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Let's talk about X-Men: First Class, shall we?
Just got back from the midnight showing of X-Men: First Class. And yes, I had to tell everyone about it immediately.
No, seriously, I mean it. SPOILERS.
Lots of spoilers.
Are you still with me? Good.
This is almost the X-men movie OF MY HEART. Honestly, the things I didn't like about this movie is shorter than the things I loved. Yes, not just liked. loved.
Dislikes:
* POC characters
We had two POCs—Darwin (more on him in a moment. ♥) and Angel.
Angel was cool. She's Latina, has fairy wings (which is why everyone thought she was Pixie when the first trailer came out, but she isn't) and the ability to spit acidic fireballs. Yeah, I don't know either. Loved her, hated the fact that she jumped ship and joined the bad guys the first moment it was offered to her.
Darwin. Oh, Darwin, how dearly do I love you? Darwin has the mutant ability to adapt to anything. ANYTHING. He was black. (For slash purposes, he and Alex were totes boyfriends.) He was the only major character in our team of superheroes to die.
Admittedly, he died in a kind of cool way, but still. The only hero to die.
The problem with this is that Darwin literally survives everything in the comics. He met Hela, goddess of death in Norse legend, got her to attack him, and evolved so highly because of it that HE BECAME A GOD OF DEATH.
He should not have died. On the other hand, almost worth it for the tragic look he gives Alex as he dies. I'm just saying. My slash goggles, they are tight.
* The Emma/Sebastian work relationship
Okay, this is a minor quibble, and could easily be explained by Sebastian Shaw being a total SKEEVY JERKFACE, but dude. Emma Frost does not use her diamond form to cut up ice for Sebastian's drink. She should have punched him in the face. If not, you know, for the fact that he can absorb kinetic energy.
That's it. Short list, right? Let's talk about everything else.
I love that they opened the movie with pretty much the same scene as the very first movie, with a young Erik wrenching the metal gates off their hinges before being knocked out. Also, Sebastian is a SKEEVY JERKFACE and knew about Erik's power, and had his mother killed in front of him to get him to use his power. And then trained him to use his pain and anger as a way to control his powers. It was tragic and powerful and I wanted to hug Erik.
With Charles, they cut some things that would have confused the viewer, I think, with his step-father and brother, Cain, so that's good. It would've needlessly caused a complicated backstory that wasn't needed for the movie. If anything, this movie is really streamlined, I feel. It gave you what you needed to understand and didn't go into unnecessary detail, which was a nice change from the original movies, where they tried to cram as many mutant cameos in as possible.
In this movie, they had Mystique and Charles meet first, when Mystique broke into his posh mansion to steal food because she was starving, Charles used his telepathy and was so excited to meet her he basically let her stay. Period. With no questions. Which was wonderful.
They had Moira McTaggert! As a CIA agent! Which is really laughable, but hey, going with the flow. It was nice to have her around. Now, to talk about the other members of the team.
1) Beast
They had him perfect. Absolutely perfect. His intelligence, his longing to be normal, I can't say it enough. It was perfect. They even had him blue and furry by the end of the movie, and it didn't come out of nowhere. They used his origin exactly. ♥
2) Havok
He and Darwin were cute boyfriends. I also liked how he found it impossible to control his powers until he had the power conduits to help him control it. Also comic!canon, which was very nice. He was very careful about always telling everyone to move out of the way before he used his powers.
3) Banshee
Caleb Landry Jones was completely adorable as Sean. I mean it. And when they taught him how to fly, it was just so joyful. No complaints there.
4) Mystique
Oh, this darling girl. I felt for her in this movie more than I did in any of the others combined. She longed to be accepted, and she thought that in order to do that, she had to be someone else. I really feel that she was one of the most dynamic characters, because at the end she'd grown comfortable into her skin.
5) Charles and Erik
I have to put these two together, because there's no way I can talk about them apart. A good deal of the movie deals with them separately, how they came to meet, and how they became the friends that they were. This movie was a love letter to their relationship, whether you take it romantically, or just as a deep friendship that changed their life. I wasn't surprised to see in the credits that Bryan Singer co-wrote the screenplay, because if there's one thing I knew out of the first two movies, it was that he had a great deal of respect for the source material, and the relationship between these two men was crafted lovingly. There were two things that really stuck out for me in their relationship, and what's more, they were both things that were supposed to stick out, so yay for the movie doing its job.
The first thing was when they were doing training to make their powers stronger and/or more controllable before their first mission. Erik has been using rage and pain as the conduit for his powers for so long, and Charles gave him the closest thing to peace I think Erik would ever be able to find. Charles believes that true focus is somewhere between rage and serenity, and with Erik's permission went into Erik's mind and discovered a memory of Erik and his mother lighting the family Menorah. It was such an intense moment of trust. And they both experienced that memory in the exact same way, and it floored me.
The second was something that crushed my soul. First off, Erik killed Sebastian in a horribly awful way while Charles was in Sebastian's mind. Poor Charles suffered. And then, when Erik began to attack the humans, Charles tried to stop him. Moira began shooting bullets, which of course Erik just knocked away like they were nothing. One of them ricocheted and hit Charles.
In movie!verse canon, Erik was the one who crippled Charles. I called the plot twist, of course, but it was still beautifully done. Oh, and Erik blamed Moira so deeply and bitterly, without understanding his own culpability until Charles told him to stop. And the look on his face when Charles told him they didn't want the same things, it was—oh, movie.
