I thought this was going to be completely horrible, but it was sort of ok. The acting is decent and the plot works. The effects work is excellent, with one conspicuous exception. Emma Frost's diamond form is especially cool. Also, the movie doesn't mercilessly hammer you with non-stop comedy! Hallelujah! I thought genre movies that take themselves more or less seriously were extinct. Special mention goes to Kevin Bacon, who looks perfect in the part of Sebastian Shaw, nails the character, and he effortlessly walks off with the movie while he's at it.
There are plenty of problems, though. The "training montage" part drags on. January Jones looks the part of Emma Frost, but she cannot act. At all. It's painful every time she opens her mouth. The final battle is mostly Magneto and Professor X making faces while waving their hands at stuff. The other X-Men hardly do anything. The flying fight between Banshee and some chick with fairy wings named Angel is extremely lame. Oh, and in an absolutely scrape-your-jaw-off-the-floor moment ... they kill the black guy first. They go miles out of their way to kill the black guy first. It's unbelievable.
Anyway, it's maybe worth a matinée. Otherwise, you can safely wait until the dollar theater.
I think my favorite thing about this movie was spotting the cameos.
James Remar!
Ray Wise!!
Michael Ironside!!!
etc.
Honestly, I really really liked this movie. Perhaps it was due to me having very low expectations of it, and being pleasantly surprised, or maybe it was just how things tied together towards the end. I admit, at first, things are very slow to start off, and I had a little bit of trouble getting into the whole CIA storyline with Moira McTaggert, but towards the middle, I felt the film shined in various areas.
To be quite frank, I had 0 interest in this X-Men film when I first saw the pictures, and actors. The cast list did not have some of my favorite previous X-Men characters, and it all seemed "meh" to me. I became more and more excited about it, however, once the 6/3/2011 date came closer and closer. Strange, huh?
My favorite thing throughout the film, is the relationship between Charles Xavier and Magneto. I always enjoyed the friendship they shared, and how they had such a dichotomy with their different philosophies on mutantkind and a coexistence with humans.
While I agree that there were some problems, I don't see it as a huge dtractor from the film, and I actually found the last part where they are just "making faces while waving their hands at stuff" to be quite well-done given what their powers are. True, the other X-Men didn't do too much, and I wasn't quite certain who the girl with wings was, I enjoyed it immensely as a whole package. I've always been a HUGE X-Men fan, and I came in thinking this would be the worst film of the series. I can happily say I was wrong about that, and I would rate this 2nd or 3rd amongst best ones after X2 and X-Men 1.
Also, the black guy dying did not really resonate the same way with me. I'm a black guy, and at no time did I go "hey what the f***? they killed a black guy first!!" There were many other people killed by Magneto before this happened, so it didn't bother me much. I was in a theater in Detroit, with about 90% black viewers, and I doubt that that was the mood or feeling folks here got when it happened either. I was more paying attention to how Shaw said "slave" and then looked right at him though. LOL.
Just my take.
4/5 stars from me
Also, where was James Remar at?
Quote from: A_Dubya on June 04, 2011, 05:46:03 PM
Also, where was James Remar at?
He was the guy pointing at the map in the war room.
I've been hearing good things about this movie, some even calling it the best Marvel film yet, which is saying a lot since it is competing with Iron Man and Spider-Man 2. I'll check it out at some point, but right now, I'm saving my money for Green Lantern. Too much of a fan not to see that.
Quote from: InformationGeek on June 04, 2011, 06:35:17 PM
I've been hearing good things about this movie, some even calling it the best Marvel film yet, which is saying a lot since it is competing with Iron Man and Spider-Man 2. I'll check it out at some point, but right now, I'm saving my money for Green Lantern. Too much of a fan not to see that.
Well, I think it's better than
Iron Man or
Spider-Man 2, but I wasn't the biggest fan of those movies to begin with. I think my original post might have sounded more critical than I meant it to.
First Class is actually pretty good, but not worth more than a matinee price, IMHO. It's worth seeing just for Kevin Bacon. The man could easily become the go-to guy for lovably sleazy villains now that James Woods has mostly retired.
The only really insurmountable problem
First Class has is one I forgot to mention. It's also kind of spoilerific, so be warned. *see below*
Beast's transformation occurs so late in the movie that they don't have time to do anything with it. It's just like, "Hey, I'm a monster now." "Ok, cool." And that's it. Had his transformation taken place earlier, they could have mined it for all sorts of character building scenes.
Maybe it's because I'm a wee bit older but the trailers made it look too much like Smallville meets Gossip Girl or something in that area. I'll probably catch it at a 2nd run theater.
