After the success of X-men (2000) both financially and through critical appraisal, 20th Century Fox immediately commissioned the second instalment to the X-Men franchise, the sequel ‘X2’ or ‘X-Men 2’ which was bought to our screens in 2003. The superhero movie is directed again by Bryan Singer who also researched various story lines from the X- Men comic book series to cultivate a plot on which to base the script.
The plot follows an assassination attempt on the president by a mutant named Nightcrawler, which sparks a fear of meta-humans and triggers an assault on Professor Xavier’s school for mutants making the X-Men go into hiding. Meanwhile a scientist and religious fanatic named William Stryker plans to annihilate all meta-humans and kidnaps the X-Men’s leader Xavier in a plot to use the cerebro to find the mutants and destroy them. This leaves the X-Men with no choice but to team up with their enemy Magneto, in a temporary alliance to stop Stryker before it’s too late.
The movie crossed the $200 million mark, making it the 6th highest grossing film of 2003. It was praised for its action, acting and storyline with a widely accepted response that it surpassed its predecessor, the original X-Men (2000) movie which is very rare achievement and a tribute to Singers potential. In May 2007 Rotten Tomatoes listed X2 as the greatest comic book movie of all time and it stands today with a 7.4/10 rating on IMDB. It won the Saturn award for ‘Best Science Fiction Film’ and got Singer a Best Director nomination along with 6 other nominations at the Saturn Awards that year. Overall this response was critical in securing the position of the X-Men franchise today and is obvious as to why Singer was chosen subsequently to direct X-Men; Days of Future Past (2014) the highest rated movie of the franchise.