Papa est en Voyage d'Affaires

For all the critical praise and financial success, the first X-Men film doesn't seem like much more than a well conceived prologue to the main story of X-Men 2, or X2 as it has become. Relations between director Bryan Singer and composer Michael Kamen were apparently somewhat strained while making the original, Singer evidently missing his regular musical partner, John Ottman. Happily for Singer, Ottman was available to both score and edit the first sequel (which apparently took six people for the original - I'm guess one Michael Kamen and five editors then). Kamen's original wasn't exactly smothered with praise and even though it had some fine moments, it was just a touch uneven overall. In what seems to be a curious trend with sequel scores, X2 is a more even listen, which means that while there are few dull moments, highlights are seriously lacking.

One of the major complaints against Kamen's score was the lack of a good theme or two, but as with most Kamen, the themes were fairly subtle and Ottman doesn't really do much to change the approach. The opening Suite from X2, naturally enough features the main theme, although quite how similar to Kamen's it is meant to be, I'm not sure, but there is a distinct similarity, if not exactly the same. Ottman augments the orchestra with a choir for the full Elfman effect. However, even though Ottman is going for a serious and unflashy approach, it's a touch on the insipid side, not helped by bland harmonies and fairly standard orchestrations, both of which are less interesting than Kamen's and vastly less interesting than the dazzling invention of Elfman's Spider-Man title sequence, for example.

The lack of highlights makes picking out specific moments difficult, even longer cues that sound very promising are a slight disappointment. Mansion Attack is perhaps the most obvious, a track title that suggests a build up toward a scintillating action sequence. It certainly starts as predicted, but soon loses focus and as with most of the cues, just ambles around with a few hints at the main theme, a bit of choir for added impact, but no real feeling of tension or excitement. Perhaps surprisingly, Ottman uses little in the way of synths, almost a shame since Kamen actually made some inspired choices for the original, but Ottman's orchestral effects are somewhat limited to the occasional Goldenthalian horn trill or Goldsmithian piano rumbling. If Ottman has a style of his own, there isn't much of it evident here.

Even for quite serious film versions of comic books, the composer needs to have a slightly outlandish musical personality, but that just isn't Ottman at all. It's a decent enough adventure score, but the dramatisation is in shades of grey; I admit that X-Men is not as clear cut as good vs. evil, but a little more distinction between light and dark wouldn't have gone amiss. Kamen's X-Men theme had a dark edge to it, but his music for the villains was genuinely creepy and sinister, but that simply isn't the case here and the music relates almost nothing with regard to the success or failure of the heroes. It's not that X2 is particularly awful, it's simply a little dull. Maybe the benchmarks are too high, but if the score weren't attached to such a high profile film, I suspect that wouldn't really be noticed at all. Disappointing.