X2

Bryan Singer’s film scatters the team across four separate threads and keeps the villain away from the heroes almost until the final act. That is where the hundred and thirty three minutes go: most of the time is spent on meetings, on people relocating, and on two groups that do not know about each other closing on the same target. The raid on the White House that opens it sets the tone within minutes, and nothing afterwards reaches the same density again. There is one adaptation change worth knowing. The film draws on Chris Claremont’s 1982 graphic novel, but the Stryker of the book is a television preacher, a figure of religious extremism. On screen he became an army colonel, and hatred of mutants stopped being a matter of faith and turned into a military programme. That is the axis a reader of the comic will look for here and fail to find. The apparent ease of the opening is deceptive. The Nightcrawler makeup took roughly four and a half hours daily, and the markings on his face were painted on one at a time because nobody had designed them before shooting began. Right for a viewer comfortable with parallel threads and a rescue finale. Wrong for a comics reader chasing the religious argument.