By Steven Gould (May 15, 2003)

There is only one word that can sum up X-Men United and that is "X-citeing." All the awesome special effects and fight scenes make this movie one of the best movies since The Two Towers.

The movie begins in the White House where a group of students are following a tour guide. A security guard sees one person walk away from the group and asks where he is going. The man takes off his disguise and reveals a monstrous image. The security guard sounds the alarm, alerting everyone that there's a mutant in the building. The mutant is later discovered to be Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming) who tries to assassinate the president but fails. After the incident the president allows a man named Stryker (Brian Cox) to send in troops into the X-men’s base to capture them. Professor Xavier is captured and now the X-men have to unite with their arch-foe Magneto (Ian McKellen) and Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) in order to find the professor.

This movie is excellent because so many people would love to be just like the X-men. Also this movie wasn’t all about Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) like the first one was. X2’s story line is based on all the mutants from the first one and a lot of new characters as well like Pyro (John Allerdyce) and Iceman (Shawn Ashmore). And you still have all the classic mutants like Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), Storm (Halle Berry) and Rogue (Anna Paquin).

X2 is the best movie so far this year. It has the best fight scenes and a marvelous plot. But one thing I didn’t like about it was that while there were a lot of fighting parts, there were almost none between mutants except for when Wolverine fought Yuriko Oyama (Kelly Hu). The rest of the fighting was mutants versus people. Out of 10 I would give this movie a 9.

X2 X-men United directed by Bryan Singer made $85.85 dollars in its opening weekend, and is the number one movie in America. The movie is a thriller/action and is rated PG-13.