I am pretty sure I was the only person in my family of admittedly geeky people who was excited to see X-Men Origins: First Class. Let's face it, we've been burned by the series before and my people weren't ready to give the franchise that delivered such dissatisfying fare as X3 and Origins: Wolverine another chance.
But I am the kind of person who is still looking forward to The Legend of Korra even though the creators took the original show in a completely ridiculous direction and then vindictively stomped all over my fragile, shipper heart. (Who's bitter?) I watched all of the Underworld movies, Van Helsing, and Jennifer's Body. I even went back for Glee's second season after the episodes stopped being about any kind of plot and started to be vehicles for musical careers.
I guess what I'm trying to say is I am an eternally hopeful participant in the TV/Movie game. I will give chances and throw myself on the mercy of the writers' good graces over and over again. I was fully expecting to hate First Class. I had remarkably low expectations after the unmentionable pile of refuse that was X3.
I am glad my assumptions were so grievously wrong.
X-Men Origins: First Class is not only a great X-Men movie (one of the top two hands down) but a good movie on its own.
Even though the movie-verse messes with established character timelines and canon, a little suspension of disbelief goes a long way and it's almost worth it in this case. The storyline is intricate enough to keep you interested while still relying nicely on things blowing up and people shooting beams out of themselves. The effects are really good, the writing is fun and funny, and the actors do very good jobs.
Plus, this movie presents the fun conundrum of all prequels: how did they go from This to That? The evolution of Charles, Erik, and the entire mutant/X-men backstory was really interesting and well-handled (at least with regards to the movie-verse's continuity).
Forewarned from here: The HMS Spoiler is all set to sail because I have nit-picky, analysis-type things to get into below. If you don't want to be spoiled, suffice it to say the movie is well worth watching. Go forth! Watch!
Anyone left? Good. Let's get into the fun stuff. >=)
The movie begins in the 1940s with what I assumed was the "Adagio for Strings" (it's not, but it sounds so similar, I am just gonna keep calling it that). What a way to start the movie. At this point I am expecting some sort of heart-rending Schindler's List-type cinema and I'm not really disappointed. Poor Baby Magneto is ripped from his parents in a concentration camp and so proceeds to rip the camp's gate free of its moorings. An extremely familiar looking man pulls Little Erik into his office promising him chocolates and happiness if he can move the proffered coin across the tabletop. Oh look! It's Kevin Bacon! Looking very old and slightly stretched and kinda evil... And his status as the villain of this flick is cemented when he shoots Baby Magneto's mother in cold blood, prompting a magnetic storm to occur in Bacon's adjoining Roomful of Torture Devices. Who keeps one of those attached to their office anyways? Damn Nazis...
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| Look at him scream, the poor Baby Erik |
This horrible reveal of Erik's powers and their Dark Side-nature is nicely contrasted with the tracking shot of what we know as the X-Mansion. Inside, Baby Charles wakes up, pads downstairs, and proceeds to Mind-bend a Baby Mystique into dropping her disguise. "Join me in my giant rambling house with missing parental figures!" he tells her in all of her adorable baby blueness. Or, you know, close enough.
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| Small Mystique is adorable |
The continual contrast between scenes of what Erik is doing (killing) versus what Charles is doing (studying) are...acceptable. If I hadn't felt as if the editor were trying to ram it down my throat, I'd have enjoyed it more. Nature/Nurture arguments are fun and all, but I like to have them after the movie, not in my head during the scenes where things are blowing up. We would still have seen the extreme differences in upbringing and outlook on life between these two guys without all of the overt switching.
I did, however, love the use of different languages throughout the scenes a lot. In a time that is categorized in our history as one of fear (and there is a scene later showing actual news footage that made me so glad I wasn't born yet) all of the different languages being batted around are really cool. The scene with Erik in the bar in Argentina switching languages at will is so awesome and cringe-worthy and yet serves to showcase his character really well. One of the things the constant language-switching does is really impress upon us, the Audience, how intelligent these guys are. It's one of the things that makes their break-up so interesting later: two brilliant men with vastly different opinions on something that affects the both of them... see, this is a more subtle version of the constant scene-shifts from earlier and it works a little better, in my opinion.
