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Offering a throwback to the last X-Men film, our trailer rejoins us with longtime friends Charles "Professor X" Xavier (Stewart) and villainous Erik "Magneto" Magnus (McKellen). Both hold different viewpoints on the struggle of mutants in society. (Stewart wants to use them to help crush the Romulan Star Empire, while McKellen believes they should be cast into the cracks of Mount Doom and unmade.) Both, also, are fairly old. As with the last film, these friendly games of chess serve as a metaphor for their many attempts to outfox one another. The scene is meant to illustrate the cunning of both. However, one might ask why, if Magneto's such hot stuff in the cunning department, he hasn't managed to break out of a prison made entirely of glass by now. Certainly it's covered every base in terms of deterring him from using his magnetic powers. Whether the prison would be as effective against his "wrapping a shirt around his hand and punching out a window" powers, though, is not addressed. Then again, it doesn't seem like the prison system's put a lot of thought into any of the details surrounding Magneto's incarceration, beyond the whole "make everything out of glass" aspect, which they've accomplished spectacularly. For instance, isn't it a savvy ploy to force Magneto to play with a glass chess set, thus preventing him from using his magnetic powers on, you know, wood? "Doesn't it wake you in the middle of the night?" asks McKellen, concerned about how much sleep Xavier's getting, a thoughtful gesture. "The feeling that someday they'll pass that foolish law, and come for you and your children?" "It does, indeed," responds Stewart. "I feel a great swell of pity for the poor fool who comes to that school looking for trouble." Ouch. Burn on Magneto. He walked right into that one.
While Wolverine dices the SWAT guys, new addition to the team Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming) flips down a hall, giving us a generous shot of his pointy-tailed blue backside. Still elsewhere, Cyclops (James Marsden) whirls around and snaps open his eyepiece, ready to do that screwed-up thing with his eyes if the need arises. Even Rogue (Anna Paquin) pitches in, shrieking in terror at the approaching SWAT guys. I don't remember the first film that well; this would presumably be her power. The trailer then segues to a montage of quick-cut action scenes, rendering any attempt at a coherent review moot, as it was precisely here that I stopped having any idea what was going on. While the narrative gets down to the business of breaking down completely, we get quick cuts of returning characters -- including Storm (Oscar winner Halle Berry, ensuring that any Academy members who happen to be watching feel immensely horrified and shamed) and Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos). Both provide the trailer with a little sex appeal for the few fanboys who aren't already immensely aroused by now, just from the first glimpse of Nightcrawler. In addition to Nightcrawler, we get to see another newcomer: an upset-looking Asian woman with superlong, supersharp fingernails. The trailer didn't bother to explain what her deal was, but I suspect she'll either be taking on Wolverine in pointy-hand-to-pointy-hand combat, or seriously scratching up the Guinness Book of World Records people for leaving her out of the 2003 edition. As a special bonus, there's also some silhouetted guy standing backlit behind a sheet who hasn't been told about his past and can't remember. Pretty mysterious -- who could it be? I have no idea. Although it's possible I simply misinterpreted things again, and he wasn't meant to be mysterious. Maybe his power involves standing around behind backlit sheets not knowing about his past. If so, it's an effective power; while he's handicapped a little by the omnipresent need for a sheet, it's still spooky, and should have the SWAT guys quaking in their boots. To sum up: ass will be kicked, if the trailer's any judge. Though it was impossible to glean anything meaningful from it, I still got a chance to see Cyclops blowing stuff up by looking at it, and Wolverine running around in an insane rage, slashing at the camera. There's even a little more sugar from Ian McKellen. "War has begun," he muses with satisfaction at the trailer's close. I think I'll be musing with satisfaction when I see this one too. I happily invite X-Men 2 to nerd me up.
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Happily,
the trailer to X-Men 2 is here to fill those empty spaces --
beginning as it does with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen playing chess.
Comic books? Strategy games? Gandalf? Jean-Luc Picard? If one of the
cast members from Babylon 5 shows up to referee the chess match,
we've officially entered nerd nirvana.
The
men we would be asked to pity in this hypothetical situation begin hypothetically
rappelling out of SWAT helicopters to infiltrate Mutant Academy in the
very next scene, waving around flashlights and looking around ominously.
Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) leaps out of the darkness with claws and teeth
bared, ready to make short work out of these poor fools, coming to the
school as they did looking for trouble. Elsewhere, Patrick Stewart feels
a great swell of pity and doesn't know why.