Outside of fan-fave Wolverine's kung-fu battle against adamantium-laced peer Deathstrike (Kelly Hu), the best action sequences belong to the putative bad muties: brainwashed Nightcrawer's bravura attack on the Oval Office, Mystique's infiltration of Stryker's underground lair and Darth Pyro's tantrum pyrotechnic display against an unfortunate squad of Boston cops. (The latter comes across as especially vicious since the poor humans on the receiving end have no way to fend off the flames.) All the other major characters get their brief CGI setpieces (neatest one visually is a series of tornadoes that Storm creates to discourage a pack of pursuing fighter jets), but most of it looked pretty rote. Only time Scott "Cyclops" Summers (James Marsden) really gets to cut loose, he's been brainwhipped into attacking his lover Jean.

And then there's poor Prof X: captured early in the pic (along with Cyclops), mentally reined by a "neural inhibitor" and victimized by Stryker's son, a brain-controlling mutant who looks like he's been lobotomized by Ron Popeil. Attempting to trick Xavier into activating Cerebro, the laser lightshow gizmo (am I only one who expects to hear Dark Side Of The Moon every time they turn this thing on?) that tracks both norms and mutants, the brain-swaying Stryker Jr. creates an imaginary version of the school and pretends to be a helpless li'l girl mutant. Watching this scene, I admit I momentarily got my franchises confused. Didn't I see a bit like this in the first Star Trek: New Generation film? I thought, wondering if Whoopi Goldberg was gonna show.

What I kept waiting for was a moment when our wheelchair-bound headmaster finally shrugged off these puissant attempts at mental manipulation and (figuratively) stood up for himself. Didn't get it, though. Like the elder faculty in the Harry Potter movies, the main thing wise adults exist to do is get rescued and tidy the mess afterwards. I don't recall the Professor X of the early comics being so consistently ineffective, but as I said I haven't been keeping up with X-book continuity all that faithfully, so he could just be growing old.

For our heroes, the biggest pleasures come in the small character moments: the Jean/Logan/Scott triangle, Rogue and Iceman struggling to hold their hormones in check, Nightcrawler explaining the iconography that's been engraved all over his body, Mystique making a morph-filled play for Wolverine, the mutant kid who stays up all night remote controlling the teevee with the power of his mind. If much of the first flick served as a reminder that small moments were insufficient in a genre flick sans an adequate threat, the new entry shows how these same smallish bits can enhance a storyline with a decent ratio of menace.

Never thought I'd write this, but Singer and co. have actually got me anticipating X3 now. . .