X Men: First Class
X Men: First Class (2011)
Nice alternate poster for you...
I don't think they were doing the films chances any good by billing it as "X Men 5" at my cinema. Still, I think it's probably important to remember that this isn't just trying to follow on from "X Men 3", but also from "Wolvering Origins". Now, I didn't mind X Men 3 too much, but I thought Origins was blooming horrendous. How do you make a hit out of the fifth movie in a flagging franchise?
X Men 3 actually happened to be on the TV the other day and I could tell that it was pretty dreadful (and I was also looking out for the point where it randomly becomes nighttime after the scene where Magneto moves a bridge). Still, I think the thing that stopped me being wholly upset with it was that I hadn't ever been particularly impressed by the X Men movies. They've always been entertaining popcorn fodder, but that's about all I've ever given them credit for. I certainly couldn't fault X Men 3 for it's treatment of Dark Pheonix (she was badass and the best part of the movie) or for the untimely demise of Cyclops (he's everyone's least favourite X man and the last thing we needed was him fighting with Wolverine over which of them should "save" Jean Grey).
So yeah, not much invested in the X Men franchise to be honest. The main draw of this movie for me was Matthew Vaughn as director. After Layer Cake, Stardust and Kick-Ass I had high hopes. Overall I'd have to say this was probably the best X Men movie, but the least good Matthew Vaughn movie. There were elements that were brilliant, but in the end it can't get away from being a prequel to the X Men movies.
I think most people can agree about what the best part of the movie is. Michael Fassbender as Erik/Magneto, plain and simple. The way he uses his powers to go Nazi-hunting is just brilliant. It's also been noted that we find ourselves siding more with Erik than with Charles Xavier, but I can't help but feel this is intentional. Why would you cast James McAvoy if you didn't want the audience to intensely hate him. That's what happens with anyone McAvoy plays. If he'd only had a little more dialogue in the first Narnia movie and perhaps a little more opportunity to look smug, we'd have been absolutely relishing the idea of the White Witch giving that faun what was coming to him. With that in mind he is, if anything, relatively endearing in X Men. Sure he's a self-righteous and spoilt little lady-chaser, but when it seems that his insight into the workings of the human psyche gives him a great deal more maturity than he'd ever have otherwise. Even so, he still comes across as distinctly less mature than his troubled but experienced friend with the metal-bending powers. In spite of the massive differences between them, Fassbender and McAvoy genuinely appear to have real chemistry and to bond when common sense would make it wholly unlikely.
One other thing I was really looking forward to at the beginning of this movie was Ben Milner and sadly I'm not entirely convinced that he was suitable for the role. He does his "I'm a troubled child expressing my inner turmoil by screaming shtick" and I'm afraid I'm not convinced that it didn't feel troubled enough. It felt too much like Ian Dury's son being a rebel (in "Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll") or the Plymouth brethren child discovering Rambo (in "Son of Rambow") and not enough like a child crying out in anger and inconsolable grief. Perhaps I'm being unfair and on a second watch it won't seem so bad, but I was expecting a much better performance from one of the most talented child actors working today.
Okay, so yeah the problems have been mentioned elsewhere. Emma Frost seems a little characterless (which is something that is much more upsetting if you are familiar with a more vibrant character in the comics, which fortunately wasn't an issue for me). Also there are too many X Men. The X Men we were really focussed on were Kevin Bacon's character, Nicholas Hoult's character (blooming eck he's come a long way since "About A Boy", though we've already seen that he's awesome acting alongside Colin Firth in "A Single Man"), Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence rocks!), Emma Frost (I guess) and, of course, Magneto and Prof. X. That's a pretty large number of characters to focus on and if there was rather less time given to the other X Men, it might have worked a bit better. Admittedly scenes with any of these characters is often used as a means to add more depth to the central six, but I think scenes between just those six could have done the job just as well. Another problem that's been mentioned is that Xavier is spoilt and self-righteous and in absolutely no position to start lecturing a holocaust survivor, but I believe I've already tackled this. It's only a problem if you think we are supposed to be on Xavier's side.
Here are some problems I don't think have been tackled enough in reviews I've read so far...
