When the first movie came out I thought it was well done and I liked it, it built and explained the story and the characters well and I felt like I knew the and understood the whole mutant/human relationship (or lack therof). But it needed something... more. Well, the second movie certainly has more. But I found it confusing because they toss in so many more characters and barely explain who they are. This movie assumes you already know, so someone like me who never read the comics kind of gets confused. But at the same time i'ts not necessarily important you know every little thing that happens on the screen to get the movie. I just felt that many times when the audience was laughing at something that I wasn't in on the "in-joke".

That said, It's well done, the action is good, and the story is intact. Basically it follows the typical excellent "part II" superhero movie syndrome where it's equal if not better then the first.

I've come to really like the mutant story, so I hope the sequels that are sure to come don't follow in their predecessors clumsy footsteps (anyone remember Superman or Batman 3 and 4?).

Of course, I'm an X-Men fan, so this movie was made for me. It had the required amount of new X-Men characters, and of course the required amount of back-story for some old characters to keep them fresh.

Trying, for a moment, to put aside my personal biases, I still think it's a good movie. It doesn't hold up on its own, it really is a sequel, in that you can't watch it without at least knowing most of the plot of the first one. Once you get over that, the overall story of mutant-kind versus human-kind has always been a thinly veiled cover over just telling the story of almost any minority group's struggle for acceptance, and this movie continues that story along nicely. And there are plenty of sci-fi effects and such to keep everyone interested.