X-Men: First Class -- Rebooted For A Dumber Generation

A discussion of homosapien vs homo-superior. A chess match between cooperating versus dominating. Too bad the rest of the film wasn't as brilliant as this discussion.
X-men: First Class is a difficult movie to like. Most of the acting that doesn’t involve Erik Leshnerr and Charles Xavier is dull. The many training montages could have been filled with, I don’t know, less training montages. In an attempt to appease this man-baby generation, Marvel and Twentieth Century Fox stumbled more than they succeeded. It's sad that there is an audience for this movie. The director produced a film that embodied the comics of the 80’s, for better and worse. It’s unfortunate that with all the liberties taken with Marvel’s canon, a good movie can’t be found through the gaudy layers of poor writing and CG.

Now that comic book movies are running Hollywood, there is a pronounced formula. Introduce characters with an inner-turmoil. Add a dash of impending doom, in this case, the Cuban Missle Crisis. And as we all know, you don’t have a comic book movie unless attractive people are involved. Odd, considering X-men: First Class attempts to comment on how we, humans, accept one another based on looks.

 
At it's best, X-men: First Class exhibits exquisite cinematography. Clever touches to time periods evoke the standard emotional responses. At it's worst, we get ass-level shots of Mystique's rump and disorienting action sequences.
The heart of this plastic movie lays with Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy. The one thing done right was showing the character flaws and strengths of the mutants who would be the most influential in this convoluted world. It’s a shame such character depth couldn’t be granted to the actual X-men First Class and their rivals.

With Kevin Bacon playing the broad bad guy, Sebastian Shaw; dimensions are lost. No care is taken to explain the Hellfire Club’s assemblage. January Jones plays a great Emma Frost, a woman who has to express as little emotion as possible. Then there are these two guys, named Azazel and Riptide, whose jobs are to kill and wear awful suits. And here’s the current problem with the comic book movie.

 
The biggest crime committed in the film is how pitch-perfect it was able to get fashion and character design. Characters as one-dimensional as the comic book pages they were ripped from.
The sacrifice of delving into a more meaningful story for vast, emotionless narrative chaos hurt X-men: First Class. Within one movie the audience is plunged into quite the intellectual discussion between Xavier and Leshnerr. We understand their differences and why they work so well together. Later, focus would shift to the gaudy, bad guy hellbent on world domination. Oddly enough, when these relationships fall apart, so does the film making. Sloppy computer generated scenes, depicting mutants flying in [supposed] intense action, come off as goofy and improperly edited bloopers.

The actors and actresses were slaves to a script that is more expository and cheesy than the source material. There are scenes where mutants are explaining their powers and their motives for using them, at great length -- as opposed to crafty directing and letting the audience figure it out. I don’t see the comic book movie getting better, but I do see a nation of film goers happy with a movie that did nothing to raise the bar. How about we wait on the, eventual, gash crab sequel and try hiring writers who care about telling a story -- rather than hiring the best special effects team?

I give X-men: First Class

Damn, maybe Magneto was right?

The “Rob Liefeld Excellent Suggestion” Award