Not exactly the Citizen Kane of comic book films that so many people are making it out to be: The philosophical volleying we saw in the other X titles is perhaps most overwrought here, and the film doesn't go unscathed by some painfully cheesy quips, clichéd moments and FX treatments probably too hokey for a $120 million budget. But it is cool to see our favorite mutants back -- and this time with their ideological origins cleverly interpolated amid a quickening Cold War.

Worst thing about the film? Probably a toss up between... Kevin Bacon and a sorely underexploited setting. (The first recognition of human mutations in a still somewhat innocent 1962 could have been way more fun and dynamic.) Best thing? Michael Fassbender , hands down. He owns every scene he's in, and while I've never been a Magneto fan, Fassbender navigates this character with the perfect mix of vulnerability and badass, eliciting more sympathy than perhaps all the other cast members combined. I'm sure Ian McKellen is both proud and turned on. Mark my words: If Fassbender plays his cards right, he's gonna own an Oscar in the next few years.

All in all:

[Edited 6/3/11 17:02pm]

I'm waiting for my cousin to get back so we can go see it. I've been waiting for a whole year to see it! I'm ready for Captain America as well

ScarletScandal said:

I'm waiting for my cousin to get back so we can go see it. I've been waiting for a whole year to see it! I'm ready for Captain America as well

I'd be interested in knowing what you think of it.

Is Gambit in the movie?

babynoz said:

Is Gambit in the movie?

Nope.

Lammastide said:

babynoz said:

Is Gambit in the movie?

Nope.

Heard very good things about the movie, but i'm not sure how i feel about the all new cast.

I saw the other X-men movies so many times, would be strange to see other people play the characters

I can't get into these movies with their butchered plots.

robertlove said:

Heard very good things about the movie, but i'm not sure how i feel about the all new cast.

I saw the other X-men movies so many times, would be strange to see other people play the characters

I thought this might be tough as well. But there are only 5 characters with overlap from the older films: Mystique, Beast, Moira MacTaggart, Prof X and Magneto.

Jennifer Lawrence, bless her heart, is simply nowhere near as compelling a Mystique as Rebecca Romijn -- and that was slightly challenging for me. The other recasts weren't so tough to imagine as simply younger versions of castings we'd already seen. And, again, Fassbender owned Magneto at least as well as Ian McKellan, I think.

Spinlight said:

I can't get into these movies with their butchered plots.

Yeah, they totally mutilated the source material. As one critic suggested, this is sort of a Magneto Origins and perverted New Mutants mashup rather than an earnest X-Men: First Class retelling. But if you can forgive that (and, for some, that's a lot to forgive), it was an interesting enough plotline to imagine the mutants wading through the Cuban Missile Crisis.

It has one of the best one line cameo I have seen in a film

It was ok.

Saw it this morning and I enjoyed it. I always keep an open mind as to the storyline because having read the comics I know you can't cram 20 years of story telling into 2 hours without some edits & liberties. My fave characters were Erik, Alex, Angel. Xavier was refreshing too because he was such a party animal at school and much freer in the use of his powers. Probably go see it again on my day off.

b3xy said:

It has one of the best one line cameo I have seen in a film

Yup!

That cameo also sort of explains why things happened the way they did in the [SPOILER] movie, if ya think about it

[Edited 6/4/11 17:44pm]

Lammastide said:

Spinlight said:

I can't get into these movies with their butchered plots.

Yeah, they totally mutilated the source material. As one critic suggested, this is sort of a Magneto Origins and perverted New Mutants mashup rather than an earnest X-Men: First Class retelling. But if you can forgive that (and, for some, that's a lot to forgive), it was an interesting enough plotline to imagine the mutants wading through the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I saw the involvement of characters like Havok, Banshee, that Wasp looking girl who is a brand new character in the books, and Azazel to be mystifying. Why didn't they just tell an interesting story involving the actual old school class? If they wanted to make up for the stupid usage of Angel in X3, they shoulda just made a separate character out of Archangel and made the villain Apocalypse or something. Whatever. It's disheartening.

I'm not a fan of other Marvel lines, but I would be interested in hearing the opinions of big Thor fans about their recent tango w/ Hollywood. I like the Thor movie, but it was super understated. I feel like those fans got a better shot at seeing their heroes come to life than us X-Men fans who are stuck with shitty directors and piecemeal plots that pair together storylines that existed 40 years apart from each other. UGH.

robertlove said:

Heard very good things about the movie, but i'm not sure how i feel about the all new cast.

