X-Men: First Class Review
In the beginning, 2 awesome X-men films were made both by Bryan Singer; X-men and X2. But then Bryan Singer dropped out suddenly so the studios considered a number of replacements. Among these were Black Swan's director Darren Aronofsky, Kick Ass's director Matthew Vaughn and Rush Hour's director Bret Ratner. With other brilliant directors expressing interest, why the fuck did they give it to Bret Ratner? No-one truly knows as he made such a fucking mess of it and completely destroyed a lot of people's faith in the series as a whole.
This was of course proceeded by the universally panned (but one of my guilty pleasures) X-men origins: Wolverine which was helmed by the relative unknown Gavin Hood. X-men: First Class however decides to scrap the trend of the last 2 movies and actually hire a director who can bloody direct. This comes in the shape of Matthew Vaughn. The man behind the freaking awesome superhero movie Kick Ass, the criminally underrated gangster flick Layer Cake and the surprisingly good Stardust.
So with a new director taking the reigns and a seemingly completely new premise, the big question is whether or not this film makes up for the last two mediocre fares. The answer is....ish. Critics everywhere have been praising this film heap-loads even garnishing (at the time of writing) an 89% on Rotten Tomatoes. The acting's brilliant at times and the fight scenes and set pieces are gigantic in scale at times so I have no idea why i found the whole affair so boring.
The film follows a cold war era Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr bringing together mutants of the world to unite in a covert C.I.A operation to limit the world war and to stop the evil Hellfire organisation. The problem is with this "evil" organisation is that there is no backstory ever provided for their actions and so we know nothing of Kevin Bacon's Sebastian Shaw or Jason Flemyng's Azazel or why they are doing these things. That's what I believed to be great about the first two X-men films, being that the main villain had reasoning for his actions whereas now it is simply the heroes that have reason.
Before I watched this film a friend told me that people had been saying that Michael Fassbender was a better Magneto than Sir Ian Mckellan's. Even though I love Michael Fassbender's performances I could not see this happening because its Sir Ian fucking Mckellan. But alas it is actually true as Fassbender takes the role to new heights, truly expressing the pain and anguish that drives Magneto to his hatred of mankind.
The action is expansive and portrayed relatively well although it always seems to be a bit tepid. As these are mutants that presumably return later in the series there are only two mutant deaths in the entire film and everyone seems to be pretty invincible which takes all the tension out of the fights. The theme of mutants being treated as second class citizens and parallels to the Nazis treatment of the Jews would be new and exciting...if it hadn't been the point of every other bloody X-Men film (apart from origins, the point of that was just to have Hugh Jackman killing things).
Overall I award this film a 6 out of 10, while the action was brilliant at times and the acting and direction was overall pretty good, I found there no intrigue as the ending was limited by the other X-Men films.
This was of course proceeded by the universally panned (but one of my guilty pleasures) X-men origins: Wolverine which was helmed by the relative unknown Gavin Hood. X-men: First Class however decides to scrap the trend of the last 2 movies and actually hire a director who can bloody direct. This comes in the shape of Matthew Vaughn. The man behind the freaking awesome superhero movie Kick Ass, the criminally underrated gangster flick Layer Cake and the surprisingly good Stardust.
So with a new director taking the reigns and a seemingly completely new premise, the big question is whether or not this film makes up for the last two mediocre fares. The answer is....ish. Critics everywhere have been praising this film heap-loads even garnishing (at the time of writing) an 89% on Rotten Tomatoes. The acting's brilliant at times and the fight scenes and set pieces are gigantic in scale at times so I have no idea why i found the whole affair so boring.
The film follows a cold war era Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr bringing together mutants of the world to unite in a covert C.I.A operation to limit the world war and to stop the evil Hellfire organisation. The problem is with this "evil" organisation is that there is no backstory ever provided for their actions and so we know nothing of Kevin Bacon's Sebastian Shaw or Jason Flemyng's Azazel or why they are doing these things. That's what I believed to be great about the first two X-men films, being that the main villain had reasoning for his actions whereas now it is simply the heroes that have reason.
Before I watched this film a friend told me that people had been saying that Michael Fassbender was a better Magneto than Sir Ian Mckellan's. Even though I love Michael Fassbender's performances I could not see this happening because its Sir Ian fucking Mckellan. But alas it is actually true as Fassbender takes the role to new heights, truly expressing the pain and anguish that drives Magneto to his hatred of mankind.
The action is expansive and portrayed relatively well although it always seems to be a bit tepid. As these are mutants that presumably return later in the series there are only two mutant deaths in the entire film and everyone seems to be pretty invincible which takes all the tension out of the fights. The theme of mutants being treated as second class citizens and parallels to the Nazis treatment of the Jews would be new and exciting...if it hadn't been the point of every other bloody X-Men film (apart from origins, the point of that was just to have Hugh Jackman killing things).
Overall I award this film a 6 out of 10, while the action was brilliant at times and the acting and direction was overall pretty good, I found there no intrigue as the ending was limited by the other X-Men films.