As hard as it sounds to believe given how ubiquitous the franchise has become over the course of the last 15 years, the superhero genre was in fairly decent health before the birth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with X2: X-Men United (or X-Men 2, if you prefer) one of the best to emerge prior to Kevin Feige’s dominance of the artform.
Bryan Singer’s opening installment was constrained by the volume of world-building and exposition necessary to help set the table for what was to come, with the second chapter having the freedom to up the ante in every way. Kicking off with Nightcrawler’s stunning assault on the White House, X2 still ranks as one of the best comic book sequels ever made almost 20 years after its initial release.
The merry band of mutants suffered their fair share of ups and downs along the way, which was to be expected when 20th Century Fox’s expanded universe counted 13 feature-length installments that included a number of spinoffs and reboots, but neither time nor inconsistency has done a thing to dent X2‘s reputation as a top-tier tale of superpowered derring-do.
Even though Disney Plus has the entirety of the MCU available at the push of a button (bar Tom Holland’s Spider-Man trilogy in certain markets, it’s X-Men 2 that subscribers have been opting to revisit in their numbers this weekend. Per FlixPatrol, the stellar sophomore effort is one of the platform’s top-viewed titles globally, proving that there’s plenty of gas in the tank – as long as the impending reboot manages to deliver the goods.
