Yet we still touch upon X3 because that's where the series went a little sour. It absolutely destroyed my confidence and more importantly, my expectations for any other mutant movies. Perhaps that's why Wolverine was OK in my books. When First Class was initially advertised, the trailer viewed and the concept udnerstood, there was much excitement. Not a lot mind you, as my capability of feeling excitement has declined quite a bit over the years. The last time I felt true giddiness from a movie was indeed Spider-Man. But I've always had a place in my heart for the X-Men because it's just plain fun watching these characters use their powers on the big screen. Finally, technology's special effects have caught up to a point where the pages from the comics can be conveyed on the screen in a way that won't make us laugh.
As is the way with comic book movies, there is no avoiding their arrival. You are inundated with media, and in part that's my own fault: I'm a nerd by heart and trade, and the news sources I tap into on a daily basis are going to be blasted into my brain on nearly a daily basis. I don't go out hunting for in-production shots of Transformers being filmed, but they are delivered to my doorstop and I'm forced to consume them. You can't avoid their arrival also, because these are the new event movies of the mid-nineties. You can thank Spider-Man and Batman for that. In my efforts to avoid saturation, I remained relatively clueless on this new X-Men movie, and instead, let me imagination run wild. I still watched the trailers and got the idea: the origins of the X-Men, back in the day when Professor X and Magneto were still buddies, and the backdrop was the Cuban Missile Crisis. We would get the original team, although "original" will be the topic of flamewars for the fanboys.
After nearly a year of previews and trailers, I found myself with actual plans to go see the movie on a Friday night. I was skeptical at first, of course, as I haven't been to a movie on Friday with my friend Cale in what seems like years, but also because his brother in law would be coming, who just welcomed his second child. Alas, it was happening and I found myself sitting in the theatre; after a short conversation about video games the topic quickly moved to children and the wonderful things they do. Sure, it sounds terrible but they don't have me scared; what really scares me is the behaviour of the people in the theatre while we were watching. I would gladly put up with an upset baby over these obnoxious nerd-teens. It's unbelievable how they could talk, at normal conversation level, for just about the entire film. The problem in this situation was not being able to tell them to be quiet, because we had two other groups doing the same thing. Some sounded younger, some older. It was like happy hour or something. And because of this, while walking away from the film I was a bit disappointed.
I was also disappointed that I barely recognized any of the characters, and my initial expectation that this was a reboot seemed to be full of lies. Yes, they managed to take into consideration the later movies by not showcasing anyone who couldn't age slowly (Mystique, Wolverine) or normally (Charles and Magneto, of course). We have Cyclops' brother, or father, or something. You thought you saw Nightcrawler? Nope, that's somebody else (probably his dad, I guess). I like the X-Men comics, but to a point. There's entirely way too many characters and lore to wrap my mind around, so that's not going to help with the confusion I felt on who these characters were. So something weird happened: I had to step back and watch this without my nerd-meter flying about wildly.
And when it comes down to it, I would have to say one negative thing. Sure, there are others but whatever, there were also a lot of cool scenes. Seeing these guys develop their power was interesting: they are still vulnerable and not all-powerful like they are in the later movies. Magneto is driven by rage but with a clear vision just as he does in the later movies. But he's still "human" at this point in his relationship with Charles Xavier and the movie definitely let you feel the conflict between chasing his vision and remaining friends. He's pretty evil, but not nearly as evil as he could be: Sebastian Shaw takes that crown to a whole new level. Kevin Bacon plays pure evil very well, but it still creeps me out that he's in the movie at all. All I could think of afterwards was how many more people are getting the first degree in the Bacon game; it's practically unfair in a large ensemble cast like this.
My complaint with the movie is that I felt like some things were a bit rushed; they could have developed the friendship between Magneto and Xavier more-so. I wanted them to explore that dynamic a bit more; instead we get a couple of training montages and too many scenes with Emma Frost. Alright, this is the second complaint: January Jones is an absolutely terrible actress. She plays her character in Mad Men well, and her turn int Unknown planted the seed of doubt. Could she act? First Class confirms it: she cannot. It's a real shame she was in the last scene of the movie: it looked like she was reading a teleprompter and she wasn't sure how to read.
Where do we go from here? Will we get direct sequels to this or will the first trilogy get more sequels? Will we get more prequels with origin stories? Regardless, I'm looking forward to more movies in the X-Universe. I have to give them credit: there are a multitude of X-Men comic books, featuring different teams, single characters, different stories, you get the idea. So why not do the same with the movies?
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