XMen 10 Things You Didn’t Know About X2
X-Men: 10 Things You Didn’t Know About X2
Contents
X2 is viewed by many fans as one of the greatest superhero movie sequels of all-time. A lot of behind-the-scenes facts about it get overlooked though.
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The legacy of the first X-Men film in 2000 is significant. The success of that film paved the way for much of the tsunami of superhero films that followed. Most importantly, its immediate consequence was X2, widely considered by many fans as one of the best superhero sequels, and movies period, of all time.
Like the first X-Men movie, the road to X2 was a complicated one. Today, a pretty well-developed template exists for crafting a superhero movie, depending on the goal of the film. Back then, not so much. Still, the film did even better than the first. Here are ten things you didn’t know about X2.
10 Different Titles
Most fans in the United States and Canada know the sequel as X2, but the film had a few alternate titles for its release in other territories. The first was simply X-Men 2, which was easy enough, and the second was X-Men United, a title that was used in Europe and elsewhere.
Alternate titles for films are pretty rare, and certainly for comic book movies where branding is everything. They have happened though: Captain America was simply The First Avenger in many international territories.
9 Echoes of Empire
Any franchise sequel exists in the shadow of The Empire Strikes Back, generally considered the greatest movie sequel of all time. Many sequels actively take on the challenge of emulating that film’s bold structure though, and this was a conscious decision on the part of the creators behind X2.
Director Bryan Singer wanted his movie to echo the Star Wars sequel by splitting the main characters up, revealing huge secrets, and emphasizing the romantic subplot between Wolverine and Jean Grey.
8 God Loves, Man Kills
Bryan Singer researched a lot of different X-Men comic book storylines when developing the script for the sequel. Singer ultimately went with one of the best X-Men stories, the graphic novel God Loves, Man Kills, in which the X-Men come into conflict with William Stryker, a human who wants mutants eradicated.
One storyline he considered was the relatively recent Legacy Virus story, which potentially would have involved characters like Cable and Magik, both of whom had been infected by it (thanks to Apocalypse).
7 The Dark Phoenix Saga
The other major X-Men storyline at play in the sequel is The Dark Phoenix Saga. At least the beginning of it. The firey rise, fall, and death of Jean Grey still ranks as one of the greatest comic book stories ever, and the film takes some cues from it, though barely.
The very loose adaptation of the story would only worsen with the third film, X-Men: The Last Stand, which was a thing that happened. And fans didn’t enjoy Dark Phoenix, the second attempt to do the famous story in 2019, any better.
6 Famke Janssen Had No Idea
Still, the major shock at the end of the film – Jean’s death and the tease of her resurrection – were major elements of the plot. The creative team wanted to keep it a secret and went to huge lengths to do so. They even kept it from actress Famke Janssen, until halfway through production of the movie.
This was very similar to again, The Empire Strikes Back. Mark Hamill did not learn that Luke Skywalker was Darth Vader’s son until the day that scene was shot.
5 Blue Two
One of the major new characters introduced in the film is Nightcrawler, played by Alan Cumming. Nightcrawler is a huge fan favorite, and one of the best parts of the film. His appearance was pretty faithful overall to the comics, with a couple of key exceptions.
He didn’t wear his famous red and black costume, and in the film, he had dozens of tattoos. Each one of these represented a different sin he committed, amplifying the character’s Catholic faith to degrees not seen in the books.
4 Mutant Cameos
The X-Men movies pioneered one of the best parts of the MCU – easter eggs. This isn’t too surprising, as Kevin Feige served as an associate producer on the first X-Men film before going on to work at Marvel Studios. A number of easter eggs exist within X2, many of them in the form of cameos of popular characters.
The most obvious is likely Kitty Pryde, who phases right through her bed as the bad guys close in. Others include mutants Artie, Siryn, and Jubilee (who would later feature in X-Men: Apocalypse).
3 Deleted Gambit Cameo
One major cameo that didn’t make the cut belonged to the popular X-Men character Gambit. A scene including Gambit was filmed for the sequence in which Cerebro is turned against mutants by Stryker, but left on the cutting room floor.
Gambit hasn’t fared too well overall in the X-movies. He appeared briefly in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, played by Taylor Kitsch. A spinoff with the character featuring Channing Tatum spent years in development hell, seemingly not to happen now.
2 Beast Delayed Again (Kind Of)
Beast ranks up there with Gambit in popularity with some fans, and producers definitely wanted to get him into the movies. The first attempt in the 2000 X-Men film failed due to budget cuts. The second try in X2 ran into a problem the MCU seems to have solved: too many characters.
Still, Beast does make a brief appearance, in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in the background. A television interview with the character plays in the background in a bar in the movie.
1 Danger Room Deferred
Another major element of the first movie that got cut due to budget concerns was a massive sequence involving the Danger Room. Singer wanted to revive it for the sequel, but once again it faced cost issues. And there was already a lot going on in the movie besides.
The Sentinels made an appearance in early drafts of the sequence, and a Danger Room was actually built, but never used. The concept of a training sequence would eventually manifest in later films.
Link Source : https://screenrant.com/x-men-sequel-unknown-facts/
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