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The music identified with Nightcrawler’s White House attack in X2 (released in the US as X2: X-Men United, and often called X-Men 2) is “Dies Irae” from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem in D minor, K. 626. The film’s original score was written by John Ottman, and a promotional score listing includes a cue called “White House Attack.” Those two facts are easy to conflate, so this article separates them.
The song: Mozart’s “Dies Irae”
“Dies Irae” is the sequence that opens the Latin text of the Requiem, the mass for the dead that Mozart left unfinished at his death in 1791. It is the movement that viewers and soundtrack listeners most often identify as the piece playing during the sequence in which Nightcrawler teleports through the White House security perimeter and the guards open fire on him.
If you want to hear it, search for Mozart, “Dies Irae,” from Requiem in D minor, K. 626. Any recording of that movement will match the composition, but the choir, orchestra, conductor, tempo and mix will vary from one release to another. The sources available for this identification name the composition; they do not establish which specific recording or arrangement appears in the theatrical film. Expect a recording you find to sound somewhat different from what you remember on screen.
John Ottman’s score and the “White House Attack” cue
John Ottman is credited for the film’s original motion picture score. Two listings connect his work to this scene, and they point to different things:
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- The score album. Apple Music lists a John Ottman soundtrack with 16 songs and a running time of 1 hour 1 minute. The listing carries a 2006 release date and a 2003 copyright line for Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, which fits a later album release of music first heard with the 2003 film.
- The promotional CD. A catalogue entry for a promotional X2 – Volume II CD names John Ottman as composer and includes a 3:18 track titled “White House Attack.” That title describes a cue in the score, named after the scene it accompanies. It does not mean Ottman wrote the Mozart movement.
In other words, the scene has a cue name from Ottman’s score, and the music you hear on screen is identified as Mozart’s Requiem. A reader searching for “the White House song” may find either name, so check which one you are looking for before buying or streaming anything.
Why the answer is easy to confuse
Viewers who ask about this scene often describe it as “a classical score” over the chaotic moment when security fire at the fast-moving, vanishing mutant. That description fits the Mozart identification. Searches for the scene also turn up the Ottman cue title, which is a film-score label rather than the name of a piece of music. Keep the two categories separate when you search: composition (Mozart) and score cue or album (Ottman).
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How to confirm it yourself
- Open the film’s scene listings or a soundtrack Q&A page and find the White House sequence.
- Check that the answer names Mozart’s Requiem in D minor, K. 626, specifically the “Dies Irae” movement.
- If you want Ottman’s score, search for the score album by John Ottman and check the track list for “White House Attack.”
- If you want to hear the Mozart movement with a similar feel, pick a recording and compare it with the scene. Recordings differ, and no source confirms which one the filmmakers used.
Film facts for context
- Title: X2 / X2: X-Men United, commonly called X-Men 2.
- Release: May 2, 2003, according to the official 20th Century Studios film page.
- Director: Bryan Singer, per the same studio page.
- Rating and runtime: PG-13 and 2 hours 13 minutes, per the same studio page.
The identification above rests on a user-contributed soundtrack Q&A and a secondary catalogue entry, not on an official music-credit document. That is enough to name the piece with confidence, but not enough to say which recording or arrangement the film uses.
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