X-Men
Went to Newcastle to see X-Men: First Class today. X-Men is one of my early fandoms, my first ficathon (and my first LJ icon, see the one I'm using) were in that fandom. My OTP in it is Xavier/Magneto, so this was obviously a film I looked forward to!
I'm sure that there are many people who went to this movie and came out disappointed - apart from Xavier, Magneto and Mystique, the characters are not the same as in the other movies, and most of the X-Men are B-Listers (no Storm, Wolverine, Jean Grey or Cyclops) and much of the movie is spent on people talking, backstories, training montages, politics and so on. The action it had, though, was very good! For the same reasons it was the right kind of movie for me.
The younger actors are of course no match for Patrick Stewart and especially Ian McKellen, but James McAvoy who played Charles was very good, I thought - nice but just a bit arrogant/over-confident, spoiled, charismatic, occasionally a dick (if Patrick Stewart's Prof X had one fault, it was that he was too GOOD), but also very gentle and kind when needed. Michael Fassbender wasn't quite as good, a bit too gruff and not quite elegant enough for Magneto, though I guess Magneto's charisma grows as he grows older, and it's pretty hard to match McKellen for charisma or the ability to look very dapper even in a supervillain costume. It was maybe a matter of wardrobe choices, too, because I thought they were a bit off for him.
The other characters were all fun: although I missed older!Mystique a bit, her first appearance as a little girl was beyond cute, Hank almost deserved to be turned blue but once he did, he had my sympathies back, Havok and Banshee were surprisingly non-rubbish, even Emma Frost didn't annoy me (though her actress, distractinly, has no hips whatsoever and generally needs to be fed some cookies, and I can't understand why she didn't at least consider changing sides once she got a glimpse of Erik's memories of Schmidt - but I guess she knew before that he was a nazi and didn't care.). Pixie was dull, I guess, and killing off the only black guy in the movie was also a rubbish choice. The Hellfire Club wasn't lame as villains, but I never expected it to be - cultists are usually fun.
The movie had a Watchmen feel to it in some places because of the Sixties-retro (I could swear Watchmen used the same shot of planes flying over Moscow!) although I have to say - the wardrobe/hair department really didn't do a good job of making it look like the sixties! The one scene that convinced me was the X kids grooving at the secret CIA base, and that was because of the music. And maybe nerd!Hank, he also looked pretty sixties.
All in all a very satisfying movie.
I'm sure that there are many people who went to this movie and came out disappointed - apart from Xavier, Magneto and Mystique, the characters are not the same as in the other movies, and most of the X-Men are B-Listers (no Storm, Wolverine, Jean Grey or Cyclops) and much of the movie is spent on people talking, backstories, training montages, politics and so on. The action it had, though, was very good! For the same reasons it was the right kind of movie for me.
The younger actors are of course no match for Patrick Stewart and especially Ian McKellen, but James McAvoy who played Charles was very good, I thought - nice but just a bit arrogant/over-confident, spoiled, charismatic, occasionally a dick (if Patrick Stewart's Prof X had one fault, it was that he was too GOOD), but also very gentle and kind when needed. Michael Fassbender wasn't quite as good, a bit too gruff and not quite elegant enough for Magneto, though I guess Magneto's charisma grows as he grows older, and it's pretty hard to match McKellen for charisma or the ability to look very dapper even in a supervillain costume. It was maybe a matter of wardrobe choices, too, because I thought they were a bit off for him.
The other characters were all fun: although I missed older!Mystique a bit, her first appearance as a little girl was beyond cute, Hank almost deserved to be turned blue but once he did, he had my sympathies back, Havok and Banshee were surprisingly non-rubbish, even Emma Frost didn't annoy me (though her actress, distractinly, has no hips whatsoever and generally needs to be fed some cookies, and I can't understand why she didn't at least consider changing sides once she got a glimpse of Erik's memories of Schmidt - but I guess she knew before that he was a nazi and didn't care.). Pixie was dull, I guess, and killing off the only black guy in the movie was also a rubbish choice. The Hellfire Club wasn't lame as villains, but I never expected it to be - cultists are usually fun.
The movie had a Watchmen feel to it in some places because of the Sixties-retro (I could swear Watchmen used the same shot of planes flying over Moscow!) although I have to say - the wardrobe/hair department really didn't do a good job of making it look like the sixties! The one scene that convinced me was the X kids grooving at the secret CIA base, and that was because of the music. And maybe nerd!Hank, he also looked pretty sixties.
All in all a very satisfying movie.