How does it compare to Origins - Wolverine? I really didn't like that one.
Quote from: Criswell on June 05, 2011, 04:47:03 AM
How does it compare to Origins - Wolverine? I really didn't like that one.
I haven't seen First Class, but I don't see how it can be worse than Wolverine...
Disclaimer: I've never seen any of the other X-MEN films, never read any of the comics, and I don't normally like any superhero movies not featuring Batman (I did like WATCHMEN, though).
*I though it was OK to good; I enjoyed it while watching it, but I've almost completely forgotten it already.
*This movie would give WyreWizard a stroke trying to address all the "reality flaws."
*It seems like there was no excuse for one character not to kill another character in one of the very first scenes, except that I guess there would have been no movie if he did.
*Kevin Bacon was surprisingly good as a villain.
*Jennifer Lawrence is much hotter than January Jones.
I give it a 3/5 but expect most on here would rate it higher.
Quote from: Rev. Powell on June 07, 2011, 08:16:57 PM*It seems like there was no excuse for one character not to kill another character in one of the very first scenes, except that I guess there would have been no movie if he did.
He probably couldn't have. He probably couldn't have killed him at the end, either, without the help he was getting.
I liked it. It is one of the best x-men films. There was alot of character growth and it build up to the much larger plot.
I really liked this one. Probably my favorite of all the X-Men films (haven't seen part 2 in a while, I remember it being pretty solid). Setting it in the 60s was the best choice they could have made, and I'd love to see a sequel where the X-Men fight in Vietnam or something like that. Michael Fassbender was great as Magneto, and I thought Jennifer Lawrence brought a lot of needed character to the part of Mystique. The only weak part in my mind was the ending, which seemed kind of rushed. Very entertaining though.
I rank it number three among the X-Men movies (behind X-Men and X2, ahead of X3). Whoever wrote the script is really in love with Magneto, though.
This board needs some spoiler tags.
Enjoyable film. Really good characterizations of Prof. X and Magneto, both in writing and acting. I thought the action scenes were decent, but didn't focus enough on showing what was going on (like the scene with Azazel, where the camera keeps cutting away from him). Really good bits of humor. The storyline was pretty good. The film has an air of competence greatly lacking from Origins and X-Men 3.
I do have a number of issues... I didn't like how Darwin was handled, the Angel character was worthless and her choices didn't make much sense, Beast's look was bad, Oliver Platt was kind of wasted, etc. Nothing at an individual level was terrible, just lots of things that bugged me. Still an overall solid film.
I'm waffling between a 7 or an 8 out of 10. I'd say it does rank up there around the same level as X1 or X2.
I'm glad to say that it lived up to my expectations, which were pretty high. I've been a fan of the X-Men movies all the way through (maybe X3 wasn't the best), but I even liked Wolverine, which some don't seem to like as much.
I loved the time in which the movie was set. All of the wardrobe choices were pretty spot-on, and I like how their civilian clothes foreshadow their later costumes.
Oddly, the scene in the trailer where Magneto causes the Russian soldier's watch to crush his wrist is absent from the movie. I hope they include this and more in an extended or director's cut.
Did I like it as much as Iron Man or Thor? I looooved Thor. First Class didn't quite have the same wow factor for me, perhaps because of the direction. But I really enjoyed it, all the same. I've seen it twice, like Thor and Iron Man. :teddyr:
If you haven't seen X-Men Origins: Wolverine, X-3, or Inglorious Basterds, beware, spoilers ahoy.
I'm glad to see this movie in the "Good Movies" section of the forums. 'Cause, honestly, I didn't expect it to end up there. I had low expectations going into it, and was pleasantly surprised but what I came out with. I feel like it got off to a shaky start, with too many independent characters whose backstories needed to be established and whose individual threads needed to be tied in with one another, but I thought once they finally did that it was an EXTREMELY entertaining superhero flick. And I'm soooo glad they made it a Cold War period piece and tied the X-Men origin in with the whole Cuba fiasco. When I saw the first trailer way back whenever it came out, I got kind of giddy, remembering the original first X-Men story written by Stan Lee back in the day, which involved Magneto trying to attack the US with a nuclear missile. I thought, wow, that would make a great tie-in with the Cold War in the movie. Obviously, it wasn't going to be the same story, since Magneto's supposed to be one of the protagonists for at least the bulk of this outing, but I'm glad that what remained of that story managed to make it in. Plus, I just think the Cold War era is just such an interesting era and is perfectly complementary when teamed with a superhero aesthetic. I'd like to see more superhero "period pieces," frankly. This was nowhere near as good as Watchmen, but I liked that recent history period piece aspect that they both shared.