Never take a human life! Oh for goodness sake, why do superhero stories always do this? There's this suggestion that if anyone ever kills someone they've failed in some way. It's always wrong to kill. You've got to send the right message to children apparently, even in The Dark Knight which involved masses of violence in the opening bank heist scene which no young child should be watching. So yeah, first they have Batman ridiculously screaming and intentionally crashing his motorcyle, all so he can fail to kill a mass murderer on the loose. Now they have Charles Xavier telling Erik/Magneto that he mustn't kill a man set on the nuclear destruction of the entire world, even when this guy is one step away from completing that plan. Are you kidding me?
The big speech! Nothing breaks my suspension of disbelief in a superhero movie than the big speeches. Perhaps they needed to have this many X Men in the movie so that Erik's rant would have an audience bigger than four. Yes, I know we need to see how Magneto begins and the script needs to explain his position somehow, but it felt all too pre-prepared and not spontaneous enough. Perhaps this somewhat explains the choice of Patrick Stewart as Professor X in the original movies. We needed someone with plenty of experience in a role where he's considered entitled to ramble.
Oooh don't forget Magneto's a bad guy really! The bad guy in this movie is played by Kevin Bacon. His character worked for the Nazis and still have a Nazi-esque view in mind where mutants are the new Aryans and everyone without powers is worthy of extermination. It's suggested quite explicitly towards the end that Erik would actually support this sentiment and I just can't quite work it out. The motive behind Erik's activities had never previous (it seemed to me) been genocide. Certainly he considered mutants and non-mutants to be two separate groups, but his motive seemed to be revenge. He saw all non-mutants as complicit in the abuse mutants suffered and he thought they should pay for it. Once again, perhaps I need to see that scene again, but it felt like they were doing a "Star Wars Episode III". They needed a change in the chracter to happen before the end of the movie and so they rushed it, leaving the transition feeling rather unrealistic.
I should note that my issue in this last case is a single line and I may have misinterpreted that scene. I may need to see it again. (And I wouldn't mind doing so.)
Overall this was very well acted, pretty well written, but a little lacking in substance. The number of characters being juggled left the movie feeling rather fragmented as the movie tried (and failed?) to give reasonable time to everyone. The main characters were great and overall the sixties setting worked great. Essentially the movie is made of a great many awesome bits, but as a whole there was something missing. This is a problem Matthew Vaughn's other films did not suffer from. Still at least the lines aren't quite so cheesy as in earlier movies.
As I said before, this is the best X Men movie. Just don't expect anything more than that.
4.5/5
Nice alternate poster for you...
I don't think they were doing the films chances any good by billing it as "X Men 5" at my cinema. Still, I think it's probably important to remember that this isn't just trying to follow on from "X Men 3", but also from "Wolvering Origins". Now, I didn't mind X Men 3 too much, but I thought Origins was blooming horrendous. How do you make a hit out of the fifth movie in a flagging franchise?
X Men 3 actually happened to be on the TV the other day and I could tell that it was pretty dreadful (and I was also looking out for the point where it randomly becomes nighttime after the scene where Magneto moves a bridge). Still, I think the thing that stopped me being wholly upset with it was that I hadn't ever been particularly impressed by the X Men movies. They've always been entertaining popcorn fodder, but that's about all I've ever given them credit for. I certainly couldn't fault X Men 3 for it's treatment of Dark Pheonix (she was badass and the best part of the movie) or for the untimely demise of Cyclops (he's everyone's least favourite X man and the last thing we needed was him fighting with Wolverine over which of them should "save" Jean Grey).
So yeah, not much invested in the X Men franchise to be honest. The main draw of this movie for me was Matthew Vaughn as director. After Layer Cake, Stardust and Kick-Ass I had high hopes. Overall I'd have to say this was probably the best X Men movie, but the least good Matthew Vaughn movie. There were elements that were brilliant, but in the end it can't get away from being a prequel to the X Men movies.
I think most people can agree about what the best part of the movie is. Michael Fassbender as Erik/Magneto, plain and simple. The way he uses his powers to go Nazi-hunting is just brilliant. It's also been noted that we find ourselves siding more with Erik than with Charles Xavier, but I can't help but feel this is intentional. Why would you cast James McAvoy if you didn't want the audience to intensely hate him. That's what happens with anyone McAvoy plays. If he'd only had a little more dialogue in the first Narnia movie and perhaps a little more opportunity to look smug, we'd have been absolutely relishing the idea of the White Witch giving that faun what was coming to him. With that in mind he is, if anything, relatively endearing in X Men. Sure he's a self-righteous and spoilt little lady-chaser, but when it seems that his insight into the workings of the human psyche gives him a great deal more maturity than he'd ever have otherwise. Even so, he still comes across as distinctly less mature than his troubled but experienced friend with the metal-bending powers. In spite of the massive differences between them, Fassbender and McAvoy genuinely appear to have real chemistry and to bond when common sense would make it wholly unlikely.