I saw the other X-men movies so many times, would be strange to see other people play the characters

This is why I am in no rush to see it.

Well, now that we've got the backstory out of the way the proceeding stories should be very interesting. Good finale.

Took me a couple of minutes to click on "Betty" (January) which was funny to me cause the Michael guy looked so much like Jon Hamm, it was driving me nuts, he was cute though, played a very believeable role.

The About a Boy kid grew up but he still has the same looks, I had a hard time placing him it was kind of distracting.

Lammastide said:

robertlove said:

Heard very good things about the movie, but i'm not sure how i feel about the all new cast.

I saw the other X-men movies so many times, would be strange to see other people play the characters

I thought this might be tough as well. But there are only 5 characters with overlap from the older films: Mystique, Beast, Moira MacTaggart, Prof X and Magneto.

Jennifer Lawrence, bless her heart, is simply nowhere near as compelling a Mystique as Rebecca Romijn -- and that was slightly challenging for me. The other recasts weren't so tough to imagine as simply younger versions of castings we'd already seen. And, again, Fassbender owned Magneto at least as well as Ian McKellan, I think.

SPOILER ALERT:

At least Rebecca Romijn did make a surprise cameo appearance!

Fury said:

I thought it kinda sucked. Too much talking and it was too long Reminded me of the first film I still think X3 was the best-- action packed and short

I respectfully disagree. X2 was and still is THE best X-Men film thus far. That sequel has a balance of drama, action-packed sequence, & an interesting storyline that is respectable to the X-Men comic series.

X3 was the first f***-up in the entire X-Men film series. Just think about it: Scott Summers/Cyclops gets killed by Jean Gray/Dark Phoneix within the first 20 minutes of the film?!? That storyline is pure bullshit and definitely shows no respect to the X-Men comic series at all. Any die-hard X-Men fan knows that Jean would never killed Cyclops because she loved him too much. Even in the comic series a few years ago when their marriage was going to potentially end in divorce after Jean cold-busted Cyclops having a psyche affair with Emma Frost, Jean still would never EVER killed Cyclops over that act of adultery. Would Jean bitchslap Emma? Yes, absolutely! But would Jean kill Cyclops? No.

TonyVanDam said:

Fury said:

I thought it kinda sucked. Too much talking and it was too long Reminded me of the first film I still think X3 was the best-- action packed and short

I respectfully disagree. X2 was and still is THE best X-Men film thus far. That sequel has a balance of drama, action-packed sequence, & an interesting storyline that is respectable to the X-Men comic series.

I agree with this.

Spinlight said:

I can't get into these movies with their butchered plots.

Butchered plot was one of the first victims here.

TonyVanDam said:

Fury said:

I thought it kinda sucked. Too much talking and it was too long Reminded me of the first film I still think X3 was the best-- action packed and short

I respectfully disagree. X2 was and still is THE best X-Men film thus far. That sequel has a balance of drama, action-packed sequence, & an interesting storyline that is respectable to the X-Men comic series.

X3 was the first f***-up in the entire X-Men film series. Just think about it: Scott Summers/Cyclops gets killed by Jean Gray/Dark Phoneix within the first 20 minutes of the film?!? That storyline is pure bullshit and definitely shows no respect to the X-Men comic series at all. Any die-hard X-Men fan knows that Jean would never killed Cyclops because she loved him too much. Even in the comic series a few years ago when their marriage was going to potentially end in divorce after Jean cold-busted Cyclops having a psyche affair with Emma Frost, Jean still would never EVER killed Cyclops over that act of adultery. Would Jean bitchslap Emma? Yes, absolutely! But would Jean kill Cyclops? No.

Oy...

Jean didn't kill Scott, that was the Phoenix.

ScarletScandal said:

TonyVanDam said:

I respectfully disagree. X2 was and still is THE best X-Men film thus far. That sequel has a balance of drama, action-packed sequence, & an interesting storyline that is respectable to the X-Men comic series.

X3 was the first f***-up in the entire X-Men film series. Just think about it: Scott Summers/Cyclops gets killed by Jean Gray/Dark Phoneix within the first 20 minutes of the film?!? That storyline is pure bullshit and definitely shows no respect to the X-Men comic series at all. Any die-hard X-Men fan knows that Jean would never killed Cyclops because she loved him too much. Even in the comic series a few years ago when their marriage was going to potentially end in divorce after Jean cold-busted Cyclops having a psyche affair with Emma Frost, Jean still would never EVER killed Cyclops over that act of adultery. Would Jean bitchslap Emma? Yes, absolutely! But would Jean kill Cyclops? No.

