{"id":5087,"date":"2011-06-02T22:52:09","date_gmt":"2011-06-02T12:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=5087"},"modified":"2014-05-17T14:51:41","modified_gmt":"2014-05-17T04:51:41","slug":"x-men-first-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=5087","title":{"rendered":"X-Men: First Class"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"xmenfirstclass\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Director:\u00a0 <\/strong>Matthew Vaughn<\/em>
\nWriter:\u00a0 <\/strong>Ashley Miller<\/em>
\nStarring:\u00a0 <\/strong>James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Rose Byrne<\/em><\/p>\n

I<\/span>t’s been eight long years since we had a decent X-Men<\/em> film.\u00a0 That would be Bryan Singer’s second and final contribution to the franchise: X-Men 2<\/em>.\u00a0 Since then we’ve had the inexplicably bad X-men 3<\/em> and a shabby Wolverine: Origins<\/em> spinoff.\u00a0 Cumulatively, these two efforts have been bad enough to universally lower the expectations of critics around the world.\u00a0 How else to explain the shockingly high 95% Rotten Tomatoes score for X-Men: First Class<\/em>, a competent but hardly sensational film.<\/p>\n

Well, let me take that back for a second.\u00a0 X-men: First Class<\/em> is a mostly<\/em> enjoyable film but you can draw a line at a particular juncture when all of a sudden the tone and quality takes a significant nose dive.\u00a0 Lets assess.<\/p>\n

\"xmenfirstclass002\"<\/a><\/p>\n

X-men: First Class<\/em> is directed by Matthew Vaughn who turned heads in 2010 with his terrific satirical superhero film Kick-ass<\/em>.\u00a0 X-Men: First Class<\/em> is mostly set in the swinging Sixties and explores the origins of the mutant superhero team.\u00a0 By setting the film in this distinctive era and taking a chance on a younger cast, Vaughn brings back some much needed freshness to the series.\u00a0 The film also moves along at a breathtaking clip.\u00a0 One minute you’re in Paris.\u00a0 Then the Argentinian country side.\u00a0 Then Las Vegas.\u00a0 Then Moscow.\u00a0 And so on.\u00a0 The characters all wear groovy costumes with interesting hairstyles and this is before anyone puts on a superhero costume or reveals their mutant ability.\u00a0 The first half of X-Men: First Class<\/em> feels less like a superhero film and more like a Connery-era Bond<\/em> film with suave gentlemen, sexy femme fatales and exotic locales.\u00a0 There’s even a luxury cruise ship that has a getaway submarine for the villain.\u00a0 I was loving it!<\/p>\n

The pacing of X-Men: First Class<\/em> might be quick but the film is anchored by a fantastic leading performance from James McAvoy.\u00a0 As a young Charles Xavier he is cavalier, debonaire and a boundless optimist.\u00a0 As ever, his foil is the tortured and nihilistic Erik Lehnsherr, played by Michael Fassbender.\u00a0 While they have a decent chemistry together, the film moves too quickly for them to share any meaningful exchanges which is a bit of a shame.\u00a0 In a slower paced film, there could have been an interesting ideological exchange between the two on whether they should involve the young mutants in a retaliatory attack against Sebastian Shaw after he decimates their CIA safehouse and murders one of them.\u00a0 Instead, we get this delightful exchange:<\/p>\n

Charles:\u00a0 We cannot allow them to fight Shaw.\u00a0 They are only children!\u00a0 Too much blood has been shed already.<\/em>
\nErik:\u00a0 No, I totally think we should.<\/em>
\nCharles: …Okay, but lets train for at least a couple of days first.<\/em><\/p>\n

Having said that, I think for the first hundred minutes or so, I was really happy with X-Men: First Class<\/em>.\u00a0 It didn’t feel patronising or juvenile.\u00a0 It was light, fun and knowingly playful.\u00a0 It was enjoyable seeing Kevin Bacon traversing the world in a bicycle helmet trying to trigger World War III while the X-Men gradually mastered their powers, learnt to work together and prepared for battle.\u00a0 Everything was in place for a dramatic showdown in Cuba in the big climactic scene.<\/p>\n

I’ll draw a line here for where the film’s quality suddenly goes down the crapper.<\/p>\n

Quality<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\n———————————————————————————————————————<\/p>\n

Crappola<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m not sure what happened but all of a sudden, we’re transported to a completely different film.\u00a0 The modest and measured use of special effects from earlier in the film suddenly goes out the window.\u00a0 In its place are over the top CGI effects that lack weightiness and strain credulity.\u00a0 The Bond inspired coolness is supplanted with Saturday morning cartoon silliness.\u00a0 A bunch of stuff blows up for about twenty minutes.\u00a0 And worst of all, the dialogue suddenly becomes stone cold retarded<\/em>.\u00a0 The final five minutes of the film could be played with no dialogue at all and with nothing more than a low key soundtrack and the audience would understand what is happening.\u00a0 Erik Lensher transforms into Magneto.\u00a0 Charles Xavier becomes a professor and forms his School For Gifted Mutants.<\/p>\n

Instead these scenes are ‘aided’ with the following lines:<\/p>\n

“I have become Professor X.\u00a0 I am going to start a school.\u00a0 Perhaps I will be bald someday.”<\/em>
\n“You’re no longer G-Men.\u00a0 You should call yourselves…the X-Men.”<\/em>
\n“I am no longer Erik.\u00a0 My name is now Magneto.\u00a0 You know, because I’ve now become a villain.\u00a0 A bad guy if you will.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Holy shit, it was terrible.\u00a0 My eyes couldn’t stop rolling into the back of my head.\u00a0 It became a script for babies.\u00a0 A shame, given how good the rest of the film was.\u00a0 Then the credits rolled and I was left to lament a squandered final act which spoiled an otherwise decent film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Teenage Mutant<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":15029,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[924,874,923,922,920,921],"class_list":["post-5087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-films","tag-james-mcavoy","tag-marvel","tag-matthew-vaughn","tag-rose-byrne","tag-x-men","tag-x-men-first-class"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5087"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5093,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5087\/revisions\/5093"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}