So we saw X-Men: First Class on Friday
Jun. 8th, 2011 10:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rallamajoopAnd really, thoroughly enjoyed it. A little puzzled by the number reviewers I've seen rushing to declare it the best X-Men movie ever, since despite all that thorough enjoyment I came away with a few caveats about the whole experience that leave it well below the undiluted awesome that was X2 (though I am what seems like a minority who really thoroughly enjoyed Wolverine: Origins too, so quite possibly the gap between this and the last good X-Men movie seems shorter to me than it does to many people), but those details aside gosh but there is a lot to like about this movie.
Highlights!
1. James McAvoy as Charles Xavier. This one has to go first because not only could he have just about made the whole damn movie for me on his own, let's face it, Patrick Stewart is a heck of an act to follow, and no matter what the official propaganda would have me believe I went in with very little expectation that he was going to pull it off. I was wrong. Oh boy, was I wrong. Between the script and McAvoy's fantastic performance they absolutely sold it to me – insightful and compassionate though also more than enough of a smug dick a lot of the time to keep him believably flawed and interesting, you can see just enough of the man he's going to become to absolutely buy him as the younger version of the Xavier from the previous movies. In a season of superhero movies where we're going to be seeing variants on the traditional origin story over and over again, a lead who's already so comfortable with his goals and powers is a truly refreshing change.
Magneto, by contrast, was perfectly decent but never managed to wow me on quite the same level. Possibly there was something a little too clean cut about him to let me entirely buy him as someone so damaged and desperate, which was probably more of a costuming and make up issue than any reflection on the actor, but still, it threw me a little. (Since coming back from the movie I have seen the point made that based on his early Nazi-hunting scenes alone Fassbender would make a hell of a James Bond and I cannot disagree, but what makes a good James Bond and what makes a convincing younger Magneto may not be quite the same thing.) What's important is that the chemistry between the young Charles and Erik was fantastic – really, I could not have asked for better, and the movie did absolutely meet it's quota for...
2. Moments of Magneto awesomeness It's one of my favourite things about the X-Men movie series is that they take these ridiculously overpowered characters who you'd think would be a nightmare to make believable on screen, and they go to town with them. You know you're watching a good X-Men movie when you're getting to watch Magneto bust his way out of a plastic prison with no more than a couple of grams of iron on hand or stop a free-falling jet in mid-flight – or, say, wrench a submarine clean out of the ocean or stop a full missile barrage dead in the air. I have lately had to come to the conclusion that somehow or other I have turned into a shameless Magneto fangirl, and minor quibbles about his costuming aside this movie delivered.
3. Young mutants figuring out their powers. Always good value and, surprisingly, I think this is almost the first time we've seen this really dealt with in an X-Men movie. Seeing all the kids really being kids for the brief window they got and taking turns to show off their powers to each other was great fun, and the later scenes at the mansion of Havok and Banshee getting the hang of their own powers were a likewise a joy to watch. Even if the lead roles are men who've already had years to get used to those ridiculously overpowered abilities we were talking about above, the supporting cast more than fills out the glorious sense of discovery that comes with learning to use your mutant powers for the first time.
But, because I never can resist the chance to gripe, we also need to cover some lowlights:
1. Emma Frost. Given that even including an adult Emma Frost in First Class constitutes one of the more glaring continuity errors in the whole series, I really would have hoped they'd more planned for the character than this. I can't claim a lot of familiarity with the pre-heel-face-turn Emma, but here she comes across as more of a lackey with a little more than average class than as a force of personality in her own right, and that doesn't do her justice. A lot of reviewers have complained about the casting of January Jones in the role, but casting aside the script gave her very little to work with. I mean, Emma Frost as a woman who'll smile widely when told she's the most beautiful woman the speaker has ever seen? The Emma I know would be more likely to give them the raised eyebrow of 'Well of course I am, what's your point?'
2. The team of white male heroes. In limited defence of the final line up, the characters we were left with by the end of the movie did make a certain measure of sense. Out of every character who could boast a significant presence on the first or even the second original incarnations of the comic book X-team, Beast, Havok and Banshee are very nearly the only ones who haven't already appeared as much younger men or women in later parts of the established timeline. That said, it is hard not to facepalm a bit when by the end of the movie every character who was female or anything other than white has joined the bad guys, had their memory wiped, or died. Granted, the final team is established far too late to have much impact on the movie and there's every chance for more diversity to be added before we do get the inevitable sequel, but this was a disappointment, especially when you consider how utterly textbook the killing off of the one token black character in the movie was.
