X-Men: First Class
So, I hadn't really wanted to go out today, but we'd talked about going to a movie yesterday and we'd missed the only reasonably timed showing of First Class yesterday afternoon and the older of my brothers decided that he really wanted to go, which makes today my only opportunity to see it in a theater, so I went. I thought it was a very enjoyable movie. If fucking PAINFUL because you sit through the whole thing watching Sebastian Shaw and a young Erik Lensherr hunting him down and you're just watching Erik become the very man he hates so much, and you know Charles is going to be crippled and that he and Moira don't get together and that he and Erik don't get together (there is an interview with James McAvoy where he says it's a mini-tragedy that Charles and Erik don't "have sex and become married..." in that order in the 60s, yep) and that their friendship is broken and even when you know it's coming it hurts.
And then I went home and thought about the other X-movies and ...just trying to make the timeline make any kind of SENSE just makes my head hurt. In this movie, Erik accidentally deflects a bullt shot at him by Moira McTaggert into Charles's back. After Erik leaves, as his friends gather around him he assures Hank that he won't move...in fact. He can't feel his legs. ("I can't feel my legs. I can't feel my legs. I can't feel my legs. I can't..." ;_; ...and then my brother leaned over and whispered "aaaaand...he's paralyzed from the waist down and I lost it XD) But...at the end of Origins there's a cameo by a digitally de-aged Patrick Stewart, as cueball-bald as always, stepping out of a helicopter to meet the young mutants that Stryker had imprisoned on Three Mile Island. Not to mention that supposedly, one of those young mutants is supposedly Emma Frost, who appears as an adult in First Class.
The climax of First Class is basically the Cuban Missile Crisis. In Origins, the final battle is covered up as the Three Mile Island disaster. Which means that First Class definitely takes place first. So who was the young blond girl with the diamond skin in Origins? How was Xavier able to walk? Dammit writers, I had enough trouble trying to reconcile the timing of Origins versus the original trilogy! XD Because either in X-movie-verse Three Mile didn't take place in the 70s, or the original trilogy takes place somewhere in the 90s rather that in the 2000s (it was released in 2000 and is supposed to take place 'in the near future').
And what happened to all the mutants in this movie that aren't in the trilogy, anyway? They never mention that Alex has a brother, either.
I want to see McAvoy's Xavier start to lose his hair. Because he's so fond of it. Poor thing. XD
I'm also a little ridiculously pleased that I was right about Chekhov's Nazi Coin. Soon as young!Erik was told to move the coin I knew that it was going to end up through someone's forehead before the film was over. I wanted to kick Xavier when he tried to convince Erik not to kill off both fleets using exactly the wrong words. Someone who's been so far inside Erik's head should've known better.
I got a huge kick out of the Wolverine cameo. Because I'd been thinking before the movie that it would be the first not to feature Wolverine anywhere, and then, I was wrong. XDDD Also amazing was a moment shortly before it when they meet Angel, a young Vegas stripper with gorgeous dragonfly wings. They hire her for a private dance, and when she goes to the room she finds them lounging cozily on the bed. Erik magnetically levitates over a chilling bottle of champagne that they're sharing. According to that interview I linked earlier there's some Noole Incident involving that scene and crossdressing that got "fuckin' kinky," but he didn't share any other details. :( ...maybe it'll be on the blooper reel on the DVD. *crosses fingers*
Also, I ship Darwin and Havok. XD Yeah, poor Darwin was barely in the film, but still. And if there's a direct sequel to this one, I wouldn't put it past Darwin to have survived Shaw's attack. According to Wikipedia his body can convert to pure energy, so maybe he could've survived that way. XD I dunno. Shame they killed him off so quick though. And speaking if minor characters, Banshee looked like Ron Weasley. My whole family agrees. XD And Riptide was hot. Yes I am shallow and I am okay with that fact. XD But yeah, throwing tornados around in a three piece suit. They should've actually mentioned his name in the film at some point, though. I had to look him up after the fact.
I did like the character arcs for Mystique and Erik. I thought they did them well, and I liked the Rebecca Romijn cameo. XD By the end of the film Mystique was really starting to sound like the way she talks in the original trilogy, and it was terrible (in the good way) watching Erik charging headfirst down and off the edge of the slippery slope. It's sad, from the very beginning there's obviously no way it can last.
But yeah. I enjoyed the movie. XD I just wish the writers of all these things could get their act together in terms of continuity.
Eta: ...I just remembered the scene where Charles and Eric recruited Jean Grey to the school. together. Which couldn't have happened if events played out as they did in First Class. That's not a relatively minor thing like changing who designed Cerebro. The whole plot of the third movie sort of hangs on that bit of shared history. Just...augh. Did the writers watch the other movies? This isn't like decades and decades of comicbook history they have to wade through, this is a grand total of five films. Including First Class. Shouldn't be this hard to maintain continuity!