X-Men: First Class discussion (spoilers!)

How would you rate X-Men: First Class?

  • Total voters
    17
I just saw it and I liked it a lot though I still feel the sting of X3. I really didn't like that movie and it has made me not care about X-Men. Still this was a damn good movie, my only real problem was the Hellfire club was pretty lame, I mean most of the villains were just place holders and they could have definitely drum up someone better than Tornado Hands I also hate Azazel in the comics and carried over. I agree with Jaggyd about Emma Frost she was incredibly underused. I also hated Magneto's look at the end, just sort of looked goofy instead of awesome. Also the final debate fell flat for me. And I hate how every Human extra sounds like an idiot "I know these mutant just saved our asses by taking out the unidentified sub that manipulating WWIII and we have no excuse because we onsite intelligence from one of our agents. Okay Russians lets team up" I mean there's a logical way for them to make that call but instead they dialog becomes "durr"

But really it was a great film they really thought out what they can do with their powers. I even didn't mind the continuity gaps, maybe it's because I want X3 to be rewritten, but I still love that it wasn't a reboot for all the bad moves the X-men franchise has made it has also made some good ones and it's a shame to just erase those.
 
so the Hellfire Club was basically a revamped Factor Three.

In the early X-Men comics, Factor Three tried to make mutants the third world power (US and USSR being one and two) so they could challenge the other countries for dominance. Their team also included a shape shifter (Changeling) and a teleporter (Vanisher).
 
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Captain Canuck said:
EDIT: also, wasn't Xavier standing when he rescued Cyclops and the others from 3 Mile Island in the Wolverine movie?
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My problem lies more in the fact that Professor X and Magneto seem to be allies in the flashback of X-Men 3, when this prequel doesn't seem to accomodate that.

As for Professor X walking, you can fanwank around that and say that the story as we're seeing it is being remembered wrong.
 
Gothamite said:
My problem lies more in the fact that Professor X and Magneto seem to be allies in the flashback of X-Men 3, when this prequel doesn't seem to accomodate that.

As for Professor X walking, you can fanwank around that and say that the story as we're seeing it is being remembered wrong.
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or that it's his astral projection/ he's making them see him that way.
 
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I saw X-MEN: FIRST CLASS on midnight the day I arrived in Charlotte (Thursday night).

Without a doubt, the best X-MEN movie to date. Hands down.

With the exception of Charles and Magneto being friends and Charles walking at the beginning of X3, I can't see what continuity problems there are. As I recall, Emma Frost isn't called Emma Frost in WOLVERINE, but she might be. Anyhow, I don't care too much.

I thought it was really entertaining. It's not great; it has empathy problems. While Magneto and Xavier are wonderful, the other heroes are kinda... not dull, but fractured. See, this film is actually two thematically different films in one. On the one hand, it wants to tell the story of Xavier and Magneto's friendship and its demise, and it wants to tell the story of how the X-Men formed. As much as I liked Banshee and Darwin and the others, I think once we got Beast, that should've been the end of the recruitment drive. The main area where it gets confusing (emotionally) is when the big fight in Cuba is about to happen and we get a training montage. It feels emotionally out of place. As does the climax; once Shaw is gone, it feels odd to continue with Magneto trying to kill all humans and Xavier getting crippled. It's not that it didn't work it just felt... out of place. And I think the pull of these two movies hurts the film. Also, White Queen and Riptide are terminably dull. They have nothing to do, and don't do what they do with any interest.

But, other than that, it's really terrific. Azazel killing Oliver Platt and the rest of the CIA was just horrifying and unexpected. Really powerful stuff. And Sebastian Shaw... Kevin Bacon owned this movie. Seriously, Shaw is a better villain here than Magneto has been anywhere. Honestly, I cannot think of a time where Magneto was the big bad and had more gravitas than Shaw. Even the way he killed Darwin was unnecessarily cruel. The filmmakers had a stroke of genius making his master plan be to create the Cuban Missile Crisis (such a great idea) and throughout I thought, "How in the hell are they going to beat this guy?"

And the ending didn't disappoint. In fact, the ending was superb. Okay, so Shaw fell like the Juggernaut always does, but that's not what made it great; stealing the helmet and freezing him wasn't the brilliant bit. No, what makes it work is that Magneto engineers a situation where he forces Charles to either help him kill Shaw or let Shaw destroy mankind. Magneto forces a crucible to demonstrate unequivocably to Charles that some people have to die to make the world a better place. It's absolutely fantastic. And Fassbender and MacAvoy shone as the two main characters. And Rose Byrne was great too.

All in all, very good if a little emotionally muddled. More powerful and original than THOR, but perhaps, less enjoyable.
 
Bass said:
See, this film is actually two thematically different films in one. On the one hand, it wants to tell the story of Xavier and Magneto's friendship and its demise, and it wants to tell the story of how the X-Men formed. As much as I liked Banshee and Darwin and the others, I think once we got Beast, that should've been the end of the recruitment drive. The main area where it gets confusing (emotionally) is when the big fight in Cuba is about to happen and we get a training montage. It feels emotionally out of place. As does the climax; once Shaw is gone, it feels odd to continue with Magneto trying to kill all humans and Xavier getting crippled. It's not that it didn't work it just felt... out of place. And I think the pull of these two movies hurts the film.
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I felt the same way.
 
