Movie Review: X-Men: First Class

Warning: May contain spoilers. You've been warned.

(out of four stars)

I must say that this is the best X-Men movie to date. I enjoyed the original trilogy, but this movie had it going on.

Honestly, I'm not even sure I can criticize this movie in any way.

I loved that they were able to tie a real historical event in America and X-Men together perfectly. I learned about the Cuban Missile Crisis in 8th grade, but I never really understood it. The only this I remembered about it was that it was called "The Cuban Missile Crisis" but the conflict was actually between the US and Soviet Russia. This movie, while being laced with fiction, helped me get the gist of what my 8th grade teacher was trying to explain. See… movies can be educational.

At first I wasn't sure about James McAvoy as Professor X, but he definitely grew on me. In fact, they did a great job with this cast, including Kevin Bacon. I must comment on the range of accents and languages that Michael Fassbender (Magneto) and Kevin Bacon had to pull off for their roles. I understand that Fassbender is in fact German, but he did have to speak Spanish during his scene in Argentina and he did it perfectly. I also enjoyed Jennifer Lawrence (Mystique) and Nicholas Hoult's (Beast) performances.

My one disappointment was that Xavier was paralyzed in this movie. First off, I should say that they did it in a great way. I looked up how it was actually done in the comics and that was stupid. Something about an alien dropping a rock on his legs. In the movie, Moira (who is a human) gets upset and begins shooting at Magneto with Xavier standing somewhat behind him. Magneto deflects her bullets. One of which ricochets and hits Xavier's spine. What's great about this is that we know Magneto deflected it and it happened to hit X. To Magneto, human Moira shot him, which makes him despise humans even more.

Now, why am I disappointed that he was crippled? Because by the end of the movie, I was hoping for a sequel and hoped that if they didn't cripple X, then they'd be somewhat obligated to make another to depict that.

Now, if you've made it this far into the review and you've seen the movie, I hope you'd agree with my thoughts on the movie. If you haven't seen the movie and you've gotten this far… WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING? Go see this movie!!! It's amazing and I want it to make money so they realize they need to make another!!

Fun fact: the movie makes two cameos; neither of which are creator Stan Lee who normal appears in all movies based off his comics. One of which is obvious and I absolutely loved but will not spoil. The second is while Mystique is lying in bed for Magneto. Magneto tells her that she is too young so she changes her appearance to that of her older self played by Rebecca Romijn, who appeared as Mystique in the original trilogy.