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The X-men are something that I hold dear to my heart. I grew up on the X-men on every
media I could find: Comics, television, even the X-men toy line. So when you release a movie based upon
the origin of the mutant comic book team – please make it about the origin of the comic book team. That
being said, when I first saw the movie trailer for X-men: First Class I wasn’t too satisfied. At
first glance it looked like a cheesy B-rated movie that you would see on Nickelodeon (children’s television channel)
after school. But after hearing everyone rave about this movie, I had to check it out.
The
film primarily focuses on Charles Xavier (“Professor X”) and Erik Lehnsherr (“Magneto”)
– showing us their connection and how each one of them developed into who they are today. They did
a great job giving us their back-story – in fact I even loved how they incorporated the opening scene from the first
X-men movie into this movie. The fact that they were giving props to the original movie gave me goosebumps,
and it showed that they didn’t forget about the original trilogy (even though they have every right to completely
forget X-men 3). James McAvoy plays Charles Xavier, and delivers a respectable performance –
it could have been a little better, but he gave it a nice and innocent twist. Michael Fassbender is the
standout actor in this film. His performance of Magneto was incredible – it was believable in every
scene. Nearly everyone else in the movie acted remarkably well, except for Rose Byrne (Moira MacTaggert)
– her performance was boring and lacked enthusiasm and character.
The storyline was pretty
solid, telling us the back-story of Professor X, Magneto and the first missions of the X-men. Although
if you are going to tell us the story of how the X-men formed, please include some of the original X-men characters besides
just Beast (such as: Cyclops, Iceman, Angel and Marvel Girl).
My main concern that started with the first viewing of the
trailer that was featured during the Super Bowl was still a concern as I watched the movie, and that was the special effects
involving the characters in mutant form. After watching the movie I still compare the visual effects to
a Nickelodeon after school movie. Each and every character (while in mutant form) looked ridiculous.
It looked as though they were wearing a cheesy Halloween mask you can pick up at Wal-mart. Why would
a movie that was made over 10 years after the original look worse? In fact, even the computer graphics
seen throughout the movie looked ridiculous. Although this could be because they used a lot more CG than
the original, but it just didn’t look right and looked worse than the original trilogy.
The
bottom line: I liked the story, it had great acting from most of the actors, but I just couldn’t look past the cheesy
graphics and characters.
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