Rating: 1/5
The X-Men are outstaying their welcome. After two great movies and two terrible movies, I honestly wasn't interested in this movie. For one thing, it's a reboot, and for another, it's directed by Matthew Vaughn, who last presented a ten-year-old girl being hammered to a pulp with a mallet as harmless entertainment. People claim this is supposed to be on the emotional level of The Dark Knight. In a universe where Your Highness wins an Oscar, maybe.
Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and his adopted sister Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) are living peacefully in England until the CIA recruits them to help explain a new species being born, mutants. Meanwhile, Erik Lensherr (Michael Fassbender), is a holocaust survivor and master of magnetism (get it?) who is hunting down his concentration camp tormentor, the evil mutant Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon). The two eventually meet up and their doomed friendship begins.
Charles and Erik make the mistake of choosing around eight X-Men for the new team, and having none of them be cool, except for the one who dies. Seriously, I don't want to see the screaming flying squirrel kid, mosquito girl, Mystique, and blue teen wolf more than I want to see Cyclops or Storm. While there are some very clever cameos, overall there are just lame X-Men. Even though I gave them a chance, after a while I realized I just didn't care at all about the characters because they are criminally underdeveloped.
Even McAvoy and Fassbender have no serious character growth. They aren't "Charles" and "Erik" like the trailer says, they are just Professor X and Magneto, but younger than Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart. The script overall ranges from mildly competent to cringe-worthy, especially in the unbelievably idiotic scene where Mystique (who spent over 16 years in England but has an American accent) names all of the characters their comic-book names. It's also inconsistent, having an early scene where January Jones FLICKS Magneto of a boat, and then be overpowered by him and Xavier with a bed. Seriously.
The acting is just ok. James McAvoy and Fassbender are good, but because the script and horrifically flat direction beat you over the head with the fact that the two will be enemies, it's hard to see them as friends at all. January Jones proves to be not only disturbingly skinny but incapable of human emotion, and a terrible actress. Everyone else is also either bland (Banshee) or absolutely horrible (everyone else). Magneto's helmet looks cool until it inexplicably becomes red and he gets a red leather jacket. The whole Holocaust thing is also completely pointless and in terrible taste, considering that the fact that Magneto was tortured by ANOTHER MUTANT making him hate humans makes NO SENSE.
Overall, X-Men: First Class is better than Kick-Ass, but in the same way that Revenge of the Sith is better than Attack of the Clones. Both still left a bad taste in my mouth and gave me a feeling of embarrassment that I was the target audience. It isn't horrible, but it's so damn silly I can't call it good. Simply put, it isn't deep or smart enough to be The Dark Knight or even Iron Man, and it takes itself much to seriously that it's not fun like Hellboy or The Incredible Hulk. It's just a really, really stupid, stupid, stupid movie. Rotten Tomatoes calls it Marvel's Batman Begins. I call it Marvel's Jonah Hex, unbelievably stupid, but utterly forgettable.
