The Summer of Superheroes just delivered a winner.
“X-Men: First Class,” the tale of how Professor Xavier and his wascally mutants first rallied for the forces of good, is precisely the summer movie audiences deserve. My review at The Washington Times tells more about my insta-affection for the fifth film in the “X” franchise.
Over to you, “Green Lantern” and “Captain America: The First Avenger.” Let’s see if you can top this.
(Photo: Michael Fassbender, Caleb Landry Jones, James McAvoy, Rose Byrne, Jennifer Lawrence and Lucas Till play mutants who join forces to stop a nuclear war in “X-Men: First Class” Photo credit: Murray Close)
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
It’s that bad?
Nah, I kid. But given how much money they throw at crap like Avatar and the Bourne movies, it’s hard not to think good movies are in spite of, not because of, the audience’s behavior. Remember, you can deserve punishment as well as reward.
Does this film have any of what your pals at Big Hollywood call the “Leftist Sucker Punch”? Because that’s been a real problem with Marvel in the past; X-Men is pretty explicitly pushing a gay agenda recently, and it’s always been used to push the “flyover country is full of ignorant bigots” thing. Leaving to one side how opposing mutant registration but favoring gun control is asinine (Magneto and Chuck X. are just a bit more dangerous than a Glock), I wonder if the writers can resist the temptation to use Magneto’s “genocidal Holocaust survivor” thing as an excuse to air anti-Zionist canards.
Or maybe I’m getting paranoid in my old age. And I’m 26.
Actually, the film is vaguely pro-American as Professor X and crew rally with the CIA to stop the villain from starting WWIII.
Thanks for the heads-up(s), WWTW! I was on-again/off-again to see this in the theatres, but combine your review with my main man Chip Diller as Sebastian Shaw, whose Hellfire Club storyline was the introduction to my X-Men comic book days, and I’m in line somewhere this weekend.
The early part of the film was much darker than I expected, which was a good thing, I just wish they’d been able to hold that tone for the entire film. Frankly they could have done a whole film of just the young Magneto and Bacon’s character. Take out the super power stuff and Erik’s hunt for Bacon would have been riveting enough for it’s own film.
Good, exciting and engaging, more adult that I expected. The reaction of the two grown women sitting next to me at the way Bacon treats Jones at one point alone was worth the price of admission.
In regards to the whole gay acceptance subtext, it’s one of those things that if you aren’t aware of it ahead of time you may not get, but it’s definately there. Towards the end of the film one mutant tells another to be “mutant and proud”,(or words very close to that). “Gay and proud” besides being a book is sort of a slogan or catch phrase in the gay community.
Just saw it tonight with the family and I agree.
My expectations going in were pretty modest and I was very pleasantly surprised. Bacon was better than ever and Fassbender was very impressive.
Need to see it again to see how it holds up to repeat viewings, but first impression is that it’s one of the best of the franchise.
CT, if you know me, you know my hesitation to go to the movies. But, I took my brother and we both agreed it hits the mark on the movie to see so far. My only beef is making sure story lines and character builds match that of the previous X-Men movies. Maybe its because Raven gets very little dialogue in the first three movies that I don’t trust that particular story so much.
It uses the themes of the previous movies to build an intelligent, fast-paced, and highly entertaining prequel. The performances from the whole cast, especially McAvoy and Fassbender add a lot to these great characters as well. Good review, check out mine when you can!