mutants
are a new genetic development, and the government and the
so-called “normals” don’t know how to deal
with this.
X2, like the first film, deals with the two sets of mutants,
the “good” ones led by wheelchair-bound telepath
Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), and the “evil”
ones, led by Magneto (Ian McKellen), who has the ability to
manipulate all metals and most lines of campy dialogue. Both
sides have different views on how to deal with an oppressive
government, with one side wishing to achieve a peaceful co-existence
with the normal people, while the other side will settle for
nothing less than total world domination. This disparity of
views echoes the schism between Martin Luther King and Malcolm
X. And all of that is well and good, I guess. But none of
you care about this. If you’re in the potential audience
of this film, (and, let’s face it, most of you are- you’re
reading this review on the internet) you already know the
backstory. You’ve read the comics and have talked at
length how Hugh Jackman, while good in the role, is just too
tall to play Wolverine.
The real revelation in X-Men 2: Feivel Goes West is the fact
that all of these mutants are freaking hot! The entire returning
cast turns the heat up a notch, and not a scene went by when
I didn’t want to bend one of them over some plastic furniture
and do dirty things to them. Sure, all the actors all hot.
But the characters, with all their genetic abnormalities,
are even hotter. There’s the world-weary telepath Jean
Grey, played by former model Famke Janssen, is hot in an “intellectual
martyr” sort of way. There’s the life-sucking Rogue,
played by the lithe youthful beauty Anna Paquin, a young woman
whose genetic power prevents her from ever touching another
human being. Conservatives take note: this is the only way
to ensure that the youth of America remain chaste. There’s
the shape-shifter Mystique, played by former model Rebecca
Romijn-Stamos, a character so hot that she doesn’t even
need to wear clothes. All she has to do to get ready in the
morning is make sure her blue skin and scales are nicely cleaned
and pressed. Aside from when she morphs into other characters,
she spends the entire movie in her blue birthday suit. Every
time she was onscreen I was hoping for a little pink to show
through all that blue.
Hell, even, Halle Berry, the hottest woman on the planet,
is even hotter when she appears as Storm, a beauty who has
the power to control the weather. It’s a good thing that
director Singer neglected to make her character interesting,
because all of her lines were drowned out by screams of orgasmic
joy emanating from men in the front row whenever her breasts
appeared on screen.
And that’s just the returning cast. There’s also
a batch of new mutants (but not New Mutants) who show up in
X-Men 2: The Legend of Curly’s Gold. There’s Iceman
(I think his genetic talent is self-explanatory) played by
Shawn Ashmore, who’s “coming out” to his parents
is the most human and interesting scene in the movie. Hoping
against hope that his ability to manipulate ice at will is
merely a passing phase, his mother asks, “Have you ever
tried… not being a mutant?” There’s Nightcrawler
(Alan Cumming) a dark blue, tattooed German circus freak (literally)
who spends most of the movie teleporting and reciting the
Lord’s Prayer in a thick German accent. Religious guilt
is hot. Especially when the repressed one is into body tattoos.
And then there’s Magneto, played by the great actor (and
out homosexual) Sir Ian McKellen. McKellen, as usual, is great
in his role. Grudgingly joining forces with the good mutants,
Magneto rules the roost with the confidence and arrogance
of the most popular person in high school, handing out veiled
insults to all that surround him. “We just love what
you’ve done to your hair,” he crows to Rogue, referencing
the Susan Sontag-like forelock of gray hair caused by him
almost killing her in the first movie. When he escapes from
his plastic prison, made possible after his hench-woman Mystique
turns herself into Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and seduces one of
his guards, as he flies through the air on a metal disc he
looks down at the portly guard’s dead body and quips,
“Never trust a woman. Especially one interested in you.”
The subtext here is not that the guard is a fat slob that
no woman would love, but that he’s just too normal. He
is without any sexy birth defects.
However, it is Magneto’s potential relationship with
Pyro, played by newcomer Aaron Stanford that I found to be
the most interesting. Pyro begins the film under the tutelage
of Professor Xavier, but ends up turning to Magneto’s
dark side. I’m still not sure what Magneto was referring
to when he says, “That is an amazing gift you have there,
Pyro. You are a God among insects, never forget that.”
Considering McKellen’s last date to the Academy Awards,
this is probably not the first time he had to utter those
words.
Magneto: the next time you’re trying to pick up a young
boy, you might not have to try so hard. Word on the street
is, all Harry Potter needs is a candy bar.
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