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X-Men: First Class

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  • X-Men: First Class

    I don't know what it is about live-action, comic-book superhero films that turns me on, but I really do like them even though I've never been a reader of comic books (they've interested me, but with an already ridiculous passion for baseball cards, I knew I could never afford to get hooked). I believe this makes me almost an ideal audience for these films, since I am predisposed to liking them while I have no knowledge of or loyalty to the source material. It doesn't matter to me if Hugh Jackman's interpretation of Wolverine is inconsistent with the comic books; all that matters to me is how he works within the context of the films.

    Of the recent swarm of such films, the X-Men films have been my favorite. Themes of alienation always turn me on, and in this case I love the way each mutant differs from the others, so that there is a certain alienation even among the alienated. I will confess ('though perhaps it goes without saying) that the juvenile male fantasy aspect of the female characters' existences is part of the draw, too, and as long as I keep getting that in fair doses, I will probably keep coming back for more.

    X-Men: First Class takes us way back to when Charles Xavier is a brilliant adolescent, aware of his own special abilities but unaware that there are others who are similarly, genetically unusual. He meets a very young Raven (who will later be Mystique) at this early age, and the two forge a brother-sister relationship that takes them into their young adulthood. Meanwhile, Erik Lehnsherr loses his mother at the hands of the Nazis in World War II, then spends his post-adolescence hunting the responsible Nazis down. He will become Magneto and Xavier's best friend. We're then led through the discovery in 1962 of other mutants and up to the formation of the factions that already exist in the first X-Men film.

    The performances, especially by James McAvoy as Xavier and Michael Fassbender as Magneto, are pretty good. The friendship that develops between them is convincing, and we can see how two men with such opposing approaches to non-mutant relationships can care about each other so deeply. The sympathy Patrick Stewart conveys so well as Professor X in the earlier films seems easily traceable to McAvoy's Xavier, 'though I wish I could have seen even more of that. And although Magneto can easily be called evil in the earlier films, we can see what set young Erik on that path and it's difficult to blame him.

    Other characters we get to know are Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), Beast (Nicholas Hoult), Emma Frost (January Jones), Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), and Moira McTaggart (Rose Byrne). They are all well played except for Bacon's Shaw, who somehow lacks the charisma of the others. I like Kevin Bacon, but something about his performance here is stiff and uninteresting. I especially love Lawrence as Mystique; she has a wonderfully appealing round-faced sweetness tinged with mischief that I found very sexy. Byrne as Moira is just about as sexy, with a brainy toughness (think Jennifer Garner in Alias) that's hard not to love.

    As I've said before, action sequences don't do much for me, but I did enjoy them in this film, especially some of the stunts in the Cuban Missile Crisis sequence. What's more interesting to me is the interaction of the characters between these scenes, and I found that to be entertaining, engaging, thoughtful, and fun. The film moralizes from a sympathetic viewpoint without banging the viewer over the head with the issues (unlike X2, which felt almost like an Afterschool Special about accepting differences) so that while it's still clear which side is the good side, it's not so easy to judge those who choose the other side.

    An excellent summer film and a standout in its genre.

    7/10 (IMDb rating)
    76/100 (Criticker rating)
    But I'm disturbed! I'm depressed! I'm inadequate! I GOT IT ALL! (George Costanza)
    GrouchyTeacher.com

  • #2
    Re: X-Men: First Class

    Saw this movie late Friday night at the Ward Theaters.

    As a superhero action flick this movie works, it is not 100% faithful to the comics but I won't hold it against this movie. The theme of the X-Men is there even though some characters roles got changed, some new characters got added or in the case of Sebastain Shaw showing up 15 to 16 years too soon.

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