Oy...

Jean didn't kill Scott, that was the Phoenix.

In the Marvel Comic universe, the Dark Phoenix would have never killed Cyclop while having Jean as a human vessel. Notice in my previous post I've said "Jean Gray/Dark Phoneix".

TonyVanDam said:

ScarletScandal said:

Oy...

Jean didn't kill Scott, that was the Phoenix.

In the Marvel Comic universe, the Dark Phoenix would have never killed Cyclop while having Jean as a human vessel. Notice in my previous post I've said "Jean Gray/Dark Phoneix".

Riiiiiiiiiiight....because Jean had such great control over the Phoenix. Please. The Phoenix was running shit in Jeans body.

ScarletScandal said:

TonyVanDam said:

In the Marvel Comic universe, the Dark Phoenix would have never killed Cyclop while having Jean as a human vessel. Notice in my previous post I've said "Jean Gray/Dark Phoneix".

Riiiiiiiiiiight....because Jean had such great control over the Phoenix. Please. The Phoenix was running shit in Jeans body.

If the Dark Phoenix was really running shit (your choice of words, NOT mine!) in the Marvel Comics OR the Marvel Films Universe, then why the hell was the Jean Gray/Dark Phoneix killed only by Wolverine with freaking adamantium claws?!?

First of all, the blame goes straight to film writers & a film director that did NOT do a better job in show enough respect to the Marvel Comics Universe. Second of all, any storyline that calls for a deity to get killed by adamantium claws just looks too fake, plain and simple.

TonyVanDam said:

ScarletScandal said:

Riiiiiiiiiiight....because Jean had such great control over the Phoenix. Please. The Phoenix was running shit in Jeans body.

If the Dark Phoenix was really running shit (your choice of words, NOT mine!) in the Marvel Comics OR the Marvel Films Universe, then why the hell was the Jean Gray/Dark Phoneix killed only by Wolverine with freaking adamantium claws?!?

First of all, the blame goes straight to film writers & a film director that did NOT do a better job in show enough respect to the Marvel Comics Universe. Second of all, any storyline that calls for a deity to get killed by adamantium claws just looks too fake, plain and simple.

:fallof: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nevermind Tony, have a great day

I won't let the fact that the movie is different from the books affect my opinion of it. It takes place in an alternate reality (Earth-10005 to be exact as opposed to Earth-616, home the comics) so it's supposed to be different. As long as it's well-written and well-acted, I'll give it a thumbs up.

TonyVanDam said:

Fury said:

I thought it kinda sucked. Too much talking and it was too long Reminded me of the first film I still think X3 was the best-- action packed and short

I respectfully disagree. X2 was and still is THE best X-Men film thus far. That sequel has a balance of drama, action-packed sequence, & an interesting storyline that is respectable to the X-Men comic series.

X3 was the first f***-up in the entire X-Men film series.

Here here. X2 was simply THE best of the trilogy, hands down. I was very disappointed in the third. It just seemed like mindless action without the heart of the second or even of the first.

SPOILERS:

I, like Spinlight said, didn't understand why they fucked with the timeline of when and which mutants were a part of the X-Men. Banshee? Havoc?? Alex is an X-Man before Scott?? Mags killing Shaw?? GTFOH!! And plus, Beast wasn't supposed to mutate until much later on in the timeline.

Oh yeah, and why was brutha man the first to die?!?!! Oh yeah, I forgot...this was set back in 1962. Lol! I never did like his character/power, either.

Overall, I liked this movie and was glad it wasn't a total fuckup. It just has some holes that irk me a bit. With the next one in the series, it definitely leaves itself open to truly start the REAL X-Men, the classic way with Scott, Jean, Bobby, and Warren. I also liked seeing some of the mutants Prof was discovering with Cerebro, and I was pleasantly surprised to see my boy Wolverine cameo in this as well.

And oh yeah, DAMN Zoe Kravitz was lookin' oh so HOT!!!!!! A couple of shots had me thinking I was looking at her mom, but I would NOT give a shit if she was my woman and had those tattoo/wings. It'd just be yet another place I'd be puttin' my tongue on her!!