X-Men: First Class

When you think about it, this was a pretty remarkable year for films based on Marvel comics. No real classics, but they effectively build up The Avengers for next year, and they managed to put out three films without any of them stinking, or even being less than pretty good for summer action blockbusters. X-Men: First Class might be my favorite of the three, not just looking at the whole X mythology in an interesting way, but being the second best X movie that's ever been released.

At this point, the whole continuity of the X movie franchise is pretty messed up. The Wolverine movie probably did the most damage, but the whole thing is fraught with issues arising from recasting and changing things that needed to be changed. As a way of pushing a big reset button, First Class mostly works while still acknowledging what's been done before for the most part. It shows the early lives of Professor X and Magneto, depicts them becoming friends during a conflict that alerts major governments to the existence of mutants, and sets the stage for their antagonistic relationship that defines the rest of the series. It doesn't do all this perfectly, but it gets the job done, and considering how little time Matthew Vaughn and his cast and crew had to put it together, I think it's fairly impressive work.

The best part of the movie is very easily the development of Erik and Charles as characters and as friends, and it's what the whole movie builds from. James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender both give very good performances, especially considering it's a comic book movie, and there's a real camaraderie that builds and a sadness when their relationship inevitably turns sour. The other stuff isn't as good, but it isn't too bad either. Kevin Bacon and January Jones play Sebastian Shaw and Emma Frost, the leaders of the Hellfire Club, are the main villains who want to start a nuclear war and create a paradise for mutants in the aftermath. Tying the main external conflict of the film into the Cuban Missile Crisis is a pretty clever move, and it works to ground the story in a period of history and play around with what we already know. There's not much else to the plot that isn't maneuvering to get characters in place for where they should be later, but there doesn't really need to be.

A good deal of time is spent with the main characters working with some members of the CIA to essentially create an early version of Xavier's school for mutants, with some familiar faces and characters new to the movies both getting introduced. One of the best single moments in the film comes from the recruitment montage, where Charles and Erik find a certain popular X-Man and get a rude response from. Otherwise, the whole training and preparing thing kind of slowed down the movie a bit, and none of the new mutants or their little subplots were particularly interesting. In general, the script definitely feels a bit thrown together, with a climax that goes on for a while but doesn't always have a clear purpose, and a few silly bits that took me out of the story. But as I said, the central story of Xavier and Magneto definitely works, and resulted in a pretty good movie. I'm definitely more interested in more of this than another Wolverine movie.

Wanted

I haven't seen either of Bekmambetov's "Watch" action/fantasy/whatever films, but I guess they were somehow interesting enough to find success outside of Russia and get him a job in Hollywood. I can't really say I'm that impressed by his storytelling skills, but he sure knows how to make an over-the-top action scene. Wanted is (apparently very loosely) based on a comic published by Top Cow and written by Mark Millar, whose work I also haven't experienced but has done well enough for me to have heard of him. It (the movie) is about a loser whose life changes when he finds out he's inherited his father's abilities as an elite assassin and is brought into a secret guild that carries out hits around the globe. It's quite a while before he really gets into that though, as a lot of time is spent showing how much of a loser he is. A lot of the focus is at the office where he works, with some really unfunny scenes about how much he hates his fat boss and dirtbag friend. The narration by James McAvoy is really bad, especially in these early scenes, where you can see him and the writing straining very hard to be clever but failing at every turn. I was glad when he left that and got into killing people.

McAvoy and Angelina Jolie are featured in most of the action, and they have a pretty decent chemistry on camera. She's sexy as she always is, and he seems a little out of place starring in a movie like this but doesn't do a bad job overall. Morgan Freeman is the leader of the assassins, and does the typical wise old man thing he always does, and towards the end his character gets more interesting and funnier. Common makes another acting appearance, although the actual acting he does is minimal and I think he's just there because his face looks cool. There are many other mildly interesting characters, and the middle of the movie is a bunch of McAvoy getting his ass kicked and partaking in some entertaining missions before the big one, avenging his father's killer. It's around this point that they start throwing out plot twists like they're party favors, and it's not long before the final big violent sequence with lots of running, shooting, absurd curving of bullets, and exploding rats. The very end makes one final attempt at too-cool-for-school humor, and then there's the credits to a very mediocre movie. While it usually pretty dumb, the filming and visual effects in the action scenes make it easily watchable for fans of the genre. If you think you'd like it from the previews, you're probably right.