Saturday 4 June 2011

X-Men is actually First Class

I just went to see the latest X-Men Movie "First Class" and left the cinema feeling very much the way I did after seeing the first Xmen movie years ago: Like I wanted to go and see it again. This movie felt more like that first outing than any of the sequels, espesially the god awful "Last Stand". And don't even get me started on the travesty that was the Wolverine movie. This new movie feels like the start of something special and the performances from all the main players, although not award winning, are solid and real. James MaCavoy is very convincing as the younger, less cautious Charles and everybody else does their bit just fine especially Kevin Bacon who must have been born to play Sebastain Shaw. The story has a decent sence of pacing and covers quite a few years so has a more epic feel than many other superhero films. There's even a couple of inspired humourous moments, one of which was a genuinly unexpected cameo that had the cinema roaring with laughter. The set peices, although few, are executed brilliantly and make the moving bridge scene in Last Stand look like something from Thunderbirds. I still have images from the film stuck in my head hours after watching it, which must be a good sign. Finally there's also some great character scenes and we really feel like we are seeing X-Men History being played out, with all the drama and tragedy of the original comics. I could chose to point out that the continuety of the movies has now been shot to hell, as Emma Frost seems to have gotten younger rather than older in the wolverine movie and Prof X's hair seems to come and go through time, as does his inabilty to walk. Maybe running that school with all those unruley kids aged him prematurely and hey... him and Eric made friends again for some reason when they went to find Jean Grey. Or maybe (please god) they are wiping the last two films from continuety with this one... yay! Then again some of these things have happened in the comics at some point, so who's to say they can't happen in the films? I look forward to hopefully seeing some cool X-Men adventures in the 1970's

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