WARNING! The following contains minor spoilers and large amounts of personal bias.
HOLY SHIT KEVIN BACON IS THE BAD GUY!!!!!!!
X-Men: First Class (heretofore referred to as XM:FC because I am incredibly lazy) is a fantastic comic reboot. I personally hope it does as much for the X-Men universe as Batman Begins did for Batman. I mean, seriously, after Christopher Nolan got ahold of it, people were finally able to believe again, knowing that Batman's glory did not die at the hands of Joel Shumacher.
That is what I hope for XM:FC. I hope that people look at this as a serious sign of things to come. All it will take now is $100+ million at the box office, because even a million positive reviews from critics will not convince the greedy bastards in Hollywood to green-light a sequel. Not when there's Shrek The Seventeenth to be made!
Just like any other origins story, this one spends more time catching everyone up with the characters than it does setting up an incredibly cohesive good vs. evil narrative. What impressed me was how well it did this. X-Men's biggest problem has always been developing both the heroes and villains into more than just two dimensional products. With other superhero movies such as Iron Man and Batman, you only have to worry about ONE superhero. With X-Men, you have half a dozen at minimum, and that's if you don't want to bother fleshing out the bad guys.
That is where XM:FC shines. The ONLY actor/actress who failed to deliver a convincing, 3 dimensional character was January Jones, playing Emma Frost. I understand that Emma Frost is supposed to be a frosty bitch, hence the name. Unfortunately, she came across as Emma Woodenly-Reads-Lines-Off-A-Cue-Card-From-Just-Off-Screen-While-Not-Displaying-Any-Emotion-At-All.
Even the X-Men and villains that I knew nothing or next-to-nothing about did a fine job. It made me want to go find out who the hell Darwin, Angel, Riptide and Havok are.
Plus, there are easter eggs and fan nods aplenty in this film. The opening sequence is shot-for-shot the Magneto origin sequence from the first X-Men film, and there is a scene during the recruiting montage where everyone in the theater got a great laugh.
The main bad guy? Kevin freaking Bacon. I gotta admit, I rarely see him in films where he gets to be the bad guy, but I think he relishes it. He really does a fantastic job as Sebastian Shaw, the founder of The Children of the Atom.
Go see this film. If you like Marvel, comics in general, excellent ensemble movies, good action flicks with a brain, or hot chicks in stupid outfits. You'll get your fix in any and all of these categories. This film is better than any X-Men movie that has come before it, and only slightly worse than my favorite origins story, Batman Begins. (Yes, that beats out Iron Man, but screw you.)
Completely agree on January Jones. We spent a decent amount of time discussing why she didn't work. Emma Frost is a bitch, yes, but she is also classy, charismatic, sexy, and INCREDIBLY SMART. I got none of these from her performance. I really liked most of the casting though, especially Michael Fassbender and (dare I say) Kevin Bacon.
ReplyDeleteThe worst part of the movie for me was when it NEEDLESSLY made errors to make it more palletable for general audiences. Banshee and Moira MacTaggert should have accents, sorry. It may sound like nitpicking, but it kicked me out of the zone every time they talked. Emma Frost should be enticing, not boring.
Likewise, I was really excited to see Mystique finally become a real character. Havok was one of my favorite characters as a kid, and just having on screen was well worth it for me, with a decent amount of accuracy and no needless Cyclops jokes.
The movie wasn't perfect, but it was much better than I expected for my money and expectations, and I really dug most of the character arcs. Possibly the best team movie adaptation to date, it only gives me more hope for The Avengers.
~RoryKO
I will agree with you on the Banshee part, however since I personally never got into that character when I was a kid, I wasn't too bothered.
ReplyDeleteOne question for everyone who saw the movie: Was it just me, or did the kid playing Banshee seem like he had a mouth full of marbles the whole time? There was a serious case of mush-mouth going on.