One other thing I was really looking forward to at the beginning of this movie was Ben Milner and sadly I'm not entirely convinced that he was suitable for the role. He does his "I'm a troubled child expressing my inner turmoil by screaming shtick" and I'm afraid I'm not convinced that it didn't feel troubled enough. It felt too much like Ian Dury's son being a rebel (in "Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll") or the Plymouth brethren child discovering Rambo (in "Son of Rambow") and not enough like a child crying out in anger and inconsolable grief. Perhaps I'm being unfair and on a second watch it won't seem so bad, but I was expecting a much better performance from one of the most talented child actors working today.
Okay, so yeah the problems have been mentioned elsewhere. Emma Frost seems a little characterless (which is something that is much more upsetting if you are familiar with a more vibrant character in the comics, which fortunately wasn't an issue for me). Also there are too many X Men. The X Men we were really focussed on were Kevin Bacon's character, Nicholas Hoult's character (blooming eck he's come a long way since "About A Boy", though we've already seen that he's awesome acting alongside Colin Firth in "A Single Man"), Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence rocks!), Emma Frost (I guess) and, of course, Magneto and Prof. X. That's a pretty large number of characters to focus on and if there was rather less time given to the other X Men, it might have worked a bit better. Admittedly scenes with any of these characters is often used as a means to add more depth to the central six, but I think scenes between just those six could have done the job just as well. Another problem that's been mentioned is that Xavier is spoilt and self-righteous and in absolutely no position to start lecturing a holocaust survivor, but I believe I've already tackled this. It's only a problem if you think we are supposed to be on Xavier's side.
Here are some problems I don't think have been tackled enough in reviews I've read so far...
Never take a human life! Oh for goodness sake, why do superhero stories always do this? There's this suggestion that if anyone ever kills someone they've failed in some way. It's always wrong to kill. You've got to send the right message to children apparently, even in The Dark Knight which involved masses of violence in the opening bank heist scene which no young child should be watching. So yeah, first they have Batman ridiculously screaming and intentionally crashing his motorcyle, all so he can fail to kill a mass murderer on the loose. Now they have Charles Xavier telling Erik/Magneto that he mustn't kill a man set on the nuclear destruction of the entire world, even when this guy is one step away from completing that plan. Are you kidding me?
The big speech! Nothing breaks my suspension of disbelief in a superhero movie than the big speeches. Perhaps they needed to have this many X Men in the movie so that Erik's rant would have an audience bigger than four. Yes, I know we need to see how Magneto begins and the script needs to explain his position somehow, but it felt all too pre-prepared and not spontaneous enough. Perhaps this somewhat explains the choice of Patrick Stewart as Professor X in the original movies. We needed someone with plenty of experience in a role where he's considered entitled to ramble.
Oooh don't forget Magneto's a bad guy really! The bad guy in this movie is played by Kevin Bacon. His character worked for the Nazis and still have a Nazi-esque view in mind where mutants are the new Aryans and everyone without powers is worthy of extermination. It's suggested quite explicitly towards the end that Erik would actually support this sentiment and I just can't quite work it out. The motive behind Erik's activities had never previous (it seemed to me) been genocide. Certainly he considered mutants and non-mutants to be two separate groups, but his motive seemed to be revenge. He saw all non-mutants as complicit in the abuse mutants suffered and he thought they should pay for it. Once again, perhaps I need to see that scene again, but it felt like they were doing a "Star Wars Episode III". They needed a change in the chracter to happen before the end of the movie and so they rushed it, leaving the transition feeling rather unrealistic.
I should note that my issue in this last case is a single line and I may have misinterpreted that scene. I may need to see it again. (And I wouldn't mind doing so.)
Overall this was very well acted, pretty well written, but a little lacking in substance. The number of characters being juggled left the movie feeling rather fragmented as the movie tried (and failed?) to give reasonable time to everyone. The main characters were great and overall the sixties setting worked great. Essentially the movie is made of a great many awesome bits, but as a whole there was something missing. This is a problem Matthew Vaughn's other films did not suffer from. Still at least the lines aren't quite so cheesy as in earlier movies.
As I said before, this is the best X Men movie. Just don't expect anything more than that.
4.5/5