Director: Matthew Vaughn
Cast: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Kevin Bacon, Rose Byrne, Jennifer Lawrence
Released: June 3, 2011
Warning: spoilers
When it comes to the X-Men, my only knowledge is the first three movies which I've only seen once. (I've also seen Wolverine - big mistake, but I like Hugh Jackman!) I've never read the comics or watched the animated series. I've enjoyed all the movies (well, except for Wolverine, obviously) and this one was no exception (or should I say X-ception? Haha!).
It takes place in the early '60s and we meet Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) before he became Professor X (played by Patrick Stewart in the previous films) and Erik Whoever (Michael Fassbender) before he became Magneto (who Ian McKellen played in the other films). Before they were enemies, Charles and Erik had to work together to stop the bad mutants from starting World War III. As far as super powers go, Charles definitely has Erik beat. Erik can move objects with his mind, which, okay, that's cool and it did come in handy a few times in the movie. However, Charles can read minds (and he can control at will whose mind to read), have conversations with people inside their minds, freeze people in time, and who knows what else. Team Charlie!
I can understand why Erik becomes evil because his mother was killed right in front of him as a young boy, so it's understandable why he has a bunch of pent-up rage. I don't understand why both young mutant girls decided to go to the dark side. First, when Kevin Bacon leads the bad guys to the government building where the young mutants are being guarded, Angel doesn't put up a fight and just decides to join them and it was like, "Really?! Really?" Like I said, I've seen the X-Men movies, so I knew Mystique was a bad "guy", but how she got there makes no sense to me. She and Charles are quite close and have a brother/sister relationship, but at the end of the movie, after Erik nearly kills thousands of innocent people (but Charles manages to stop him), he asks who wants to join him, and Mystique decides to go with him and Charles is like, "Okay, that's cool. I know that's what you want to do." Um, hello, Charlie? But you're letting one of your closest friends join the bad side!
Mystique has one of the coolest powers of all the X-men (or women, in her case). She's a shift shaper and can turn into anybody she wants. At first I was a little confused that 1960s Mystique was played by 20 year old Jennifer Lawrence and Mystique in 2000 was played by late 20s Rebecca Romijn, but it's explained to us that she has genetic make-up that makes her age quite slowly. We also find out that Mystique was the one who suggested the nicknames Professor X and Magneto for Charles and Erik.
There's a few fun cameos: Rebecca Romijn and the best is Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. It was unexpected and really funny; they made nice use of their one F word in the PG-13 movie.
How about that death scene with Kevin Bacon? If anyone had to be killed in that manner, than he certainly deserved it - he was the one who killed little Erik's mother right in front of him, after all. I have to give the movie credit; I've never seen anyone killed like that. That made me cringe! I will never look at a coin the same way again.
I was really entertained by this movie and the special effects were amazing, though in ten years they'll probably look awful!
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