X-Men: First Class

Viewer Rating:Andy has rated X-Men: First Class rating: 3 Star

Comic adaptions seem to have become a major force on the silver screen with so many new franchises arriving and old ones being rebooted.

X-Men: First Class is definatly a reboot of the original (and mostly terrible) original series of Xmen films, featuring the insantly recognisable Xavier and Magneto (though Magneto only gets his code name half way through) and some young mutants laying the foundations of the X-Men. This film preceeds what most of us know of the story, before Charles Xaviers School.

Firstly, it is good to see that the film makers have gone their own way with this film, and somewhat ignored the trilogy and deviates away from the comics, allowing it to become a story in its own right. This works in places, and the nods at the source material (and even the original films with a cameo by Jackman), but does create some interesting issues for those with a knowledge of the source. This issue hurts all comic adaptations, but X-Men: First Class has at least tried to address it in a meaningful way.

Unfortunatly, where this film falls down is in many of its performances. January Jones is terrible in every scene, a fact which seems to be acknowledged by her wardrobe, which may be the only reason she is in the film. While Fassbender is mostly brilliant, the accent falls back to home far too often, and why this was seen as acceptable is a mystery!

Finally, the story here had potential. Set against the Cuban millise crisis, and the emergence of mutants (the fact that there are older, baddy mutants creates the question of where and how they had been hiding, creating a plot hole that unfortunatly never gets plugged), this story had great potential, but the side story of Magneto's origins and rise were far more interesting, with you even routing for him for a large part of the film. This is where the film falls, it is 2 films, neither of them fleshed out, being less than the sum of their parts.

However, if you go to the film looking for X-Men, looking for something new in the X-Men that you haven't seen before, then this is definatly the film for you.

Review published on the 08 June 2011 08:58