X2
X-Men United
Film · 2003 · 133 minutes · Original Trilogy
After a mutant attempts to assassinate the U.S. President inside the White House, anti-mutant extremist Colonel William Stryker uses the incident as pretext to launch a military assault on Professor Xavier's school. Stryker captures Xavier and plans to use a modified Cerebro to kill every mutant on Earth, having once used Wolverine as a test subject in the Weapon X program that gave him his adamantium skeleton. With the school overrun and Magneto freed from his plastic prison by his own allies, the X-Men are forced into an uneasy alliance with Magneto and Mystique to rescue Xavier and stop Stryker. Jean Grey sacrifices herself to hold back a flood and save the team's escaping jet, an act that leaves her fate ambiguous. The film ends with Stryker's plan foiled but hints that Magneto's endgame for mutant survival is far from over.
Follows on from
- X-Mendirect-sequel — Continues directly from the first film's story — Wolverine, Rogue, and the X-Men's roster and unresolved conflict with Magneto carry forward, with Magneto's imprisonment (from the ending of X-Men) as a key plot point.
Leads to
- X-Men: The Last Standdirect-sequel — Continues directly from X2's Alkali Lake climax, where Jean Grey sacrificed herself to save the team and was seemingly killed — setting up her resurrection as the Phoenix here.
- X-Men: Days of Future Pastcrossover · optional — The original-trilogy cast's future storyline continues directly from the continuity established in X2, before this film's changed timeline supersedes it.