X2

• Title: X2
• IMDb: link

This week’s Throwback Thursday takes us back to 2003’s sequel to X-Men. Bringing back most of the cast of director Bryan Singer‘s first film, X2 explored the origins of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) with a series of flashbacks which would be further explored in the best-forgotten X-Men Origins: Wolverine six years later. Although Magneto (Ian McKellen) returns, he’s not the villain his time around. Instead the villain is William Stryker (Brian Cox) who is using his own son’s mutant abilities to start a war against mutants in hopes of wiping them out completely. His maneuvering includes brainwashing Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming) to try and assassinate the President and attacking the X-Men in their own home.

Along with Nightcrawler, the franchise expands mutants with the additions of Pyro (Aaron Stanford), Colossus (Daniel Cudmore), and Lady Deathstrike (Kelly Hu), and a number of mutant children living in Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.

The movie holds up a bit better than the original X-Men, and unlike X-Men: First Class it gets to use the A-List X-Men rather than the B-Team. Magneto successfully manipulates events to his liking, Mystique (Rebecca Romijn) shows of her set of skills, Logan gets some answers, and Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) makes the ultimate sacrifice leading into the sequel nobody really wants to talk about. With so many characters some X-Men unfortunately draw the short straw, notably Cyclops (James Marsden) and Colossus who are both underutilized here.

Released several times over the years on both Blu-ray and DVD, extras include commentary from Singer and cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel, production and behind-the-scenes featurettes, deleted scenes, and featurettes on some of the X-Men comic characters as well.

[20th Century Fox, Blu-ray $7.88 / DVD $9.99]