Sunday, June 5, 2011

X-Men: First Class


Before I talk about X-Men First Class, I wanna talk about the trailers before the movie.

really? we're doing this again?

I'm not a james Franco fan and I think he's outta place as a scientist, but this looks ok, it didn't make me want to see it but it did make me interested in seeing more. also Andy Serkis(Of Gollum Fame) is playing the ape.

use of led zeppelin is shameful, awful awful cover, and I do want to see this movie but I have no fucking clue what goes on in this trailer the flashing words on the screen for a split second isn't something I like I think this actually caused a seizure.

Why not like other super hero movies? we have quite a few coming out this summer captain america maybe? Neither here nor there, every time I go see a movie I feel like the trailers are always awful.


So this movie is how Charles Xavier's school for gifted youngsters is founded, and how the X-Men start. It has problems, quite a few problems actually, but I'd have to say I really enjoyed it.

The movie starts out with the scene from the first X-men film where Erik later to be known as Magneto, is taken to a prison camp his mom is pulled away from him and several german soldiers have to keep him from destroying the gate. I really liked that they tied this in to the first films, but if you were Marvel would you want your new movie to be associated with the old ones? The first two are good the third is downright unwatchably bad. I watch some SHIT movies and I found X-men the last stand or whatever the crap it was called downright unwatchable. already off track and i'm sorry. K so they give you what happened with Erik at that age then they include Charles meeting "Raven" who will be known later as mystique. Flash forward 10 years or so Charles is getting his doctoral degree in picking up women by using lines about how they're mutated, which always makes Raven jealous because she wants to have his babies and make little tiny blue telepaths. This angle is almost entirely abandoned. Erik is out for revenge trying to kill Kevin Bacon, who the CIA is also after. Charles is then recruited by the CIA this leads him to Erik and together they begin training mutants. The team consists of Raven, Banshee, Beast, Havoc, Angel Salvadore and of course Erik and Charles.

So this is where I talk about problems, first, I don't really like a lot of those x-men. Havoc is cool but I don't think he actually fits in to this timeline, he's Scott Summer's younger brother and he was around and a teenager in the 1960's? so is Cyclops like 55 in the first movie? I guess they'll probably make him Cyclops father as this series goes on and I can see why they wouldn't want to use his actual father. Audiences may have a problem relating to this guy.


Space pirates are very difficult to relate to for some reason. Angel Salvadore is pretty much just a fly, Banshee can just scream really loud, Beast is ok but I never understood why fans were always so pissed he was left out of the movies, so not much interest in that group.

ok nextly, I felt charles and Moira's love story was completely forced in to the movie. It's a complete non-topic till the end, I ACTUALLY thought it made more sense for him to have an interest in Raven. They meet when they're young, become good friends one day they have wild sex while drunk and don't talk about it the next day, half way through she turns in to his mother and scars him for life, which is what leads to her joining Magneto. Which also brings me to a point, when you're evil shapeshifting is a really cool and helpful power, when you're good it's COMPLETELY USELESS! Unless you're trying to scar your friends for life.

The acting for the most part is pretty good, I liked the two main actors who played Magneto and Charles, Michael Fassbender and Laurence Belcher. Kevin Bacon made a very good villain which surprised me. January Jones (how is she not a porn star?) Jennifer Lawrence, Rose Byrne all played their roles and Emma Frost, Raven, and Moira MacTaggert very well. Zoe Kravitz wasn't in it a lot (she played Angel Salvadore) but she was far from great. mostly good, some was painful like the kid who played banshee, not enough to ruin the movie.

The beast costume.....well look

I've seen better beast costumes at Meijer. It's not a big deal because most of the time Beast isn't in his beast costume, but it was hard to not laugh when he came on screen.

Ok I gotta wrap this up because it's getting LONG! But I feel recently superhero movies have been pretty good. Iron man was definitely a solid movie, the Dark Knight was great, Iron Man 2 and Thor were both pretty good. I felt those benefited from having a small cast, this is a bigger ensemble picture and it's hurt by the size of the cast. while WELL worth the 7 bucks to go see it. It was a lot of fun if you're a fan of the first two you won't be disappointed, if you're a fan of the third then you have horrible taste in movies.

Sorry this is a horrible rant.

2 comments:

Jim said...

I think the point with Charles/Mystique is that, in his youth, he's a bit of a hypocrite and a self-hating mutant. He much prefers passing as human, and is not able see Mystique as beautiful in her blue scaly form. She's Charles' great mistake, and adds a little dimension to both his and Erik's argument that both are not necessarily entirely right or wrong.

Danielle said...

Totally agree with what Jim just said. Charles' inability to see Mystique as beautiful is what made her choose to go with Magneto and feel like she will never be accepted.