I just watched the original film again for the first time in a couple of years, and I gotta say, the prequel goes quite well with it. Applying the First Class backstory to Mystique in X1 is really interesting, imagining that teenage girl losing her humanity over the years with Magneto and actively becoming superiority-complexed and reptilian. I also just really love that film.... it just has such class.
 
Planet-man said:
I just watched the original film again for the first time in a couple of years, and I gotta say, the prequel goes quite well with it. Applying the First Class backstory to Mystique in X1 is really interesting, imagining that teenage girl losing her humanity over the years with Magneto and actively becoming superiority-complexed and reptilian. I also just really love that film.... it just has such class.
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i watched X2 the other day and thought the same thing when Stryker and Mystique/Kelley are talking to the president about Xavier's school. She's usually so cold and arrogant, but she shows concern when Stryker plans on attacking the school.
 
Captain Canuck said:
i watched X2 the other day and thought the same thing when Stryker and Mystique/Kelley are talking to the president about Xavier's school. She's usually so cold and arrogant, but she shows concern when Stryker plans on attacking the school.
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Her conversation with Nightcrawler also works pretty well. "Why don't you hide all the time?" "Because we shouldn't have to."
 
Question from someone who has not seen the film: how does the team mesh?

I just kind of looked at the lineup from previews and kept thinking that this was a really weird collection of characters, aside from Xavier and Magneto. Like all the X-Men characters went on Oprah or something. "And you get to be in the movie and you get to be in the movie..."
 
Grocer Man said:
Question from someone who has not seen the film: how does the team mesh?

I just kind of looked at the lineup from previews and kept thinking that this was a really weird collection of characters, aside from Xavier and Magneto. Like all the X-Men characters went on Oprah or something. "And you get to be in the movie and you get to be in the movie..."
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They work alright really not much time is given for them to develop. But they all worked well together.
 
Grocer Man said:
Question from someone who has not seen the film: how does the team mesh?

I just kind of looked at the lineup from previews and kept thinking that this was a really weird collection of characters, aside from Xavier and Magneto. Like all the X-Men characters went on Oprah or something. "And you get to be in the movie and you get to be in the movie..."
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Do I get to be in the movie?
 
Grocer Man said:
Question from someone who has not seen the film: how does the team mesh?

I just kind of looked at the lineup from previews and kept thinking that this was a really weird collection of characters, aside from Xavier and Magneto. Like all the X-Men characters went on Oprah or something. "And you get to be in the movie and you get to be in the movie..."
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the movie isn't so much about the team as it is about Mags and Prof X. But there is at least one scene of the team bonding, and a few other moments in the training montage that show them interacting. Most of the interaction in the team is between Beast/Mystique and there is some between Havok and Beast as well (obviously pretty different kinds of interactions). Mystique and Beast are the two members of the team whose characters are developed the most (probably because they are important characters in the other movies).
 
Hellsbuttmonkey said:
I have heard a lot of people disliking her performance, but I thought she did Emma Frost well. The cold, uncaring ice queen Emma. The way she spoke, the way she acted was as if she didn't care about anyone else but herself. With is how it should be, full of arrogance and disinterest.
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There's a difference between reading your lines like you don't care about anyone else and reading your lines like you don't care about the movie.

This film was great because it embraced some of the goofier, sillier things about the mutants. They didn't try to cloak them in a veneer of 'Ultimateness,' they just said "Okay this dude creates power rings of destruction, this guy uses the force of his scream to FLY! GO!")

I was disappointed that Beast was not more awesome. Nicholas Hoult was a great choice to play Hank McCoy, giving him a lot of pathos and angst tempered with cute aw shucks charm, but then after he became all blue and furry, it was like "MY CHARACTER ARC IS OVER. IMMA FLY A PLANE."

Also, Rose Byrne. Not aging well.

And from now on, I will only refer to X-Men's First Class Beast as "Blue Kilrathi is Blue."
 
I purchased all 4 X-men films on bluray for 7 each, got a free ticket to First Class with each of them. Resold them and got my money back. Then I watched all 5 movies in a row. I may be crazy but I think X2 > The Last Stand > First Class > X-men > Wolverine. Wolverine wasn't as bad the second time.
 
Was anyone else put off by the complete lack of smoking in the film? It was set in the early 60s and there should have been plumes of cigarette and cigar smoke in every scene and there was nothing. Usually the villains will at least be seen doing it.

I think Wolverine might have been the only person who smoked in the whole film and even then, there's a possibility his cigar wasn't even lit.

This is going to be even more annoying in the Captain America movie.
 
Nope. I thought she looked kind of sick and gross in First Class. That scene where she took all of her clothes off was kind of unsettling.
 
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