X-Men: First Class movie

[Nessex]

Well - i can breath a huge sigh of relief.

This was HUGELY enjoyable. A tiny bit long-winded towards the 3rd quarter, but that's a minor gripe.

I love seeing how they stitched the x-universe together.

The origin of Beast etc . . .

I think i may have missed a couple of cameos & as an x-fan i'm a bit appalled at myself. Please feel free to start a spoiler hidden cameo list if anyone out there could see more than

Wolverine & a possible young storm, jean & cyclops)

One of the cameos when Xavier first starts recruiting seems to very much fly in the face of one of the previous x-films. But i think that on the whole, this really stayed true to the x-films and the core values of the comics. (although it did seem to 'politely' ignore some extablished facts set up in XMOW. )

The score was fantastic - the closing credits looked awesome.

Apart from it getting a bit long & Angel

defecting to the Hellfire club without any real motivation

, i was really happy.

I think i'd give this a 7 out of 10. I'm going to have to go back for a 3rd watching this week (which might bump it up to 8 out of 10)

[Trekker 42]

One of the cameos when Xavier first starts recruiting seems to very much fly in the face of one of the previous x-films. But i think that on the whole, this really stayed true to the x-films and the core values of the comics. (although it did seem to 'politely' ignore some extablished facts set up in XMOW. )

I have a feeling that particular cameo took place in media res of that other movie.

in the 60's, Wolverine was either still working for Weapon X or was in his time spent with Silverfox. Either way, it's f**king Wolverine. He'll be in a bar. It's how he works. The stuff where he went after Sabertooth and got claws was in the late 1970s as it happened around the Three Mile Island incident. This means that this Wolverine had not been Adamantiumized. Considering that the part when he leaves the team happened six years before Silverfox's faked death, and that happened in the late 70s and not long before Three Mile Island, this cameo probably happened during Wolverine's tour of Duty with Weapon X before he left the team in the middle of Africa. It fits, just in a weird place.

[dj87]

I had to re-read your post a few times Trekker, before I realised you were referring to medias res!

[Nessex]

I was reffering more to the possible

young Storm cameo. She (or some other white haired african girl) is shown at about the age of 6 in the XMOW film, but she is shown at about the same age, or more like 10/1,1 in this film as well. The Wolverine cameo i had no issue with. I don't even have too big a deal with the storm one either. I just thought it was curious how much attention they paid to some details and not to others. Also - where did Emma clothes go when the transformed?

[Trekker 42]

I had to re-read your post a few times Trekker, before I realised you were referring to medias res!

Damn. Forgot the s.

Still. Concept is there.

[NorthRaider]

Great movie. Did not regret seeing this, though comic/movie continuity is being stretched to its limits yet again. (Mostly it appears people are still torn on whether this is a prequel or a straight-up reboot, seems not even Matthew Vaughn and Bryan Singer agreed on which was which.)

On that note, it's cool how First Class kept itself (mostly) in trilogy continuity whilst being very much its own movie. People had been angsting for months over how the hell they were gonna do a First Class movie without Jean, Cyclops, etc. but I liked how they skated around that with the whole "government project" set-up. The sequel hook wasn't too shabby either, now I'm dying to know whatever the hell happened to all the other mutants we don't see in the later movies

especially Havok and Banshee.

Nessex, I think one cameo you missed was

Rebecca Romijn as Mystique (in the scene where she, um, seduces Erik).

Granted, this a very subtly-done cameo but a welcome nod to the previous movies nonetheless.

[youbastards]

We should've gotten a Banshee Minimate instead of yet another movie Beast, it could have been an easy part swap for a 616 Banshee.

For all you QC'ers, don't forget to add the lines to Banshee's costume!

[gambitron]

As I just received my First Class moviemates in the mail and love 'em I also wished that they had done a Banshee. Considering these minimates are the only merchandise this movie is getting it would have been cool so see a couple more of them as minimates.

Yeah 1000 posts! :biggrin:

[TM2 Dinobot]

Nessex, I think one cameo you missed was

Rebecca Romijn as Mystique (in the scene where she, um, seduces Erik).

Granted, this a very subtly-done cameo but a welcome nod to the previous movies nonetheless.

I was so frickin happy. Seriously, this may be the best Marvel Movie to date. It's certainly up there with Spidey 2 and Ironman.

[Nessex]

Nessex, I think one cameo you missed was

Rebecca Romijn as Mystique (in the scene where she, um, seduces Erik).

Granted, this a very subtly-done cameo but a welcome nod to the previous movies nonetheless.

I did see this one actually - it was my favourite cameo in the whole film. It shows how delicately and fully Matt Vaughn attempted to sew this picture into the pre-existing x-movie universe.

10 points for that one.

[Danny]

I have to say I wasn't expecting much from this film, it just seemed a bit unnecessary when X1 was an origin story, Wolverine was an origin story and now this film is an origin story!

But I was very surprised how it all just seemed to work on screen. Fassbender and McAvoy had real chemistry together and it was good to see them front and centre in the story.

The battle at the end helps justify Magneto's "them or us" position for the other films, and Charles comes across as being a bit naive. I do think there is scope for a sequel to re-introduce some of the other characters like Scott, Storm and Jean.

Also must mention Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique cos she was absolutely gorgeous It's a sad fact that as I get older they cast younger and younger actresses in these things!

[karamazov80]

I just saw this today. Awesome movie. Worthy of the praise being heaped on it by critics. Second best of the franchise after X2, but only closely behind that one, and would probably be my favorite if it had more of the Claremont/Byrne-era crew.