On a similar note, would it have killed them to actually make Sean Irish and Moira Scottish? Sean at least does seem to have been written with some consciousness of his background (or at any rate he's apparently Catholic, if him crossing himself before jumping out of the window is anything to go by) but he's still got that American accent, and Moira seems to have little beyond her name in common with her comic book counterpart. When neither got more than a few scenes each to establish them as distinct characters and the team we're left with at the end is so monotonously White-Male-American, this seems like a real wasted opportunity.
3. That thing where the good guys think you should have to hide to fit in and the badguys are the ones saying you shouldn't have to. I suspect this is going to be a big case of YMMV, but for myself I could have done without seeing the good guys portrayed as such utter failures on this topic. Much of it can be justified away from the perspective that they're all so young in these incarnations, but the way the 'good guys' dealt with Mystique's body issues came a bit too close to the line for what I can take from sympathetic characters, and it all seemed so unnecessary. If they needed a clear line between the philosophies of the two sides on the issue – and I'd certainly agree that they did – then I'd have thought a disagreement over whether regular humans would ever realistically be able to accept someone like Mystique in her true form would have worked just as well, particularly in light of the very event that cements the divide being the moment when the humans turn on them. We're far enough back in X-Men history that it makes some sense that the question of whether it's better to focus on finding ways to pass as human would still be open to a lot of mutants, but when young Charles manages to be so compassionate and so insightful about everything else, the movie failed to make any convincing case as to why this should be his one epic blindspot. The lack of logic by which Beast triggers his change to his beastly form with a serum meant to do the exact opposite – and is nevertheless practically over it by the next morning – was similarly irritating to me.
So yeah, I feel there was a lot of room for improvement in certain parts of the script, but on the balance of it, I'm quite tempted to go see it again, and not a lot of movies do that for me. Also very much looking forward to the inevitable upsurge in Charles/Magneto fic - on which note, it should be no surprise to anyone that there is a kink meme which is already on it's second round and has also already covered the AU ending where they never break up, the obligatory band AU, sex pollen, the one where Mystique morphs into Charles to get a rise out of Erik and all kinds of fun with the implications of falling for a telepath no really, and those are just the ones I have loved so far that I still have the links for. Additional recs very much welcome. :3
Highlights!
1. James McAvoy as Charles Xavier. This one has to go first because not only could he have just about made the whole damn movie for me on his own, let's face it, Patrick Stewart is a heck of an act to follow, and no matter what the official propaganda would have me believe I went in with very little expectation that he was going to pull it off. I was wrong. Oh boy, was I wrong. Between the script and McAvoy's fantastic performance they absolutely sold it to me – insightful and compassionate though also more than enough of a smug dick a lot of the time to keep him believably flawed and interesting, you can see just enough of the man he's going to become to absolutely buy him as the younger version of the Xavier from the previous movies. In a season of superhero movies where we're going to be seeing variants on the traditional origin story over and over again, a lead who's already so comfortable with his goals and powers is a truly refreshing change.
Magneto, by contrast, was perfectly decent but never managed to wow me on quite the same level. Possibly there was something a little too clean cut about him to let me entirely buy him as someone so damaged and desperate, which was probably more of a costuming and make up issue than any reflection on the actor, but still, it threw me a little. (Since coming back from the movie I have seen the point made that based on his early Nazi-hunting scenes alone Fassbender would make a hell of a James Bond and I cannot disagree, but what makes a good James Bond and what makes a convincing younger Magneto may not be quite the same thing.) What's important is that the chemistry between the young Charles and Erik was fantastic – really, I could not have asked for better, and the movie did absolutely meet it's quota for...
2. Moments of Magneto awesomeness It's one of my favourite things about the X-Men movie series is that they take these ridiculously overpowered characters who you'd think would be a nightmare to make believable on screen, and they go to town with them. You know you're watching a good X-Men movie when you're getting to watch Magneto bust his way out of a plastic prison with no more than a couple of grams of iron on hand or stop a free-falling jet in mid-flight – or, say, wrench a submarine clean out of the ocean or stop a full missile barrage dead in the air. I have lately had to come to the conclusion that somehow or other I have turned into a shameless Magneto fangirl, and minor quibbles about his costuming aside this movie delivered.
