I’m excited for First Class and most of the reviews have been positive.  Sherdog member, Dragonlord has reviewed the movie.  Too bad the ending didn’t live up to the movie.  Regardless I’m seeing this tomorrow!

Dragonlord’s review:

Bottom Line: The second best X-Men film so far, X-Men: First Class is a smart entertaining film with a wonderful cast but suffers from an unsatisfactory ending.

Just came back from watching X-Men: First Class and I am a bit underwhelmed to be honest. Don’t get me wrong, I like the film. It is exceptionally well-made and the build-up is terrific, but there’s no big payoff in the end. The problem is the constraints that is placed on this prequel to somehow fit their storyline with the previous three X-Men films. Everything has to be neatly gift-wrapped up in the end with no surprises. And that’s why the film failed to truly soar. Remember in X-Men Origins: Wolverine where they tried to tie up all the loose ends in the ending? Well, it kinda feels like that again but less idiotic.

Before this review gets too depressing, let’s evaluate the many positives. Matthew Vaughn’s direction is top notch, the film is slick, sexy, and smart. The film moves at a bustling pace and it’s never dull. And the inactivity were well spent on character development. There were even parts in the movie that’s reminiscent of those old Cold War spy films. Michael Fassbender would make an excellent Bond when Daniel Craig steps down.

The main characters were all given ample screen time to build up their characters with the bulk spent on James McAvoy’s Professor X and Fassbender’s Magneto, which stole the show. The duo have great chemistry and they make you believe their friendship despite knowing each other for a short time only.

As for the rest of Professor X’s students, they were given just enough face time to justify the movie’s title but not enough to shrug off the stigma of being second class citizens. This is another flaw in the set-up for this prequel which deprived us the original five founding members. You can feel by the end of the film that they just didn’t care enough, aside from Beast and Mystique, to build up their characters properly.

I admit, I disliked the casting of Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Shaw when I first heard about it. But after watching the film, his Shaw was a magnificent super villain. The rest of the Hellfire Club were equally great. January Jones’ Emma Frost doesn’t have a dominant personality here unlike in the books but her portrayal is still fun to watch. Azazel and Riptide don’t have much dialogue but they’re pretty cool as evil henchmen.

Watch out for a surprising cameo. The scene is very brief but hilarious. A PG-13 rated movie is only allowed one “Fuck” word and they used it here perfectly.

I’m still processing everything and would like to rewatch the film again to finalize my thoughts on it. But as I said in the first paragraph, I felt the film suffered from the constraints of being a prequel and didn’t have a satisfactory ending. Overall, X-Men: First Class is smart entertaining flick but X2 is still the better film.

Rating: 7.5/10 or 8/10

Thanks to Dragonlord for sharing his review with us.

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