xmen first class With the summer blockbuster bloodbath coming soon, hype for numerous films has been generated such as the campaigning for Thor, Green Lantern and even X Men First Class. While, most of the advertising for X Men has gone down the wrong way with horrible looking posters, I must admit that X Men First Class went too much with preview clips. I mean Thor had his in the hospital and the fighting scenes but those were just extended scenes from the ones we already could see in the trailer. X Men First Class had important scenes in the climax like Magneto pulling submarines or Shaw and his Hellfire Club's rampages. I mean, its one thing to extend trailers but another thing to keep pumping footage out like that. Its just plain old over exposure.
Anyways, let's move onto my review.
Let's talk about the casting first. I thoroughly enjoyed James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender's performances as the so called titular characters of the franchise. Honorable mentions would be Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique which is a talking character with her own viewpoints and not some copycat speaker from the past films. The rest of the cast do it with their own style with Nicholas Hoult tackling Beast and of course January Jones doing a very cold blooded Emma Frost. Of course, we mustn't forget Kevin Bacon who did a villain that was quite good. I won't say Heath Ledger Joker good but may Liam Neeson Ra' Al Ghul good and Jeff Bridges' Iron Monger good. He knows when not to step over the line and become some over campy villain.
Moving on to plot, the plot of this film is pretty neat and nicely wrapped up by the end. Its definitely of the class of X Men and X2 but not up to the class of genre makers like Iron Man or The Dark Knight. However, compared to other films like Raimi's Spiderman or the recently released, Thor, X Men First Class is at that level. One thing I liked was how they learnt from Nolan and Richard Donner in how they did Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and the good old, Christopher Reeve's Superman. They had these great actors in small roles. I mean Oliver Platt as the Men in Black (who plays quite a key but small role) as well as Jason Flemyng as Azazel were some nice actors to watch out for in the film. Throw in some cameos by the likes of Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Romijn, and you definitely have a good film in the works (not necessarily a good comic book movie though!).
Pitching realism against political sub plots, Vaughn and his writers managed to create a world that makes you feel for the characters. The beginning which is actually a shot by shot replay of the beginning of X Men 1, is already like a hint to tell you that this film is nothing like The Last Stand or that (no respect to source material) Wolverine Origins. Its more of a Singer style, Bond tone film, if you get what I mean.
Of course, there are some bad points. Aside from a few plot holes, I am also one of the few who come from the "Where the frick is the real First Class" camp. Though it was nice to kinda see some guys like Banshee and Havok appear, it just wasn't right. Having Mystique defect I can accept but no Cyclops? No Jean? And replacing the angelic Angel with a dragon-fly winged girl is not funny at all. I mean that problem could have been averted if they just did a tele-kinetic Jean Grey. Not a psychic one since Xavier is there but hey, you want equal genders, there's your solution.
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