X-Men: First Class

I have to admit I was a bit of a sucker for this concept. The relationship between Professor X and his counterpart Magneto is one of the most interesting in comics, colouring the conflicts between their respective groups as not just the battle of opposing forces, but of divergent ideologies. There are almost certainly comics that detail their time together and the essential divide between them, but I've never come across one in the chaotic process by which I generally read them (i.e. borrowing ones with smart looking covers from my brother).

The trouble is that I don't think it even attempted to follow through on the promise that the idea holds. We don't bear witness to the divide in theory, just the point at which Magneto ceases to use Xavier as a resource to meet his own ends. At no point do they share a common goal, at no point are the mental and physical aspects they represent cohesive, and I think that fundamentally diminishes the dynamic.

But as I say, never having read a full description of their past this might just be my personal interpretation that the film is failing to meet. As much as I'd like it if they were to start, they just don't make movies for me.

It is fairly successful in a lot of other areas. The spy thriller trappings of the Cold War era solidifying it's setting, alongside the giant sideburns and bad shirts. Hijacking the Cuban Missile crisis as the event that changes the world they inhabit made for an interesting comment on how they would effect our own. The inversion of the usual Harmony versus Discipline trope, Xavier believing their powers are to be controlled while Erik of the opinion they are to be expressed, adding much needed complexity and placing their split beyond one of purely good versus evil. And I did like both the personal narratives and acting of both the leads. It was a little tricky to place them in the same shoes as Picard and Gandalf, but I was left happy that they represented the characters as they might have been, my only issue being that they never manage to connect in a way that satisfied.

Beyond my reservations over the central relationship, it's really the powers that let this film about people with powers down. Beyond Erik and Charlie they really were dealing with a pack of D string material. They seemed to have scoured the source for characters with barely enough dimensions to rub together and abilities that just weren't lending themselves to the screen. They render most of the action entirely disposable, and while their allegiances mark much of the interaction between the two ideologies, I feel it would have been far less corny if that had stayed with just the one character. Kevin Bacon does his best with his physics lecture of a villain, but he does end up being yet another antagonist wanting to set off yet another mutant causing bomb to show those pesky humans what for. More could have been done with this. They should have been dealt a villain who represented the antithesis of both of their paths, instead this just muddies the waters in which they find themselves.

In the end it's all a little forgettable, rather than being especially bad. It didn't really do a good deal with it's concept or it's action, but the things that it did manage were not wholly disagreeable. I feel I should lambaste it further for forging something weak from such a grand idea, but I think I can detach my feelings enough to see it for what it is: a disposable summer blockbuster. And there are worse things in the world. Like wasps.