RE: Erik - There's a reason it's so fun to write characters motivated solely by revenge. They're a lot simpler and these characters will often push the edges of what is traditionally seen as "right" and "wrong", crossing into fun torture things while still being full of ennui and angst. Erik is so full of angst it is almost strangling him.
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| MAGN-ANGST-O |
Of course by the point in the movie where it was time to reconcile the two storylines (Erik's and Charles') I just kept getting "James Bond, JAMES BOND" vibes from Erik's side. I guess it's because the only Bond besides the newest ones I've seen is Octopussy and I swear that Bond wears a wetsuit just like Erik's. But the switching between the James Bond espionage scenes with Erik and the scienc-y CIA scenes with Charles are...interesting. It really kept me on my toes tone-wise and I don't know if I would have liked it if I weren't enjoying the movie so much.
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| Wetsuit looks like this. Pretty much exactly. |
From here on out, the movie is about finding baby mutants, training them, and putting nods to the original duology in as often as possible (X3 didn't happen, I tell you!).
A break before I analyze the heck out of character motivations: My notes just say "Beast! <3" for the introduction of Dr. Hank McCoy. ...Yeah. :)
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| Awww, isn't he adorable? And so full of Science and Wonder... |
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| ...and then he turned into a blue muppet... |
What the movie does well at this point and for the rest of the film is really showcase the nebulousness of Charles' "goodness". He is going to be Professor X, upstanding member of society, leader of the X-Men and all around great guy, but right now? Right now Charles is a twenty-something year old who's just gotten his PhD in genetics and can't stop calling people splendid when they're uncomfortable with themselves.
He has that smug arrogance of the highly educated young adult. The "I-am-so-smart, Look-at-my-brains" proclivity with the added fun of being able to talk to people and affect their actions with his Mind. He's intrigued by the possibility of mutants and his PhD helps enable him to speak about it in a group setting. What his brains and his Brains don't do for him, however, is provide a justification for the manipulation he is doing.
Any way you slice it, telepathy is a kind of creepy power. And Charles is shown to have such great control he can literally force people to do things they don't want to do. This isn't a power to be taken lightly. And yet, while the movie goes out of its way to show the creepiness inherent in being able to control metal (Erik's initial tantrum plus his slaughter of all of the Nazis he can find come to mind) it does a lot less with the invasion and control Charles constantly exhibits.
I mean, Xavier is the guy who mind-bent Baby Mystique out of her disguise, outed Dr. Hank as Beast just by shaking his hand, psychically removed Erik from the magnetic pull of a submarine, put three soldiers to sleep while running, controlled a soldier to turn his head and look through his eyes, penetrated a fellow-mutant's mind (more than once), and physically controlled an officer on a Russian ship to do something he had absolutely no intention of ever doing. And that's just the stuff I can remember four days after I saw the movie.
Charles isn't really into this whole "gotta catch 'em all" collection of baby mutants for the good of everyone, he is pretty selfishly doing it to study mutants in their natural habitat (search your feelings, you know it to be true!) and build a family of which he is the unequivocal head. He is oligarchic at heart and while his actions reflect that, they're never cast in a Bad Light. Fridge logic at its best, right?
The training scenes really serve to showcase my idea that Charles Xavier is secretly a terrifyingly selfish force. While he builds secret bunkers for children who explode (coughHavokcough) and races Dr. Hank around the grounds repeatedly, Charles gives off the impression that he is training these children to better protect the world when it comes time to save it. But at this point in the movie the CIA base has already been destroyed, the only black character (Darwin! And he had such an awesome power and a level head!) has been killed, and the mutants have been kicked out of the government. Charles brings them all to his childhood home, outfits everyone in hideous tracksuits, and goes about ensuring that these kids are going to be competent killing machines to aid the cause of a group that doesn't want their help.
