"No, Mister Xavier, I Expect You To Die!"

[woodwardiocom]

X-Men: First Class is what you would get if you crossed the X-Men with one of the better 1960s James Bond films, down to details like the revolving restaurant booth or the yacht that might as well have Disco Volante written on its stern. Kevin Bacon plays the Bond villain role so gleefully you almost expect to see Mike Meyers in the corner coaching him. Emma Frost might as well have Pussy Galore written on her stern. And Michael Fassbender plays Magneto as Daniel Craig in a Sean Connery world, relentlessly looking for vengeance with glowering blue eyes. This is all a good thing by my lights.

If I have a complaint, it's that the Bond-iness extends to the women a little more than I was comfortable with. Yeah, the Hellfire Club has always been about lingerie, but the women in this movie spend just a bit too much time stripping down. (And the fact that the only mannequins they have for Havok to test his powers on are very modern, very female mannequins verges on creepy.)

That said, I still highly recommend the film. There's humor, excellent action scenes, heroes to root for and villains to hiss at, and the Xavier-Magneto relationship is brilliantly handled by McAvoy and Fassbender. It's rare for any X-Men fiction to show how similar the goals of the hero and the villain are.

Oh, if you're wondering how close it hews to X-Men comic book canon, the answer is "not very". Here are the years of introduction for all the major characters:

• 1963: Xavier, Beast, Magneto
  
• 1967: Banshee
  
• 1969: Havok
  
• 1975: Moira MacTaggert
  
• 1978: Mystique
  
• 1980: Shaw, Frost
  
• 1986: Riptide
  
• 2001: Angel Salvadore
  
• 2003: Azazel
  
• 2006: Darwin

Again, not a bad thing except for the purists.

Comments

[ckd]

I liked it overall, but am unhappy with the "let's show the new recruits that the bad guys are serious" scene; the choice of target was a bit tropetastic (TVTropes link warning).

[moonshadow.livejournal.com]

I liked it too. But I agree with you, I didn't like how they handled the female characters. I was a bit bugged by the way they handled Angel's character, I felt like they implied a connection between her having been a stripper and her morality in general that annoyed me a lot. And normally I find Emma Frost a pretty sympathetic character, one who's known to change sides on occasion. I didn't feel they showed that part of her at all.

*Edited to remove spoilers for those who have not seen the movie.*

[minkrose]

Agree entirely with your post and the two comments thus far. Still enjoyed the hell out of the movie, which is good.

It felt like they were going for a "this is the 60s so there is sexism, isn't that ... quaint/silly?" vibe but it completely did not work. It seemed so obvious that it almost became ridiculous, but it didn't white get there.

The group of people I went with had at least four people who claimed there was sexy subtext between Darwin and Havoc but I did not see it. I was busy flirting with James McAvoy through the screen. :D

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

It felt like they were going for a "this is the 60s so there is sexism, isn't that ... quaint/silly?" vibe but it completely did not work. It seemed so obvious that it almost became ridiculous, but it didn't white get there.


I just saw the film myself. I like the way they played down the Hellfire Club's ridiculous sexism, though playing up the establishment sexism was forced to the point of using FBI drag to represent the CIA.

Still haven't seen it

[drwex]

and thank you for avoiding spoilers.

And I'm impressed that you remembered the name of the yacht. I recognized it as soon as I read it in your post, but had I been asked I would have been at a loss to come up with the name spontaneously.

[shut-it-already.livejournal.com]

My comments to A upon leaving the theater were pretty similar to your review, though I was a bit more strident about paragraph two. I also thought that Oliver Platt (and Michael Ironside) were criminally underused.

I'm glad you posted that list of origin dates. Now I don't feel so bad about not knowing anyone newer than Riptide.