3. Young mutants figuring out their powers. Always good value and, surprisingly, I think this is almost the first time we've seen this really dealt with in an X-Men movie. Seeing all the kids really being kids for the brief window they got and taking turns to show off their powers to each other was great fun, and the later scenes at the mansion of Havok and Banshee getting the hang of their own powers were a likewise a joy to watch. Even if the lead roles are men who've already had years to get used to those ridiculously overpowered abilities we were talking about above, the supporting cast more than fills out the glorious sense of discovery that comes with learning to use your mutant powers for the first time.
But, because I never can resist the chance to gripe, we also need to cover some lowlights:
1. Emma Frost. Given that even including an adult Emma Frost in First Class constitutes one of the more glaring continuity errors in the whole series, I really would have hoped they'd more planned for the character than this. I can't claim a lot of familiarity with the pre-heel-face-turn Emma, but here she comes across as more of a lackey with a little more than average class than as a force of personality in her own right, and that doesn't do her justice. A lot of reviewers have complained about the casting of January Jones in the role, but casting aside the script gave her very little to work with. I mean, Emma Frost as a woman who'll smile widely when told she's the most beautiful woman the speaker has ever seen? The Emma I know would be more likely to give them the raised eyebrow of 'Well of course I am, what's your point?'
2. The team of white male heroes. In limited defence of the final line up, the characters we were left with by the end of the movie did make a certain measure of sense. Out of every character who could boast a significant presence on the first or even the second original incarnations of the comic book X-team, Beast, Havok and Banshee are very nearly the only ones who haven't already appeared as much younger men or women in later parts of the established timeline. That said, it is hard not to facepalm a bit when by the end of the movie every character who was female or anything other than white has joined the bad guys, had their memory wiped, or died. Granted, the final team is established far too late to have much impact on the movie and there's every chance for more diversity to be added before we do get the inevitable sequel, but this was a disappointment, especially when you consider how utterly textbook the killing off of the one token black character in the movie was.
On a similar note, would it have killed them to actually make Sean Irish and Moira Scottish? Sean at least does seem to have been written with some consciousness of his background (or at any rate he's apparently Catholic, if him crossing himself before jumping out of the window is anything to go by) but he's still got that American accent, and Moira seems to have little beyond her name in common with her comic book counterpart. When neither got more than a few scenes each to establish them as distinct characters and the team we're left with at the end is so monotonously White-Male-American, this seems like a real wasted opportunity.
3. That thing where the good guys think you should have to hide to fit in and the badguys are the ones saying you shouldn't have to. I suspect this is going to be a big case of YMMV, but for myself I could have done without seeing the good guys portrayed as such utter failures on this topic. Much of it can be justified away from the perspective that they're all so young in these incarnations, but the way the 'good guys' dealt with Mystique's body issues came a bit too close to the line for what I can take from sympathetic characters, and it all seemed so unnecessary. If they needed a clear line between the philosophies of the two sides on the issue – and I'd certainly agree that they did – then I'd have thought a disagreement over whether regular humans would ever realistically be able to accept someone like Mystique in her true form would have worked just as well, particularly in light of the very event that cements the divide being the moment when the humans turn on them. We're far enough back in X-Men history that it makes some sense that the question of whether it's better to focus on finding ways to pass as human would still be open to a lot of mutants, but when young Charles manages to be so compassionate and so insightful about everything else, the movie failed to make any convincing case as to why this should be his one epic blindspot. The lack of logic by which Beast triggers his change to his beastly form with a serum meant to do the exact opposite – and is nevertheless practically over it by the next morning – was similarly irritating to me.
So yeah, I feel there was a lot of room for improvement in certain parts of the script, but on the balance of it, I'm quite tempted to go see it again, and not a lot of movies do that for me. Also very much looking forward to the inevitable upsurge in Charles/Magneto fic - on which note, it should be no surprise to anyone that there is a kink meme which is already on it's second round and has also already covered the AU ending where they never break up, the obligatory band AU, sex pollen, the one where Mystique morphs into Charles to get a rise out of Erik and all kinds of fun with the implications of falling for a telepath no really, and those are just the ones I have loved so far that I still have the links for. Additional recs very much welcome. :3