Yet he is seen as the benevolent and altruistic leader of the newly formed X-Men. I am not going to say that Professor X isn't altruistic and loving and the best and most kindly bald-headed leader for the X-Men he could be. But Charles? Charles is kind of a dick. (sorry, Mom)
In my notes I wrote that Charles is like Dumbledore only more meddlesome, which isn't right. Charles is like Dumbledore in that he thinks 3 steps ahead, but not in every direction, just 3 steps ahead in the direction he is going to force the world into. He's a formidable personality, but not a Good one.
It offers up a nice contrast with Erik, who's not Good but motivated by revenge, something typically depicted as a thing only Evil people will do. It affords the question of which is "better": selfish motivations that help other people peripherally or revenge which is pretty focused on yourself without really hurting anyone else (….except the objects of your revenge...they bite it...hard).
The training scene also presents an interesting scenario: Charles is stronger than Erik is but only insofar as he is able to provide support. He's the squishy in the Raid group, hanging back and using his mind to provide information, control the enemy, and be the leader. As a general, he plays by the tried and true "stay in the car" methodology of battle. Which is fine. You don't want your mages up in the front pulling aggro and dying all over the place. You keep them back and Charles does just that. Ostensibly, the training sequence is about showing Charles pushing all of his mutants to their full potential, but really he's testing them. And what he does to Erik, invading his mind, making him cry, sharing his memories with barely a blink of the eye, it squicked me more than made me appreciate what he was doing.
Charles may be the pin upon which the picture turns, but Erik is the heart and you feel more for his plight than that of the spoiled, manipulative Xavier.
Case in point: while everyone is running about in tracksuits, moving giant satellite dishes, and catching mannequins on fire, Charles is...not training. He is too good for it, apparently.
For all of his insistence that the kids are normal, he still manages to forget that they are just normal kids. Kids who are finally among people they don't have to be afraid with. His blow-up at their harmless jubilation made me angry. Possibly that's where this anti-Xavier tirade comes from... But come on! I could be onto something here! ;) |
| Sometimes Havok sets the entire ROOM on fire... |
Seriously though, can I be a telepath, please? I promise to be less creepy than Charles.
Anyhoo, the rest of the movie, after the training scene, is all about the X-Men flying in on their awesome super-sonic jet and making the entire world angry with them. The fight scenes are well-choreographed and, call me cheesy, I really love watching movies where people spend time training and then kick butt at the end. That's not a cliché for me, it's one of my favorite tropes. So Banshee flying around and using his sonar, Havok blasting things with his chest... all of it was cool and worth watching and felt right.
But of course, we couldn't end the movie without the Chekhov's Gun (the Magneto helmet) making an appearance and the break-up between Erik and Charles is almost heart-rending. Erik as the cause of Charles' paralysis? After their chess-playing, night on the town, Russian-invasion friendship? So sad! But it nicely resolved a problem I'd been having, namely the disparate attitudes each of the men was taking toward mutant integration and place in society.  |
| Plus, suits! |
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| There's such nice continuity expressed by these chess games. |
Erik magnetically manipulating all of the missiles and finally letting them fall into the ocean only to save his friend? Very nice. If it was a bit of a cliché, I was willing to accept it because it had been built up to so well.
Charles, for all of his flaws really does want the mutants to keep living and thriving and learning (he might just want to study them, though. He did write his doctoral thesis on mutations) while Erik wants them to be Special. Both of their ideas have merit. Both of them could be construed as Right.
And so this movie did pretty much exactly what it meant to do: threw up a cloud of fog obscuring the motivations and Rightness of two characters who we have seen as diametrically opposed in the past. What side are you on? It's not as simple as the first 2 movies would have you believe. And set in a time-period where black and white was essentially the norm (Russians are bad, U.S. is good, etc, etc) such a lovely shade of grey was a brilliant contrast.7.5 on the Richter Scale of my Heart
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