In summary:
It is the best X-Men movie they've released. You should watch it. Right now. Go on.
No, seriously, I mean it. SPOILERS.
Lots of spoilers.
Are you still with me? Good.
This is almost the X-men movie OF MY HEART. Honestly, the things I didn't like about this movie is shorter than the things I loved. Yes, not just liked. loved.
Dislikes:
* POC characters
We had two POCs—Darwin (more on him in a moment. ♥) and Angel.
Angel was cool. She's Latina, has fairy wings (which is why everyone thought she was Pixie when the first trailer came out, but she isn't) and the ability to spit acidic fireballs. Yeah, I don't know either. Loved her, hated the fact that she jumped ship and joined the bad guys the first moment it was offered to her.
Darwin. Oh, Darwin, how dearly do I love you? Darwin has the mutant ability to adapt to anything. ANYTHING. He was black. (For slash purposes, he and Alex were totes boyfriends.) He was the only major character in our team of superheroes to die.
Admittedly, he died in a kind of cool way, but still. The only hero to die.
The problem with this is that Darwin literally survives everything in the comics. He met Hela, goddess of death in Norse legend, got her to attack him, and evolved so highly because of it that HE BECAME A GOD OF DEATH.
He should not have died. On the other hand, almost worth it for the tragic look he gives Alex as he dies. I'm just saying. My slash goggles, they are tight.
* The Emma/Sebastian work relationship
Okay, this is a minor quibble, and could easily be explained by Sebastian Shaw being a total SKEEVY JERKFACE, but dude. Emma Frost does not use her diamond form to cut up ice for Sebastian's drink. She should have punched him in the face. If not, you know, for the fact that he can absorb kinetic energy.
That's it. Short list, right? Let's talk about everything else.
I love that they opened the movie with pretty much the same scene as the very first movie, with a young Erik wrenching the metal gates off their hinges before being knocked out. Also, Sebastian is a SKEEVY JERKFACE and knew about Erik's power, and had his mother killed in front of him to get him to use his power. And then trained him to use his pain and anger as a way to control his powers. It was tragic and powerful and I wanted to hug Erik.
With Charles, they cut some things that would have confused the viewer, I think, with his step-father and brother, Cain, so that's good. It would've needlessly caused a complicated backstory that wasn't needed for the movie. If anything, this movie is really streamlined, I feel. It gave you what you needed to understand and didn't go into unnecessary detail, which was a nice change from the original movies, where they tried to cram as many mutant cameos in as possible.
In this movie, they had Mystique and Charles meet first, when Mystique broke into his posh mansion to steal food because she was starving, Charles used his telepathy and was so excited to meet her he basically let her stay. Period. With no questions. Which was wonderful.
They had Moira McTaggert! As a CIA agent! Which is really laughable, but hey, going with the flow. It was nice to have her around. Now, to talk about the other members of the team.
1) Beast
They had him perfect. Absolutely perfect. His intelligence, his longing to be normal, I can't say it enough. It was perfect. They even had him blue and furry by the end of the movie, and it didn't come out of nowhere. They used his origin exactly. ♥
2) Havok
He and Darwin were cute boyfriends. I also liked how he found it impossible to control his powers until he had the power conduits to help him control it. Also comic!canon, which was very nice. He was very careful about always telling everyone to move out of the way before he used his powers.
3) Banshee
Caleb Landry Jones was completely adorable as Sean. I mean it. And when they taught him how to fly, it was just so joyful. No complaints there.
4) Mystique
Oh, this darling girl. I felt for her in this movie more than I did in any of the others combined. She longed to be accepted, and she thought that in order to do that, she had to be someone else. I really feel that she was one of the most dynamic characters, because at the end she'd grown comfortable into her skin.
5) Charles and Erik
I have to put these two together, because there's no way I can talk about them apart. A good deal of the movie deals with them separately, how they came to meet, and how they became the friends that they were. This movie was a love letter to their relationship, whether you take it romantically, or just as a deep friendship that changed their life. I wasn't surprised to see in the credits that Bryan Singer co-wrote the screenplay, because if there's one thing I knew out of the first two movies, it was that he had a great deal of respect for the source material, and the relationship between these two men was crafted lovingly. There were two things that really stuck out for me in their relationship, and what's more, they were both things that were supposed to stick out, so yay for the movie doing its job.
The first thing was when they were doing training to make their powers stronger and/or more controllable before their first mission. Erik has been using rage and pain as the conduit for his powers for so long, and Charles gave him the closest thing to peace I think Erik would ever be able to find. Charles believes that true focus is somewhere between rage and serenity, and with Erik's permission went into Erik's mind and discovered a memory of Erik and his mother lighting the family Menorah. It was such an intense moment of trust. And they both experienced that memory in the exact same way, and it floored me.
The second was something that crushed my soul. First off, Erik killed Sebastian in a horribly awful way while Charles was in Sebastian's mind. Poor Charles suffered. And then, when Erik began to attack the humans, Charles tried to stop him. Moira began shooting bullets, which of course Erik just knocked away like they were nothing. One of them ricocheted and hit Charles.
In movie!verse canon, Erik was the one who crippled Charles. I called the plot twist, of course, but it was still beautifully done. Oh, and Erik blamed Moira so deeply and bitterly, without understanding his own culpability until Charles told him to stop. And the look on his face when Charles told him they didn't want the same things, it was—oh, movie.
In summary:
It is the best X-Men movie they've released. You should watch it. Right now. Go on.
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