[Polonius]

This columnist doesn't know what he's talking about. X2 was based on "God Loves, Man Kills," a famous 1982 X-Men graphic novel by classic comic writer Chris Claremont. Furthermore, the X-Men comics have been portraying anti-mutant authorities as the bad guys for many, many years. Perhaps this self-proclaimed comic fan should start reading something a little more challenging than '60s Superman comics.

[Paul Atreides]

I agree with this article, but, for the most part, we cannot depend on Hollywood to have morals. Every once in a while, a great movie will come out. But, for the most part, modern movies are laced with some sort of liberal indoctrination, subtle and blatant.

[LS]

Well, I saw X-Men 2 and didn't have a problem with it. The entire X-Men series is about mutant outsiders who live in fear of being discovered. Some are good, some are bad, but people assume all of them are bad. (Yes, this is supposed to be some big morality message about homosexuals, except the Lee-Kirby storyline ran long before "gayness" was an issue.)

Any sensible person can see that the reason the U.S. MILITARY must be the "enemies" here is precisely because they use "stun guns," and that no other scenario would work: Arab terrorists would kill the mutants and be done with it. Even the evil Magneto doesn't want to kill everyone---merely to make them all mutants like him, sort of like the "stars on thars."

Anyway, if you read the old Lee-Kirby comics---the Fantastic Four, Spiderman (Lee/Ditko), X-Men, and Avengers---the army was always there to protect the people, but it was relatively helpless against people with superpowers. Constantly, the FF would show up and tell a captain to get his men out of the area, and the FF would handle the baddie. Regular U.S. military units were seldom in a plot where they attacked the FF or the Avengers unless duped by some evildoer like the "Hate Monger."

Bottom line, the movie is a tiny snippet of the story, and the writer can make his point only by taking the movie out of the context of the entire series.

[TheOtherOne]

In that movie, US soldiers terrorize a school full of unarmed children, in one scene shooting a boy with a dart gun, then haul the children off in helicopters (in a scene designed to look like a Vietnam War attack) to a secret base where they are thrown in a dungeon. The bad guy's leader is described as a military scientist, a colonel and a Vietnam veteran who performs cruel and inhumane experiments on innocent people including his son. The plot revolves around this individual's desire to stage a fake terrorist attack on the White House so he can receive presidential permission to carry out a policy of genocid

It's a freaking movie. What a moron.

[Future Snake Eater]

This guy's out to lunch. I think he needs to read the comic, watch the show, then re-watch X2 and pay attention this time. I found nothing so horrific in this movie. I loved it, actually.

[Question_Assumptions]

Unfortunately, X2 makes the mutants so menacing that I actually had quite a bit of sympathy for the military "fanatics". No individual has any business building a machine that could kill every normal person or mutant in the world just as no individual has any business owning their own multi-megaton nuclear weapon in the real world. Arms for personal defense? Sure. The ability to exterminate hundred, thousands, millions, or even billions with a twitch? No.

If there were a school for gifted children in New York that armed the students with full-automatic assault rifles and had a doomsday atomic bomb capable of killing over half the population of the world in the basement, you better believe I'd support a milary raid. Those mutants in that movie proved that they were everything that the bad guys feared they were. Even the good guys to a degree.

[sten]

Arad is an authentic American success story, an Israeli immigrant who put himself through college by driving a truck. Arad is also a veteran of the Israeli Army who was so badly wounded in the Six Day War that he spent months in a hospital recuperating.

Actually, this background explains his point of view perfectly. Arad understands, from personal experience, the danagers and horrors a government can unleash on people. He is naturally suspicous, cautious, and distrusting of any such body.

Another group of men had the exact same point of view... then they wrote a little document in the hope that such a thing cannot happen again.

Forget those lessons at your own peril.

** Founding FATHERS bump **

[sten]

oh, and BTW, there is NO WAY Spiderman would slit ANYONE's throat. In the Marvel universe, Spiderman (the original) is the pinnacle of all that is good. Basically, saint-like. He cannot even lie, as it would be a stain on his character.

Wolverine on the other hand...

(Note: in the movie, his lie to Uncle Ben lead, indirectly, to dire consequences)

... at least, this is how Stan Lee had portrayed him over the years. Spiderman is one of 2 mortals (on Earth) that were worthy to lift Thor's hammer. (The other being the one-and-only, original, Capt. America... natch)

[Sofa King]

Anyone here see "The Hulk"?

I was actually pleased to see that the military commander in that movie was actually portrayed as someone who was trying to protect the population from a potential threat instead of just trying to kill the Hulk for the hell of it.

[steve-b]

Yeah, where do these Hollyweird people get off depicting American military forces attacking innocent people? For a worse example, look at this movie still:

Huh? That's a news still, not a movie still?

[ EMILY LATELLA ] Never mind.... [ /EMILY LATELLA ]

[Sloth]

This is ridiculous. I saw X-Men 2, it did NOT portray the military in general as bad, just one particular guy who was misusing it. Furthermore, it stunned me by portraying an explicitly Christian faith (by the character Nightcrawler) in a very positive light.

If I was to interpret X2 as any kind of modern political allegory, the mutants would be gun-owners.