Fassbender stole the show, and really embodies the Magneto from the comics better than McKellen did IMO. He's gonna be a big movie star from here on, methinks. But the biggest surprise to me was Kevin Bacon. How freakin' awesome was he?? I hope people will now give the criminally overlooked (and misunderstood) Hollow Man a second look

Biggest disappointment was probably White Queen. Ms. Jones looks the part, but that's about as far as it goes.

And I totally called the Wolverine cameo. Fully expect to see him show up in commercials in a few weeks once the initial hype of the movie has died down.

[dj87]

completely agree with all of that k, especially your remark about McKellen... I've rewatched a couple of the 'old' X films since seeing FC, and they all seem so flat, McKellen particularly 2 dimensional in his portrayal of Magneto. They showed X3 over here a few days after I'd been to the cinema... while its a very bad film in it's own right, with FC fresh in my mind, I could hardly watch it.

The more I think about it, the more I do actually want a 'sequel' to this, simply to see more McAvoy/Fass development, confrontation, etc.

[karamazov80]

They were clearly trying to set up a sequel at the end. . .unfortunately, those things don't always pan out

[youbastards]

Was that a deleted scene from Rocky III? :tongue:

Langella was seriously channeling Burgess Meredith in that role.

[TM2 Dinobot]

I've say it before, I'll say it again. I actually like X3.

Really, I don't understand why people are crying about the lack of Jean, Cyc, Iceman, Angel and Beast. Seriously. We've seen them, we know what they can do, we had Jean's origin in X3. It worked better without hem, opening up a fresh slate to people that don't know the comics or like me that don't care, and allowed for a more enjoyable movie.

People are also ripping on January Jones too much. Emma Frost is an emotionless ice queen unable to summon up the barest of human feelings or expression. Mrs Jones did a perfect job. The was playing a wooden character, so wooden acting fit the bill.

Also, I'm going with what other people are saying and chiming into the fact that Fassbender should be the new James Bond.

[karamazov80]

I've say it before, I'll say it again. I actually like X3.

Really, I don't understand why people are crying about the lack of Jean, Cyc, Iceman, Angel and Beast. Seriously. We've seen them, we know what they can do, we had Jean's origin in X3. It worked better without hem, opening up a fresh slate to people that don't know the comics or like me that don't care, and allowed for a more enjoyable movie.

People are also ripping on January Jones too much. Emma Frost is an emotionless ice queen unable to summon up the barest of human feelings or expression. Mrs Jones did a perfect job. The was playing a wooden character, so wooden acting fit the bill.

Also, I'm going with what other people are saying and chiming into the fact that Fassbender should be the new James Bond.

Well, from my perspective, the movies can work or fail to work on a number of levels. One level is accuracy to the comic. Obviously, the original X-Men team didn't include Mystique, Havok, and Banshee. If they would have rebooted the series (which would be completely justifiable after X3 in my opinion), then they could have started out with the X-Men team everyone knows as the first X-Men team, and that would have been one very cool nod to the comic that folks could get behind. It's almost like having a Avengers film where the team is Cap, Black Knight, Hercules, and Dr. Druid. Could still be a great movie, but it ain't close to the original Avengers team.

Of course, compromises with the comic are always made with film, so it's a matter of how much matters to the individual fan. Personally, I can live with First Class starting fresh as it is, and keeping the connection with the previous films (though I can understand that it will really bother some), but I am a bit more put-off with the fact that, apart from Magneto (and to a lesser extent, Prof. X, Beast, and Mystique) none of these characters really struck me as their comic counterparts from a personality standpoint. I enjoyed Bacon as Shaw, but in the comics he was nothing like that. Same with White Queen. TM, you may be referring to newer comics (I'm only really familiar with her from the 70s/80s stuff), but I always thought of her as amoral, power-hungry, and a clever manipulator. Jones dialogue may have reflected that character, but I didn't feel that her performance did. I didn't think of her as a person with flat affect, who seemed kind of bored all the time--which is what Jones' performance seemed like to me.

In any case, a great movie, a great X-Men story, just not containing X-Men that I recognized very well apart from Mags. The team was weird, the personalities were mostly new creations, and it worked, but it's one of those things where if they could have pulled that other stuff together, the movie would have been that much greater.

And that meets my quota for stupidly long post of the week that no one will bother reading

[Turtle]

Your, ahem, post looks a lot bigger on my phone than on my computer. I don't really care about accuracy in letter to the comics. I'm more interested in seeing accuracy in spirit, and I think First Class really did nail it. Some characterizations didn't match the comics, but they worked for the movie. I personally thought that Kevin Bacon was an interesting take on Shaw that captured that kind of cheesy, is-this-guy-serious?-my-god-he's-serious! Thing Shaw has going in the comics. And his power looked very cool visually. I'd love a sequel. Seeing the X-Men and Brotherhood evolve and grow more distant.

[Turtle]

I watched the first three X-Movies this weekend, and I have to say that I thought overall First Class fit in pretty well with the first two movies. There were no huge, glaring inconsistencies, and it's actually quite cool seeing the similarities in costumes. (The biggest problem for me is Magneto helping Prof. X build Cerebro.) There is clearly a lot of room for more prologue before X1/X2. Like, you know, why are there only three X-Men at the start of the series? I'd really like to see some sequels that bridge that period and end with Cyclops, Phoenix, and Storm as the only remaining X-Men/students. It'd make a lot of sense if we were to see X1 as the beginning of Xavier's rebuilding period.

X3... ugh. That movie has gotten worse with age. I do not recommend watching it right after the first two and only 1 week after X:FC. It doesn't make sense in the context of those three, and worse, it doesn't even make sense in context of itself. I just... can't understand how that got made. Rubbish. I stand by my belief that X3 was all a bad dream and that when the REAL X3 happens, it will be good and we will rejoice.