X-Men First Class

Unlike some of the other Super-Hero movies that have come out, I did read and follow X-men. I started with the new group and also read a lot of the classic ones. With the depth of history and various configurations of the groups I was quite excited to see a movie about the original group. X-men First Class is not that movie.
That’s not to say that it’s not a good film. It’s one of the better stories and the characters are all well represented. It’s just that they play fast and loose with the history and characters. Most people who have only ever been exposed to the X-men through the movies will not be bothered by this.

The Hellfire Club is well represented and the White Queen is basically wearing her comic costume. As a matter of fact, the accuracy to comic costumes is quite close in this one. Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Shaw was a fine choice as a villain. If only Oliver Platt had a character name other than “man in suit” to match his fine role.

As super-hero films go, even as action films go, it’s quite good. If you have no preconceptions of who would be in the ‘first class’ of X-men, and don’t know who designed Cerebo, the Blackbird, and the yellow and black costumes, if you don’t know when Hank turned blue and fuzzy, when Xavier ended up in a wheelchair, and when Banshee, and Havok joined the X-men and when Shaw, Mystique, and Emma encountered the X-men and when Emma gained a diamond form, and if it won’t bug you that Moria and Banshee are no longer Scottish, then you should have no trouble with this film.

I knew all this going in and it’s probably what prevents me from liking this film more. I liked it quite a bit, but could have liked it even more if some of these had been closer to what I already knew.