05.10.2003

I still remember my first X-Men comic, The Uncanny X-Men 179, when Kitty Pryde was being forced to marry Caliban, pretty much in the middle of the fantastic Chris Claremont run from 1975-1991 that provided most of the character points for the movie and to me will always be the way the tortured Logan, Rogue, Storm, and the rest were all best done, as much as I love Grant Morrison’s current pacifist manifesto that is New X-Men (vols. 1, 2, 3 out in paperback).

I geeked out watching X2, in which, as in X-MEN, I loved everything except the need for a big set piece doomsday plot to foil, but my favorite thing must have been seeing Nightcrawler come to life in the way he did — it was just as exciting as seeing a living, breathing Wolverine in the first one. Just as he is in the comics these days, Nightcrawler in the movie is more religious and less fun than he was in Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men (and also in Warren Ellis’ lesser-known, and lesser, Excalibur), but seeing him move through a scene and fight and rescue people the way he did was the best action-movie ballet since CROUCHING TIGER.

This CountingDown.com interview with X2’s production designer Guy Dyas has some of the details about how they brought Nightcrawler to life so well, and a lot of other interesting design and production trivia from the movie (and be sure not to miss the great circus posters Dyas made). Let’s be nice to Hollywood when they get it right and thrill the hell out of us… soon enough, it’ll be all dreck again in the multiplexes, so I’ll probably just go see X2 again.

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