When I first came out of the movie, I wasn't entirely sure how I felt about it. I knew I liked it, but how much? Well, I saw it on Monday, and I've been thinking about it on and off all week. I've picked up a lot of my old X-Men comics and I've been in an X-Men mood ever since. I think I can safely say I found X-Men: First Class to be a pretty damn good flick if it's got me this pumped. Honestly, the main reason I wasn't expecting much was because of the Wolverine movie, which I thought was just atrocious. X-3 I didn't actually mind though. I seem to be one of the few who actually liked it, and I'd rather watch X-3 than the first X-Men movie (I'd also rather watch First Class than ANY other X-Men movie, by the way). One of the things I dug about X-3 was its willingness to depart from the comic book mythos in BIG ways. I think, sometimes, when people are disappointed by a film departing too much from the source material, it's become it actually doesn't depart enough. You can either stay verrrrry close and come out with a classic (like with 300, Watchmen, or Sin City) or you can take a LOT of liberties and just do what you want and end up with something all its own that is, if nothing else, entertaining (like with Wanted and the X-Men movies). It's when a movie tries to stay close to the source material, but then takes enough liberties throughout for the sake of updating the material or making it less controversial or making it more sleek and film-friendly and "kewl" for mainstream audiences or convenient to fit into a 93-minute running time, I think that's when it has more potential to really rub fans of the source material the wrong way. Because if you just got off into left field and do your own thing, then the old fans will snort and complain, but they'll recognize "okay, this isn't even trying to replicate the original" and thus feel less like the movie is trying to "replace" what they love, and the people who don't come with baggage will just sit back and be able to enjoy the ride. Whereas if you TRY to stay close, but then make jarring, unpleasant changes, then it's close enough to the original to register with people as being a replication of the source material, but those changes are made all the more jarring by how faithful the rest of the movie, and I think that has more potential to turn people off and leave a bitter taste in their mouth.
At least, that's just what I think.
Anyway, one of the things I liked about X-3 was how it just completely did its own thing and said to hell with the comics for the most part. The fact that they KILLED Professor X in that movie, it might be heresy to some, but I thought it was awesome. I thought it was just as awesome as them killing Hitler in Inglorious Basterds. Both of those things took BALLS, if you ask me. And I respect that.
One of the things I really loved the most now about X-Men: First Class is the way it continued X-3's radical departure (okay, Wolverine did the same... it just didn't do it well... not even close) and completely reconfigured the X-Men story elements into a unique mythos all its own. Continuity diehards can argue that this is all just an alternate reality, if they want. Me? I don't care enough. Sure, the movie still had its flaws, and the continuity flaws WITHIN this already established source material-divergent mythos warrant recognition (for instance, White Queen's existence here in an earlier point in the timeline, being older than she was in Wolverine, is a bit of a snag, ...but I don't think they actually named the character in Wolverine as being Emma Frost, so I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt that that was just a whole 'nother mutant with an extremely similar power set... so THERE!).
Personally, I'm looking forward to a sequel.
And (WARNING: sort-of semi-spoiler, don't read this unless you've seen the movie, ya jerks!), to Rev. Powell, regarding Character A's failure to killer Character B at an early point in the movie... I had a problem with that too, especially when it was happening (I was like "WTF? Whack the goon, ya mook!"), but, after thinking about it later, and thinking about what I actually did see Character A do with his/her powers during that scene, implied that said character's powers were so undeveloped that he/she couldn't really control them in a manner enough to kill. You'll notice that rather than things moving as smoothly as they did later in Character A's life, many things didn't really move at all, just kind of rumbled or collapsed inward. I wager that the unlucky extras that DID die in the resulting mayhem were killed more by the poor luck of wearing what they wearing at the time (you'll notice Character B wasn't really wearing anything that would lend itself to putting him/her in the same predicament as the unlucky extras) than by Character A intentionally focusing his/her powers to do as such.
I tried to be as vague as possible here, but I'm sure anyone with an IQ above 12 will get what I'm saying. So if you didn't see the movie ya better not have read that. I warned ya! Ya jerks.
Quote from: WilliamWeird1313 on June 26, 2011, 09:56:20 AM
The fact that they KILLED Professor X in that movie,
Excpet they didn't. Not really.
In the end credits his mind is in the other dudes body.
I think...
From my understanding, X3 and Wolverine Origins were rendered non-canonical by First Class. A little weird I know.
I liked it a lot. Some miscasting and some very cheesy moment, but IMO still the best X-men movie so far.