Saturday, June 25, 2011

X-Men: First Class (2011)

Director: Mathew Vaughn. Cast: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Kevin Bacon, Rose Byrne, Oliver Platt, January Jones. 132 min. Rated PG-13. Action/Adventure.

No doubt, the fifth X-Men episode (this time a prequel, describing the rise of Professor X and Magneto), is a highly-entertaining action-packed ride, with great chemistry between its two main characters. But I was expecting something more. More than waiting 2 hours plus to finally discover why Prof. X was paraplegic, where Magneto's helmet came from, or how Mystique ended up with the baddies. I wasn't curious about these elements in the first place. Still, nice to see Kevin Beacon in a good movie after awhile - and Hugh Jackman has one helluva 10-second screen time as the future Wolverine.

(Disclaimer, or huge bummer: Even though this was a Marvel superhero movie, there's no 2-minute sequence at the end of the end credits. Don't embarrass yourself by waiting.)

Mo says:

7 comments:

  1. My friends went to see this a few weeks back but I gave it a miss. I didn't enjoy any of the previous X-Men movies and thought this prequel was just a gimmick.

    The main problem I have with many superhero movies is the need to have "actors" playing the roles. I really just wanna see an end to end slugathon!

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  2. I actually enjoyed the original X-Men trilogy, and believe the "Wolverine" episode was a major let down compared to the trilogy. I guess the reason they need real actors for today's superhero movies, is because of the major shift that's happened since "Spider-man 2" from pure action to deep character development.

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  3. Deep character development ruined the comics in the first place. There are plenty of great stories that benefit from fine actors but I don't think the Superhere genre needs them. I just watched the second Swamp Thing movie and although slated by critics and comics fans alike I enjoyed it. It was a ludicrous story with some real ham acting but it was fun and the monsters were good old fashioned guys in rubber costumes.

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  4. Unfortunately, haven't seen either of the "Swamp Thing" movies. The PG-rated remake is very available, but I'm looking to find the unedited version.

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  5. The 1st one had it's moments but was quite poor, they made the classic mistake of not spending any money on Swamp Things makeup. It turned into a very soft porn movie for about 10 minutes which was pointless.
    The second one was much better. Not a brilliant movie by any stretch of the imagination but good comic book fun!

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  6. To tell the truth ,in comparison to the trilogy it has nothing much to say, but as a prequel it was not bad and obviously entertaining .Again I got amazed by outstanding performance of Micheale Fassbender in here, absolutely dominant in acting to others , He was the best choice for great Magneto , even to positive role of James Mc Avoy in popular character of Professor Xavier. Whatever I thought I didn’t see any similarity between young and old Professor, and my imagination doesn’t help me to match both together physically, at least at face !( how can it possible Mc Avevy would turn to Patric Stwart?! )
    I’m wondering among all performances of Fassbender which is the best indeed ? I had hard time to answer… in “ hunger “ he was shocking protester , in Fish Tank he was a nice looking but abuser , in the “Shame “ he was a complicated sex addicted guy and in all of those he is totally perfect!
    Thanks for highlighting him ...no doubt he has a highly bright future by keep going on this track. Still waiting for "dangerous method" release in here!

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  7. I thought Fassbender's act in "Shame" was the best performance I've seen of him so far. I just posted my review on the movie last night.

    Still waiting to see "A Dangerous Method" too.

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