Tuesday, July 05, 2011

Review Tuesday: X-Men: First Class

X-Men: First ClassI used to collect and read comic books years ago. While I wasn't a huge fan of The X-Men, I had deep respect for the book and characters especially since a fellow BPMS member and friend, Dave Cockrum (the man who drew the caricature of your humble narrator) invented several of the original team. This movie is called "First Class" but does not have that exact line-up.


This movie is set, mostly in the early 1960s, but it does have scenes explaining the origins of the original leaders of the mutants, Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender), how they meet, how they collected the first groups of mutants with super powers, and how they impacted the world.

I found the movie fun and entertaining. It wasn't burdened down with too much detail. The leaders were given their proper time on screen. The peripheral characters, not so much. The evil villain, Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) did his job well. The story was fluid and moved along well. The worst part of the movie was also some of teh best parts on screen, The White Queen aka Emma Frost (January Jones) was wooden on screen. She was like the hottest mannequin you've ever seen, but sucked the life out of every scene she was in. But, damn, they dressed her up nice!

As long as you aren't a big fan of X-men and know the proper sequences and are a stickler for those sorts of details, you should be okay with this movie. Yes, it's an absurd movie, but it's a SUPERHERO movie, so it should be absurd. Once you get past that hurtle, you should be fine.

It's probably out of theaters already. I bet they will have an extended version of the movie on DVD. It'll be worth it to pick up.

More on IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1270798/

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