God love them! Our buds at Fox Home Video have given me a special advanced look at their upcoming two-disc “”X2: X-Men United”” Special Edition DVD. I’ve made no secret of the fact that this is my favorite film of the year (in a very bad year), and that FHV has a blind man design their menu navigations. So how does it play on TV? How is the navigation system, what about those special features? Well worry not folks, this DVD kicks serious ass!!
MOVIE“”X2: X-Men United”” (dumb name) is that rare sequel that actually improves on the original – an original that had very few flaws. X2 takes all the elements that made the first film such a creative and commercial success, tweaked it and turned it up a notch for the sequel. In the original X-Men film, Director Bryan Singer and crew were hampered by the fact that they had to deal with the introduction of so many different characters, and the world of the X-Men as well as the technical issue of just how to bring such a complex world to life. In large part the constraints that they were working under forced them to focus on the characters and the central theme of the X-Men, which is the battle not between good and evil, but the fight for the right to survive, to merely exist in a world where human kind fears and hates mutants. The Martin Luther King, of Mutant kind, Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) believes that there is hope, that with a little education humans will come to accept them and allow them to live peacefully. Another faction of mutants – lead by Magneto (Ian McKellen) believe that humans will never accept them and that war between mutants and humans are inevitable and that he gain mutant rights “”by any means necessary.”” While these larger issues are at play, we see how the individual heroes feel about them. They are being persecuted by the very society that they are risking their lives to protect. In addition to introducing us to Charles Xavier, Magneto, we meet a large colorful cast of heroes and villians including Rogue (Anna Paquin), Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), Storm (Halle Berry), Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) and more. X2 expands this already considerably large cast by introducing us to several newer characters including Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming), Yuriko Oyama/Deathstrike (Kelly Hu), Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), and Pyro (Aaron Stanford), a teenager who has a temper to match his fire powers. He is someone who is trying hard to believe in Xavier’s non-violent approach but when military troopers, led by the fanatical anti-mutant crusader William Stryker (Brian Cox) attack the school and hunts them down like animals he finds himself slowly coming over to Magneto’s viewpoint. While the original film seemed to clearly be on the side of achieving human rights through non-violent means, X2’s main theme seems to be that Magneto is correct, a war is indeed coming and there’s no avoiding this simple fact. The only question left to debate is how you fight it.Like the first film, the second one relies more on character development than large scale action sequences. You would think that with so many primary characters in this ensemble that folks would get lost in the shuffle, but the writers Zak Penn, David Hayter and Bryan Singer deserve kudos for delivering a tightly focused script, with crisp dialog and fully developed characters. There doesn’t seem to be a wasted scene or moment in this film and every character seems to evolve and grow by the end. The only exceptions to this are Deathstrike and Cyclops (James Marsden). Everything about X2 is just bigger, better, cleaner, and more clearly defined than the original. There are so many subtexts in this film that you will discover something new every time you watch it. This is truly a crossover film that everyone will enjoy – even non-comic book fans. It’s a flawless adaptation.Movie Grade A+——————————————————————————————————————————-DVD EXTRASYou know I’ve come to the conclusion that DVD Extras don’t thrill me as much as they used to. Maybe it’s because usually I’ve already seen most of the “”extra material”” used to create the featurettes before, or maybe it’s because I don’t have time to peruse the hours and hours of material that some of these DVDs contain. These days if you give me subtitles, a couple of trailers, decent navigation system, cast/crew bios, Dolby 5.1 or DTS sound, a flawless transfer, and most importantly a decent widescreen aspect ratio or a full screen presentation then I’m a happy camper.X2 has all of this (except for the Full Screen option), and much more. This disk contains not one, but two commentary tracks, which I actually took the time to listen to. The first commentary track is by Director Bryan Singer and SFX Supervisor Tom Sigel. The two clearly have a long standing relationship and friendship while Bryan can be dry at times his passion for the project comes through on the commentary. They focus their track primarily on discussing the shot setups, and the more technical aspects of the production. They can be a little boring, except when they are talking passionately about the upcoming X3 Musical that they are working on.The more informative and lively track is actually track two which includes a session with the producers, and writers of the movie. This track is very cool, we gain a lot of insight into the actual process of getting the film made, casting decisions, etc. The writers seem to really know the X-Men characters, so we gain a lot of insight into the comic-books and why certain characters made it to the screen and others didn’t, etc.There are a boatload of featurettes including: “”The Secret Origin of X-Men,”” “”Nightcrawler Reborn,”” “”Evolution in the Details